Near And Far Quotes

Not many have escaped Merthyr, Mam. Not many want to leave in any case. At least there is
work in this valley, people come near and far to work here, so we should be glad of that... - Lily - Black Diamonds. ~ Lynette Rees

The river, tonally, does not recede, presenting the same lifeless grey near and far, a depthless plane upon which Schmitt's dragging oars inscribe parallel lines and Eakins' oars, rising and falling, leave methodically spaced patches of disturbed water. The canvas is haunting - en evocation of the democracy's idyllic, isolating spaciousness, present even in the midst of a great Eastern city. ~ John Updike

For when two beings who are not friends are near each other there is no meeting, and when friends are far apart there is no separation. ~ Simone Weil

Water has its own archaeology, not a layering but a leveling, and thus is truer to our sense of the past, because what is memory but near and far events spread and smoothed beneath the present's surface. ~ Ron Rash

When Western civilization invaded the Near and Far East and what is now called the Third World it imposed its own ideas of a proper environment and a rewarding life. Doing this, it disrupted the delicate patterns of adaptation and created problems that had not existed before. ~ Paul Feyerabend

Baby's fishing for a dream, fishing near and far. His line a silver moonbeam is, his bait a silver star. ~ Alice Riley

The rhododendron, growing every minute somewhere in Alpine meadows, are far happier than we, for they know neither love, nor hate, nor the Perillo slipper system, and they don't even die, since all nature, excepting man, is one undying, indestructible whole. If one tree somewhere in the forest perishes from old age, before dying, it gives the wind so many seeds, and so many new trees grow up around it on the land, near and far, that the wold tree, especially the rhododendron doesn't mind dying. [...] Only man minds and feels bitter, and burdened as he is with egotistical pity for himself. ~ Sasha Sokolov

I was very fortunate to have learned the transforming power of music early in life. As an adult I want to share that power by inspiring people to care about their neighbors near and far. Being a UNICEF Ambassador allows me this kind of opportunity. ~ India.Arie

We do not realize the full extent of the difference between near and far futures. Yet ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I love you, always forever
Near and far, close and together
Everywhere, I will be with you
Everything, I will do for you. ~ Donna Lewis

Before it had awoke to die on the instant of its waking, a score of bells and clocks had shouted midday and for a minute after its death, from near and far the clappers in their tents of rusted iron clanged across Gormenghast. ~ Mervyn Peake

You're like a witness. You're the one who goes to the museum and looks at the paintings. I mean the paintings are there and you're in the museum too, near and far away at the same time. I'm a painting. Rocamadour is a painting. Etienne is a painting, this room is a painting. You think that you're in the room but you're not. You're looking at the room, you're not in the room. ~ Julio Cortazar

The power of such a mountain is so great and yet so subtle that, without compulsion, people are drawn to it from near and far, as if by the force of some invisible magnet…this worshipful or religious attitude is not impressed by scientific facts, like figures of altitude, which are foremost in the mind of modern man. Nor is it motivated by the urge to 'conquer' the mountain. ~ Lama Anagarika Govinda

The air of the islands, she believed, was different than the air of other regions of the world. It engulfed her now, carrying with it flavors of sun-drenched soil and foam-flecked sea, aromas of virgin woods and naked rocks, its tang of citrus trees and its fizz of foreign wine-misted lips. It carried in its pockets the sounds of children's laughter, the clatter of drunken brawls, the mandolin music thrumming sensually from decades-old cassette tapes in the colorful souvenir shops where old ladies and young women waved at passersby. It came from near and far, rebounding off the blue-white flag strapped to ferry masts rearing above the sparkling waters, glinting in the brown-eyed winks and twirled mustaches of the locals. ~ Angela Panayotopulos

When the hearthfire turns to blue,
what to do? what to do?
run outside, run and hide
when his eyes are black as crow?
where to go? where to go?
near and far. Here they are.
see a man without a face?
move like ghosts from place to place.
whats their plan? whats their plan?
Chandrian. Chandrian ~ Patrick Rothfuss

