Distant Cousins Quotes

We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form. ~ William Ralph Inge

Words, do not have twins in every language. Sometimes they only have distant cousins, and sometimes they pretend that they are not even related. ~ Monique Truong

There is a difficult discussion that rarely happens among American funeral directors: viewing the embalmed body is often an unpleasant experience for the family. THere are exceptions to this rule, but the immediate family is given almost no meaningful time with the body. Before the family has time to be with their dead person and process the loss, coworkers and distant cousins arrive, and everyone is forced into a public performance of grief and humility.

I wondered what it would be like if there were places like Lastel in every major city. Spaces outside the stiff, ceremonial norm, where the family can just be with the body, free from the performance required at a formal viewing. Spaces that are safe, comfortable, like home. ~ Caitlin Doughty

What is it that has called you so suddenly out of nothingness to enjoy for a brief while a spectacle which remains quite indifferent to you? The conditions for your existence are almost as old as the rocks. For thousands of years men have striven and suffered and begotten and women have brought forth in pain. A hundred years ago, perhaps, another man sat on this spot; like you he gazed with awe and yearning in his heart at the dying light of the glaciers. Like you he was begotten of man and born of woman. He felt pain and brief joy as you do. Was he someone else? Was it not you yourself? What is this Self of yours? What was the necessary condition for making the thing conceived this time into you, just you and not someone else? What clearly intelligible scientific meaning can this 'someone else' really have? If she who is now your mother had cohabited with someone else and had a son by him, and your father had done likewise, would you have come to be? Or were you living in them, and in your father's father... thousands of years ago? And even if this is so, why are you not your brother, why is your brother not you, why are you not one of your distant cousins? What justifies you in obstinately discovering this difference - the difference between you and someone else - when objectively what is there is the same? ~ Erwin Schrodinger

We're distant cousins. He's my first cousin, but he's 5,000 miles away. And he doesn't talk much. ~ Jarod Kintz

It was in a swampy village on the lagoon river behind the Turner Peninsula that Pollock's first encounter with the Porroh man occurred. The women of that country are famous for their good looks - they are Gallinas with a dash of European blood that dates from the days of Vasco da Gama and the English slave-traders, and the Porroh man, too, was possibly inspired by a faint Caucasian taint in his composition. (It's a curious thing to think that some of us may have distant cousins eating men on Sherboro Island or raiding with the Sofas.) At any rate, the Porroh man stabbed the woman to the heart as though he had been a mere low-class Italian, and very narrowly missed Pollock. But Pollock, using his revolver to parry the lightning stab which was aimed at his deltoid muscle, sent the iron dagger flying, and, firing, hit the man in the hand.

He fired again and missed, knocking a sudden window out of the wall of the hut. The Porroh man stooped in the doorway, glancing under his arm at Pollock. Pollock caught a glimpse of his inverted face in the sunlight, and then the Englishman was alone, sick and trembling with the excitement of the affair, in the twilight of the place. It had all happened in less time than it takes to read about it.

("Pollock And The Porroh Man") ~ H.G. Wells

What the fossil record does do is to force us to contemplate our place on the planet. We are but one species of several hominids that inhabited Planet Earth, and like our distant cousins who went extinct fairly recently, our time on Planet Earth is also finite. ~ Louise Leakey

The fertility of the slave mothers meant that Virginia planters, including Washington, could "grow" their own labor force. One of Washington's distant cousins wrote to his manager in 1759, "the Breeding wenches most particularly, you must instruct the overseers to be kind and indulgent to." Thomas Jefferson's calculation of the economics of plantation slavery was chillingly blunt: "a woman who brings a child every two years [is] more profitable than the best man of the farm. ~ Henry Wiencek

At paces that might stun and dismay the religious jogger, the runners easily kept up all manner of chatter and horseplay. When they occasionally blew by a huffing fatty or an aging road runner, they automatically toned down the banter to avoid overwhelming, to preclude the appearance of show boating (not that they slowed in the slightest). They in fact respected these distant cousins of the spirit, who, among all people, had some modicum of insight into their own days and ways. But the runners resembled them only in the sense that a puma resembles a pussy cat. It is the difference between stretching lazily on the carpet and prowling the jungle for fresh red meat. ~ John L. Parker Jr.

