Quotes About Distance

Together we raced into the jungle, leaving Justin Bieber far behind.

Why, he wondered, does a phone call to a distant loved one only intensify the emptiness and loneliness you were feeling before you called?

Why was it always like that? he wondered. You call someone you love on the phone, and when you've finished talking, all you feel is the bloody distance between you.

There was something in him that always stood apart, that she couldn't reach and he wouldn't offer. It wasn't just the Job and its demands, but something deeper: a central core of loneliness. He had been like that even as a child. An observer. Always on the outside, even when he played with others. As Annie said, it was a part of his nature, and he didn't think he could change it if he tried.

He always had that same empty, lonely feeling after he'd spoken to someone he loved over the telephone, as if the silence had somehow become charged with that person's absence.

It is easy for us to criticize the prejudices of our grandfathers, from which our fathers freed themselves. It is more difficult to distance ourselves from our own beliefs so that we can dispassionately search for prejudices among them.

What we are doing to strangers in other communities right now is, therefore, far more serious and far more widespread than the harm we would do if we were in the habit of occasionally sending out a group of warriors to rape and pillage a village or two. Yet causing imperceptible harm at a distance by the release of waste gases is a completely new form of harm, and so we lack any kind of instinctive inhibitions or emotional response against causing it. We have trouble seeing it as harm at all.

Yet causing imperceptible harm at a distance by the release of waste gases is a completely new form of harm, and so we lack any kind of instinctive inhibitions or emotional response against causing it. We have trouble seeing it as harm at all.

No doubt we instinctively prefer to help those who are close to us. Few could stand by and watch a child drown; many can ignore the avoidable deaths of children in Africa or India. The question, however, is not what we usually do, but what we ought to do, and it is difficult to see any sound moral justification for the view that distance, or community membership, makes a crucial difference to our obligations.

Ranged weapons, together with the mastery of fire, literally made us human. They also defined what may be called the "human way of war." The distinguishing characteristic of human combat is the ability to strike from a distance coupled with mobility.

Loneliness clarifies. Here silence stands Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken, Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken, Luminously-peopled air ascends; And past the poppies bluish neutral distance Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence: Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.

once or twice the two of them shared a glimpse of meaning that felt as if a shaft of sunlight had struck through clouds to light up a majestic line of great hills in the distance—something far beyond, and never suspected.

Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some people went there, but I never would.

I didn't know how Douglas and Mickey felt about the news, but the Earth seemed so far away now it didn't matter anymore. Maybe that was the wrong way to feel, but that's what I felt anyway.

I have been trying to think clearly about everything and to use all this distance to advantage. And here is what I've discovered. I don't love you, Ishmael.

We'd said we'd keep in touch. But touch is not something you can keep; as soon as it's gone, it's gone. We should have said we'd keep in words, because they are all we can string between us--words on a telephone line, words appearing on a screen.

Maybe, it's not the distance that's the problem, but how you handle it.

Sometimes memory tricks you. Sometimes beauty is best when it's distant.

I will never have a photograph of her to carry around in my pocket. I will never have a letter in her handwriting, or a scrap-book of everything we've done. I will never share an apartment with her in the city. I will never know if we are listening to the same song at the same time. We will not grow old together. I will not be the person she calls when she's in trouble. She will not be the person I call when I have stories to tell. I will never be able to keep anything she's given to me.

I should talk to him I know I should talk to him. But I do not talk to him. I watch after him from afar and love him.

You are so close, and I can't reach you.

If you zoom close-if you get really close to someone, if you really get close to yourself-then you lose the other person, you lose yourself entirely. You get so close you can't see anything anymore.

Maybe this is what we've needed all along. Distance from everything else, and closeness to each other.

detachment, n. Even when I detach, I care. You can be separate from a thing and still care about it.