I come from the ocean with songs of the sea
No lesson for learning, just play upon me
Now go make your music in lands near and far
Orion protects you wherever you are ~ Jimmy Buffett

Pull open the glass door, feel the rush of cool air, walk inside, get in line, and look around you, look at the kids working in the kitchen, at the customers in their seats, at the ads for the latest toys, study the backlit color photographs above the counter, think about where the food came from, about how and where it was made, about what is set in motion by every single fast food purchase, the ripple effect near and far, think about it. Then place your order. Or turn and walk out the door. It's not too late. Even in this fast food nation, you can still have it your way. ~ Eric Schlosser

After a spent day, I
walked back in a fever.
The whole way home
the sun touched my cheeks.
The blissful evening glow
spread across the meadows
and I called this light
the blood I shed.
My hot burning blood lay
consoling the entire world.
So I walked with pride
Now that all was tilled.
I didn't know what was happening,
I leaned against a fence post,
in my blood that covered
the meadows near and far. ~ Robert Walser

If we all counted our blessings and then shared them with our neighbors, near and far, all our lives would be richer. ~ Janet Autherine

My friends, if there is one gift in my omniscience, it's the knowledge I have of just how much good is out there. When I'm disappointed in my children near and far who hurt others, I am reminded of the many souls who do not hurt others. I see a smack across the face in one part of the planet at the same time as I see a thousand hugs and kisses somewhere else. Love is everywhere. And if all the forces of good were stacked up against all the forces of evil, it would be a most unfair fight. Good would always win. My dears, good will always win. ~ Sean Patrick Brennan

Instar implies something both celestial and ingrown, something heavenly and disastrous, and perhaps change is commonly like that, a buried star, oscillating between near and far. ~ Rebecca Solnit

We dedicate ourselves to working with our neighbors, near and far, day in and day out, to building that peaceful society in which the tragedies we have known are a bad memory and a continuing warning. ~ Betty Williams

A globalized world is by now a familiar fact of life. Building walls or moats may sound appealing, but the future belongs to those who tend to their people and then boldly engage the rest of the world, near and far. ~ Jon Meacham

I went to the springs while the sun was still up, and sitting on a rocky outcrop above the cave mouth I watched the light grow reddish across the misty pools, and listened to the troubled voice of the water. After a while I moved farther up the hill, where I could hear birds singing near and far in the silence of the trees. The presence of the trees was very strong ... The big oaks stood so many, so massive in their other life, in their deep, rooted silence: the awe of them came on me, the religion. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Shortly afterwards it started raining, very innocently at first, but the sky was packed tight with cloud and gradually the drops grew bigger and heavier, until it was autumn's dismal rain that was falling - rain that seemed to fill the entire world with its leaden beat, rain suggestive in its dreariness of everlasting waterfalls between the planets, rain that thatched the heavens with drabness and brooded oppressively over the whole countryside, like a disease, strong in the power of its flat, unvarying monotony, its smothering heaviness, its cold, unrelenting cruelty. Smoothly, smoothly it fell, over the whole shire, over the fallen marsh grass, over the troubled lake, the iron-grey gravel flats, the sombre mountain above the croft, smudging out every prospect. And the heavy, hopeless, interminable beat wormed its way into every crevice in the house, lay like a pad of cotton wool over the ears, and embraced everything, both near and far, in its compass, like an unromantic story from life itself that has no rhythm and no crescendo, no climax, but which is nevertheless overwhelming in its scope, terrifying in its significance. And at the bottom of this unfathomed ocean of teeming rain sat the little house and its one neurotic woman. ~ Halldor Laxness

