Distance Quotes - Page 13

• That politeness which we put on, in order to keep the assuming and the presumptuous at a proper distance will generally succeed. But it sometimes happens that these obtrusive characters are on such excellent terms with themselves that they put down this very politeness to the score of their own great merits and high pretensions, meeting the coldness of our reserve with a ridiculous condescension of familiarity, in order to set us at ease with ourselves.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Character, Order, Ease

  Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”, p.79

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• Cunning has only private selfish aims, and sticks at nothing which may make them succeed. Discretion has large and extended views, and, like a well-formed eye, commands a whole horizon; cunning is a kind of shortsightedness, that discovers the minutest objects which are near at hand, but is not able to discern things at a distance.

  Joseph Addison

  Selfish, Eye, Views

  Joseph Addison, Richard Steele (1854). “The Spectator”, p.226

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• I take a sun bath and listen to the hours, formulating, and disintegrating under the pines, and smell the resiny hardihood of the high noon hours. The world is lost in a blue haze of distances, and the immediate sleeps in a thin and finite sun.

  Zelda Fitzgerald

  Time, Sleep, Blue

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• Sound--
  That stealeth ever on the ear of him
  Who, musing, gazeth on the distance dim,
  And sees the darkness coming as a cloud--
  Is not its form--its voice--most palpable and loud?

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Clouds, Voice, Darkness

  Edgar Allan Poe (2015). “Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry and Tales”, p.45, Library of America

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• learning must travel the distance from head to heart.

  Gloria Steinem

  Heart

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• Distance is the only cure for certain diseases.

  Zora Neale Hurston

  Disease, Cures, Certain

  Zora Neale Hurston (1995). “Zora Neale Hurston: Novels and Stories: Jonah's Gourd Vine / Their Eyes Were Watching God / Moses, Man of the Mountain / Seraph on the Suwanee / Selected Stories”

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• Every man, in judging of himself, is his own contemporary. He may feel the gale of popularity, but he cannot tell how long it will last. His opinion of himself wants distance, wants time, wants numbers, to set it off and confirm it.

  William Hazlitt

  Men, Numbers, Long

  William Hazlitt (1845). “Table Talk: Opinions on Books, Men, and Things”, p.38

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• Affectation naturally counterfeits those excellences which are placed at the greatest distance from possibility of attainment, because, knowing our own defects, we eagerly endeavor to supply them with artificial excellence.

  Samuel Johnson

  Knowing, Excellence, Possibility

  Samuel Johnson (1851). “The beauties of Johnson: choice selections from his works”, p.9

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• By those who look close to the ground dirt will be seen. I hope I see things from a greater distance.

  Samuel Johnson

  Looks, Dirt, Greater

  Samuel Johnson (1836). “Johnsoniana: Or, Supplement to Boswell: Being Anecdotes and Sayings of Dr. Johnson”, p.53

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• Providence has fixed the limits of human enjoyment by immovable boundaries, and has set different gratifications at such a distance from each other, that no art or power can bring them together. This great law it is the business of every rational being to understand, that life may not pass away in an attempt to make contradictions consistent, to combine opposite qualities, and to unite things which the nature of their being must always keep asunder.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Law, Opposites

  Samuel Johnson, William Page (1860). “Life and Writings”, p.148

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• With respect to duels, indeed, I have my own ideas. Few things in this so surprising world strike me with more surprise. Two little visual spectra of men, hovering with insecure enough cohesion in the midst of the unfathomable, and to dissolve therein, at any rate, very soon, make pause at the distance of twelve paces asunder; whirl around, and simultaneously by the cunningest mechanism, explode one another into dissolution; and, offhand, become air, and non-extant--the little spitfires!

  Thomas Carlyle

  Insecure, Men, Ideas

  Thomas Carlyle (2015). “Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh”, p.161, The Floating Press

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• There are dreams of love, life, and adventure in all of us. But we are also sadly filled with reasons why we shouldn't try. These reasons seem to protect us, but in truth they imprison us. They hold life at a distance. Life will be over sooner than we think. If we have bikes to ride and people to love, now is the time.

  Copyright: Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Family Limited Partnership.

  Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

  Dream, Love Life, Adventure

  Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, David Kessler (2012). “Life Lessons: How Our Mortality Can Teach Us About Life And Living”, p.35, Simon and Schuster

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• There is convincing evidence that the search for solitude is not a luxury but a biological need. Just as humans posses a herding instinct that keeps us close to others most of the time, we also have a conflicting drive to seek out solitude. If the distance between ourselves and others becomes too great, we experience isolation and alienation, yet if the proximity to others becomes too close, we feel smothered and trapped.

  Bill Vaughan

  Convincing Evidence, Luxury, Solitude

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• Our senses will not admit anything extreme. Too much noise confuses us, too much light dazzles us, too great distance or nearness prevents vision, too great prolixity or brevity weakens an argument, too much pleasure gives pain, too much accordance annoys.

  Blaise Pascal

  Pain, Light, Giving

  Blaise Pascal (1849). “Thoughts of Blaise Pascal”, p.83

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• God is, or He is not." But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager?

  Blaise Pascal

  God, Games, Heads Or Tails

  Pensees no. 680 (1658). Popularly known as "Pascal's wager."

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• The aim of my writing is to utterly remove the distance between author and reader so that the book becomes a sort of semipermeable membrane through which feelings, ideas, nutrients pass.

  Erica Jong

  Book, Writing, Ideas

  FaceBook post by Erica Jong from Sep 18, 2012

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• The whole process of writing is a setting at a distance. That is the value of it - to the writer, and to the people who read the results of this process, which takes the raw, the individual, the uncriticized, the unexamined, into the realm of the general.

  Doris Lessing

  Writing, People, Individual

  Doris May Lessing (1994). “Under my skin”

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• The law of dislike for the unlike will always prevail. And whereas the unlike is normally situated at a safe distance, the Jews bring the unlike into the heart of every milieu, and must there defend a frontier line as large as the world.

  Israel Zangwill

  Heart, Law, World

  Israel Zangwill (1921). “The Voice of Jerusalem”

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• whereas the dog strives to lessen the distance between himself and man, seeks ever to be intelligent and intelligible, and translates into looks and actions the words he cannot speak, the cat dwells within the circle of her own secret thoughts.

  Agnes Repplier

  Dog, Cat, Intelligent

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• idealism, that gaudy coloring matter of passion, fades when it is brought beneath the trenchant white light of knowledge. Ideals, like mountains, are best at a distance.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Passion, Light, White

  Ellen Glasgow (1900). “The Descendant”

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• A letter is a barrier, a reprieve, a charm against the world, an almost infallible method of acting at a distance.

  Iris Murdoch

  Acting, World, Letters

  Iris Murdoch (2003). “The Black Prince”, p.65, Penguin

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• All the best things are seen first of all at a far distance.

  Elizabeth Goudge

  Perspective, Firsts, All The Best

  Elizabeth Goudge (2001). “The Little White Horse”, p.91, Penguin

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• I may not be great at geometry but I know one theorum. The longest distance between two points is you and your parents.

  Jane Wagner

  Two, Parent, May

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• Middle-class-led reform movements, from the Progressive Era to the War on Poverty, have been marred by an elitist distance from the would-be beneficiaries of reform.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  War, Class, Reform

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1989). “FEAR OF FALLING”, Pantheon

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• History needs distance, perspective. Facts and events which are too well attested cease, in some sort, to be malleable.

  Joseph Joubert

  History, Perspective, Events

  Joseph Joubert (1896). “Pensées of Joubert”

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