Mma Ramotswe found it difficult to imagine what it would be like to have no people. There were, she knew, those who had no others in this life, who had no uncles, or aunts, or distant cousins of any degree; people who were just themselves. Many white people were like that, for some unfathomable reason; they did not seem to want to have people and were happy to be just themselves. How lonely they must be
like spacemen deep in space, floating in darkness, but without even that silver, unfurling cord that linked the astronauts to their little metal womb of oxygen and warmth. For a moment, she indulged the metaphor, and imagined the tiny white van in space, slowly spinning against a background of stars and she, Mma Ramotswe, of the No. 1 Ladies' Space Agency, floating weightless, head over heels, tied to the tiny white van with a thin washing line. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

Linda continued stubbornly, "Evolution can't be true, because if humans evolved from apes, then why are there still apes?"

"Frankly, Linda, it is exactly that kind of bone-headed statement that demonstrates a complete ignorance of evolutionary processes by the staggeringly misinformed. Humans did not descend from apes, humans and apes shared a common ancestor millions of years ago. Humans and apes are distant cousins, with chimpanzees as our closest cousins sharing roughly ninety-eight percent of our genome, who together share an even earlier common ancestor with gorillas."

"I am not descended from a monkey," Linda stated hotly. "Humans are created in the image of God and appeared on Earth in our present form. We did not evolve from pond scum!"

"You are free to believe that and persist in your ignorance, but as the renowned evolutionary biologist and zoologist, Richard Dawkins, wrote in A Devil's Chaplain - "

"Aha!" Linda burst out, "there you go, admitting it's the work of the devil. ~ Diogenes Of Mayberry

Eddie made a half-turn in his seat to face her. "So, what did you think of our hosts?"
She chuckled. "I think they could be not-too-distant cousins of the Addams Family."
"With Paul as a fuzzy Uncle Fester," Eddie laughed. ~ Hunter Shea

And there's you,
with your purity and beauty.
You unyoke me.

We lie on the bed,
closer than a hand in a glove,
yet I still experience this distant ache.
I miss you even in your presence.

How did love find me
when I hid from it so masterfully?
How did love know when to strike?

I look into your infinite eyes
and can say nothing.
Because there, in front of me,
lies everything.
And you unyoke me. ~ Kamand Kojouri

It was incredible to see how ordinary individuals act once they cross the porthole from the streets into Tiffany & Co. They instantly transform from giggling, loud-mouthed college girls, griping old biddies and tired middle-aged errand shoppers into genteel cousins to aristocracy. ~ Chiara Kelly

The essence of art that is at all noble is the DREAM, and this dream dwells only upon what is distant, absent, vanished, unattainable. ~ Georges Rodenbach

Who hasn't grown up knowing the bitchy cheerleader, a dumb jock, the computer nerd, an overbearing mother, a distant father, a misunderstood old person, or an alienated artist, writer, musician, or dancer? If everybody knows these people, are they really clichés or merely categories? Maybe the various cities, towns, neighborhoods, and blocks are really replicating microcosms? The same strands woven together to create one large tapestry of life? ~ Karen Wojcik Berner

If dimensions are virtual like the particles in quantum foam are virtual then, entanglement is information that is in more than one location (hologram).
There are no particles, they may be wave packets but the idea of quantum is, a precise ratio of action in relationship to the environment.
Feynman's path integral is not infinite, it is fractal.
If you look at a star many light years away, the photon that hits your eye leaves the star precisely when the timing for the journey will end at your eye because the virtual dimension of the journey is zero distance or zero time. Wheeler said that if your eye is not there to receive the photon then it won't leave the star in the distant past. If the dimension in the direction of travel is zero, you have a different relationship then if it is zero time in terms of the property of the virtual dimensions.

