Famous Quotes & Sayings

Jonathan Swift

If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.

Jonathan Nolan

Time eventually convinces most of us that forgiveness is a virtue. Conveniently, cowardice and forgiveness look identical at a certain distance.

Jonathan Raban

Interstate highways dull the reality of place and distance almost as effectively as jetliners do: I loathe their scary monotony.

Jonathan Safran Foer

I write because I want to end my loneliness. Books make people less alone. That, before and after everything else, is what books do. They show us that conversations are possible across distances.

Napoleon Hill

Do not search for SUCCESS off in the distance, but instead recognize it and grasp it right where you are!

Napoleon Bonaparte

Between a battle lost and a battle won, the distance is immense and there stand empires.

Os Guinness

In terms of distance, the prodigal's pigsty is the farthest point from home; in terms of time, the pigsty is the shortest distance to the father's house.

Orlando Aloysius Battista

The shortest distance between two jokes makes a perfect speech.

Olafur Eliasson

I see the artist as a participant, a co-producer of reality. I do not see the artist as a person who sits at a distance and evaluates.

Mason Cooley

No dignity without distance.

Mary Augusta Ward

Customers must be delicately angled for at a safe distance - show yourself too much, and, like trout, they flashed away.

Mary Astell

Unhappy is that Grandeur which makes us too great to be good; and that Wit which sets us at a distance from true Wisdom.

Michael Collins

I really beleive that if the political leaders of the world could see their planet from a distance of, let's say 100,000 miles, their outlook wouls be fundamentally changed . The all-important border would be invisible, that noisy arguement suddenly silenced. The tiny globe would continue to turn, serenely ignoring its subdivisions, presenting a unified facade that would cry out for unified understanding, for homogeneous treatment. The earth must become as it appears: blue and white, not capitalist or communist; blue and white,not rich or poor; blue and white, not envious or envied.

Michio Kaku

It's humbling to realise that the developmental gulf between a miniscule ant colony and our modern human civilisation is only a tiny fraction of the distance between a Type 0 and a Type III civilisation - a factor of 100 billion billion, in fact. Yet we have such a highly regarded view of ourselves, we believe a Type III civilisation would find us irresistible and would rush to make contact with us. The truth is, however, they may be as interested in communicating with humans as we are keen to communicate with ants.

Michio Kaku

Scientists are embarrassed by science fiction; they want to distance themselves as much as possible. ... I think there's nothing to be ashamed of [and that] we should take science fiction seriously.

Michel Foucault

In the Renaissance, madness was present everywhere and mingled with every experience by its images or its dangers. During the classical period, madness was shown, but on the other side of bars; if present, it was at a distance, under the eyes of a reason that no longer felt any relation to it and that would not compromise itself by too close a resemblance. Madness had become a thing to look at: no longer a monster inside oneself, but an animal with strange mechanisms, a bestiality from which man had long since been suppressed.

Mark Ruffalo

I didn't like the distance between my family and myself that I was experiencing from having to work all the time.

Mark Calcavecchia

When I'm in a zone, I don't think about the shot or the wind or the distance or the gallery or anything; I just pull a club and swing.

Marie Lu

Now, as we stand three feet apart and stare at each other, I feel the full distance that comes with spending so much time apart, a moment filled with the electricity of a first meeting and the uncertainty of strangers.

Marie Lu

I make sure to keep a good distance between us, just in case she decides to get happy with a knife or something.

Theodore Roethke

The fields stretch out in long unbroken rows. We walk aware of what is far and close. Here distance is familiar as a friend. The feud we kept with space comes to an end.

Manmohan Singh

The salvation of the world ultimately lies in moving towards universal nuclear disarmament, but that's a long distance away.

Johannes Kepler

The squares of the periodic times are to each other as the cubes of the mean distances.

Johannes Kepler

But although the attractive virtue of the earth extends upwards, as has been said, so very far, yet if any stone should be at a distance great enough to become sensible compared with the earth's diameter, it is true that on the motion of the earth such a stone would not follow altogether; its own force of resistance would be combined with the attractive force of the earth, and thus it would extricate itself in some degree from the motion of the earth.

Johannes Kepler

If the moon and earth were not retained in their orbits by their animal force or some other equivalent, the earth would mount to the moon by a fifty-fourth part of their distance, and the moon fall towards the earth through the other fifty-three parts, and they would there meet, assuming, however, that the substance of both is of the same density.

George Armstrong Custer

Previous to this time I had never even a balloon except from a distance. Being interested in their construction, I was about to institute a thorough examination of all its parts, when the aeronaut announced that all was ready. He inquired whether I desired to go up alone, or he should accompany me. My desire, if frankly expressed, would have been not to go up at all; but if I was to go, company was certainly desirable. With an attempt at indifference, I intimated that he might go along.

Joan Didion

Grief, when it comes, is nothing we expect it to be. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.

Eric Fischl

I think people who make objects like the distance; they're not there when the other person is taking it in.

John McGahern

The imagination demands that life be told slant because of its need of distance.

John James Audubon

But hopes are shy birds flying at a great distance, seldom reached by the best of guns.

John James Audubon

Look at that mallard as he floats on the lake; see his elevated head glittering with emerald green, his amber eyes glancing in the light! Even at this distance, he has marked you, and suspects that you bear no goodwill towards him, for he sees that you have a gun, and he has many a time been frightened by its report, or that of some other. The wary bird draws his feet under his body, springs upon then, opens his wings, and with loud quacks bids you farewell.

Neal Stephenson

Any strategy that involves crossing a valley accepting short-term losses to reach a higher hill in the distance will soon be brought to a halt by the demands of a system that celebrates short-term gains and tolerates stagnation, but condemns anything else as failure. In short, a world where big stuff can never get done.

Rainer Maria Rilke

It’s possible, I’m moving through the hard veins of heavy mountains, like an arc, alone; I’m so deep inside, I see no end in sight, and no distance: everything is getting near and everything near is turning to stone.