Quotes About Distance

Even between the closest human beings, infinite distances continue.

Wie einer, der auf fremden Meeren fuhr, so bin ich bei den ewig Einheimischen; die vollen Tage stehn auf ihren Tischen, mir aber ist die Ferne voll Figur. In mein Gesicht reicht eine Welt herein, die vielleicht unbewohnt ist wie ein Mond, sie aber lassen kein Gefühl allein, und alle ihre Worte sind bewohnt. Die Dinge, die ich weither mit mir nahm, sehn selten aus, gehalten an das Ihre -: in ihrer großen Heimat sind sie Tiere, hier halten sie den Atem an vor Scham.

Love at first is nothing like merging, surrendering, and uniting with a second person (for what would a union be with something undefined and unfinished, still disordered—?); it is a high incentive for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become a world, to become a world for himself for the sake of another, it is a large, demanding claim on him, something that elects him and calls him into the distance.

Mädchen, Dichter sind, die von euch lernen das zu sagen, was ihr einsam seid; und sie lernen leben an euch Fernen, wie die Abende an großen Sternen sich gewöhnen an die Ewigkeit.

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.

And if what is close is far, then the space around you is wide indeed and already among the stars; take pleasure in your growth, in which no one can accompany you, and be kind-hearted towards those you leave behind, and be assured and gentle with them and do not plague them with your doubts or frighten them with your confidence or your joyfulness, which they cannot understand.

Perhaps everyone loved someone; I didn't now, I couldn't give much thought to love; in order to travel far you had to be detached, and I had the long road back to the campus before me.

Perhaps, like them, I was a throwback, a small distant meteorite that died several hundred years ago and now lived only by virtue of the light that speeds through space at too great a pace to realize that its source has become a piece of lead

Atom from atom yawns as far As moon from earth, or star from star.

The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough

The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. . . . The force of character is cumulative.

No mountain is of any appreciable height to break the curve of the sphere.

Visible distance behind and before us, is respectively our image of memory and hope.

Emotions are like waves. Watch them disappear in the distance on the vast calm ocean.

The love of God shows us that God alone bridges the distance between him and us, enabling us to see this world through Calvary.

I am well aware that objects are nearer than they appear and should be handled with care. These

Love will fly if held too lightly, love will die if held too tightly.

A train has a poor memory; it soon puts all behind it.

He lay far across the room from her, on a winter island separated by an empty sea. She talked to him for what seemed a long while and she talked about this and she talked about that and it was only words, like the words he had heard once in a nursery at a friend's house, a two-year-old child building word patters, like jargon, making pretty sounds in the air.

You are all there, the people in the city. I can't believe I was ever among you. When you are away from a city it becomes a fantasy. Any town, New York, Chicago, with its people, becomes improbable with distance. Just as I am improbable here, in Illinois, in a small town by a quiet lake. All of us improbable to one another because we are not present to one another. And it is so good to hear the sounds, and know that Mexico City is still there and the people moving and living.

Well, I've kept you waiting long enough, he said, peering at me from that distance which drinking adds between people and which, at odd turns in the evening, seems closeness itself.

All of us improbable to one another because we are not present to one another

Colonel Freeleigh? said Douglas softly. There was something in his silence that made them all shut up their mouths. They approached, almost on tiptoe. Douglas, bent down, disengaged the phone from the old man's now quite cold fingers. Douglas lifted the receiver to his own ear, listened. Above the static he heard a strange, a far, a final sound. Two thousand miles away, the closing of a window.

Way late at night Will had heard—how often?—train whistles jetting steam along the rim of sleep, forlorn, alone and far, no matter how near they came. Sometimes he woke to find tears on his cheek, asked why, lay back, listened and thought, Yes! they make me cry, going east, going west, the trains of far gone in country deeps they drown in tides of sleep that escape the towns.