Is a particle really a wave packet?
Could something like a "phase transition" involve dimensions that are more transitory then we imagined.
Example; a photon as a two dimensional sheet is absorbed by an electron so that the photon becomes a part of the geometry of the electron in which the electrons dimensions change in some manner.
Could "scale" have more variation and influence on space and time that our models currently predict?
Could information, scale, and gravity be intimately related? ~ R.A. Delmonico

Is eating her brain consumes only the fresher memories, the unripe moments. Her distant past is preserved, better than preserved. Moments that occurred in Leningrad sixty-some years ~ Debra Dean

English kings married their cousins and so their kids were as sharp as clubs. ~ Peter Prasad

A little thing happened in the not so
distant past Cade, something called
Feminism, which meant that women have
the right to do a lot of things, like vote, get equal pay oh and wear whatever the fuck they want. There is no way I am letting anyone tell me what to wear, ever Cade. And if you wanted a timid 'Old Lady' who would don a full length fucking burka at your request you've got the wrong one. ~ Anne Malcom

Men who as boys felt neglected by their dads often remain distant from their children. The sins of fathers are passed on to children, often through the dynamic of self-protection. It hurts to be neglected, and it creates questions about our value to others. So to avoid feeling the sting of further rejection, we refuse to give that part of ourselves we fear might once again be received with indifference. ~ Larry Crabb

The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf. ~ Lewis Mumford

Fake tiaras and fashion handbooks play into the collective fantasy that one day, if you are beautiful and good enough, you too can marry the inbred great-great-grandchild of some bloodless aristocrat whose distant relations were better at murdering huge numbers of peasants than some other bloodless aristocrat. ~ Laurie Penny

Irene had always thought that some awakenings were better than others. For instance, waking up in bed on a morning with nothing urgent to do, a pile of books next to you, and a mug of coffee within arm's reach could be described as good. Waking up in the deserted tunnels of the London Underground to the sound of distant werewolf howls was bad. Waking up to find yourself hanging in chains in a private Inquisition Chamber was really bad. (And hell on the shoulders.) ~ Genevieve Cogman

Sentimentality and nostalgia are closely related. Kissing cousins. I have no time for nostalgia, though. Nostalgics believe the past is nicer than the present. It isn't. Or wasn't. Nostalgics want to cuddle the past like a puppy. But the past has bloody teeth and bad breath. I look into its mouth like a sorrowing dentist. ~ Mal Peet

What does the future look like? I don't know how to answer this question, but for the bettering of man's future, I would like for a civilization of knowledge to exist on our planet in the not too distant future. ~ Eraldo Banovac

While group collaboration can certainly be a source of collective intelligence, it can also get you to jump off a cliff or drive too fast. And that's probably why some form of continued connection to the adults and their adult perspectives still exists in traditional cultures, and even in our animal cousins. Without adults around, young adolescents can literally go wild. ~ Daniel J. Siegel

If there is a conflict between the easy drift of prosperity and the ordeal of peace, the ordeal of peace comes first. ~ Norman Cousins

God is not going to let you see the distant scene either. So you might as well quit looking for it. He promises a lamp unto our feet, not a crystal ball into the future (Psalm 119:105). We do not need to know what will happen tomorrow. We only need to know he leads us and "we will find grace to help us when we need it" (Hebrews 4:16 NLT). ~ Max Lucado

The choice is yours. You hold the tiller. You can steer the course you choose in the direction of where you want to be - today, tomorrow, or in a distant time to come. ~ W. Clement Stone

Each patient carries his own doctor inside him. ~ Norman Cousins

Primus is certainly learning caution," said Secundus to his four other dead brothers.
"Well, you know what they say," whispered Quintus, in the wistful tones of the dead, which sounded, on that day, like the lapping of distant waves upon the shingle, "a man who is tired of looking over his shoulder for Septimus is tired of life. ~ Neil Gaiman

The more distant and distinct the relationship between two realities that are brought together, the more powerful the image. ~ Pierre Reverdy

Perhaps the most important Stoic legacy to the history of moral thought was the concept of universal humanity. In his famous Elements of Ethics, the second-century Stoic philosopher Hierocles imagines every individual as standing at the centre of a series of concentric circles. The first circle is the individual, next comes the immediate family, followed by the extended family, the local community, the country, and finally the entire human race. To be virtuous, Hierocles suggested, is to draw these circles together, constantly to transfer people from the outer circles to the inner circles, to treat strangers as cousins and cousins as brothers and sisters, making all human beings part of our concern. The Stoics called this process of drawing the circles together oikeiosis, a word that is almost untranslatable but means something like the process by which everything is made into your home. ~ Kenan Malik

The good diarist writes either for himself alone or for a posterity so distant that it can safely hear every secret and justly weigh every motive. For such an audience there is need neither of affectation nor of restraint. Sincerity is what they ask, detail, and volume; skill with the pen comes in conveniently, but brilliance is not necessary; genius is a hindrance even; and should you know your business and do it manfully, posterity will let you off mixing with great men, reporting famous affairs, or having lain with the first ladies in the land. ~ Virginia Woolf

Coastal people never really know what the ocean symbolizes to landlocked inland people - what a great distant dream it is, present but unseen in the deepest levels of subconsciousness, and when they arrive at the ocean and the conscious images are compared with the subconscious dream there is a sense of defeat at having come so far to be so stopped by the mystery that can never be fathomed. The source of it all. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

Brantford was the fixed point of my universe, growing up. Both sets of grandparents lived there, with various cousins and uncles and aunts, and no matter how far we'd moved off, we came back there for regular visits. In a way no other houses have ever been, my grandparents' houses were 'home,' and the sale of the last of those houses was hard. ~ Susanna Kearsley

How had he got here? Only a few minutes ago he'd been a kid, riding his bike to school, collecting comics, doing homework and watching TV. Over the years, a few trappings of adulthood had insinuated themselves into his life withoutmaking significant inroads. Real adult life seemed to exist over there, somewhere as distant and unreachable as Uranus. He had no idea how people crossed over to this place, or why - the demands of being grown up seemed exhausting. Look how I work all the time. See my silky girlfriend. Watch me exchange money for food. Admire my blood pressure. ~ Meg Rosoff

The ultimate source is probably the tendency in some of us, part of our psychological inheritance from our far-distant ancestors, the tendency to look for extreme solutions, absolute truths, abstract answers. All fanatics and fundamentalists share this tendency, which is so alien and unpleasing to the rest of us. The theory says they must do such-and-such, so they do it, never mind the human consequences, never mind the social cost, never mind the terrible damage to the fabric of everything decent and humane.
I'm afraid these fundamentalists of one sort or another will always be with us. We just have to keep them as far away as possible from the levers of power. ~ Philip Pullman

Why, in his life of frequent travel, had he never recognized the beauty of flight? The improbability of it. The sound of the engines faded, the airplane receding into blue until it was folded into silence and became a far-distant dot in the sky. ~ Emily St. John Mandel

More and more, the choice for the world's people is between world warriors and world citizens. ~ Norman Cousins

All I can say is, it's a sort of kinship, as though there is a family tree of grief. On this branch, the lost children, on this the suicided parents, here the beloved mentally ill siblings. When something terrible happens, you discover all of the sudden that you have a new set of relatives, people with whom you can speak in the shorthand of cousins. ~ Elizabeth McCracken

And FYI, Deliverance took place in Georgia. In West Virginia we kiss our cousins. ~ Abigail Roux