You have a freckle," he murmured. "Right" – he leaned down and dropped a light kiss near the inside of her elbow – "here."
"You've seen it before," she said softly. It wasn't in an immodest spot; she had plenty of frocks with short sleeves.
He chuckled. "But I've never given it it's proper due."
"Really."
"Mmm-hmm." He lifted her arm, twisting it just a bit so that he could pretend to be studying her freckle.
"It is clearly the most delightful beauty mark in all of England."
A marvelous sense of warmth and contentment melted through her. Even as her body burned for his, she could not stop herself from encouraging his teasing conversation.
"Only England?"
"Well, I haven't traveled very extensively abroad…"
"Oh, really?" "And you know…" His voice dropped to a husky growl.
"There may be other freckles right here in this room. You could have one here." He dipped a finger under the bodice of her nightgown, then moved his other hand to her hip.
"Or here."
"I might," she agreed.
"The back of your knee," he said, the words hot against her ear
. "You could have one there."
She nodded. She wasn't sure she was still capable of speech.
"One of your toes," he suggested.
"Or your back."
"You should probably check," she managed to get out.
He took a deep, shuddering breath. ~ Julia Quinn

Bunny Slippers watched my appraisal for at least a full
minute before clasping his hands and resting them on the table.
"You stand in the doorway, clothes sticking to you like you just
got out of the shower and didn't dry off." I hadn't dried off
actually. "Your hair is wet like it's been raining, but it's near
ninety outside. You glare at me for a good ten minutes before
you come over. Sit across from me in my booth, without an
invitation. Don't introduce yourself. Don't say hello. You
announce you're not gay, but that I made you gay, and I am
confusing you?
Well, when he said it like that. ~ Dani Alexander

When I was a kid, I was fascinated by space
And I learnt that time slows near a black hole.
Inside a black hole, time stops altogether.
Whether or not this theory will ever be proved,
I'm moved to believe this would be the perfect place to love someone. ~ Shane Koyczan

To great effect, Reagan echoed white frustration in race-neutral terms through implicit racial appeals. His 'color-blind' rhetoric on crime, welfare, taxes, and states' rights was clearly understood by white (and black) voters as having a racial dimension, though claims to that effect were impossible to prove. The absence of explicitly racist rhetoric afforded the racial nature of his coded appeals a certain plausible deniability. For example, when Reagan kicked off his presidential campaign at the annual Neshoba County Fair near Philadelphia, Mississippi - the town where three civil rights activists were murdered in 1964 - he assured the crowd 'I believe in states' rights,' and promised to restore to states and local governments the power that properly belonged to them. His critics promptly alleged that he was signaling a racial message to his audience, suggesting allegiance with those who resisted desegregation, but Reagan firmly denied it, forcing liberals into a position that would soon become familiar - arguing that something is racist but finding it impossible to prove in the absence of explicitly racist language. ~ Michelle Alexander

O, beautiful rainbow; - all woven of light! There's not in thy tissue, one shadow of night; Heaven surely is open when thou dost appear, And, bending above thee, the angels draw near, And sing, - The rainbow! the rainbow! The smile of God is here. ~ Sarah Josepha Hale

You either build up or you tear down. You either keep in the light where you can see, or you stand in the dark and fight everything that comes near you, because you can't see and you think it's an enemy. ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett

She remembers blood.
A fine mist which goes deep into her lungs, over her skin and through the air. She remembers a desert at dusk. The sky indigo blue and the fire bright, so bright that she can see everything. Near the fire, in the night, all she knows is chaos wrapped in crimson. All is death and nightmare with a single solitary dancer who smiles cruelly as he moves. He is power and darkness. He is man and beast, silver coin eyes and that face, those claws and the agony of loss.
Time stretches wide; seconds like vast eons swallow up her world. Vince is dead, his mother, his brother and her small son ripped apart and gushing as he/it moves. She is screaming, a howl of agony beyond words, primal and wordless. Still he moves, faster than air, faster than she could ever be. Blood drips from her face as she grunts, running with her lungs on fire and her last remaining hope wrapped in her arms. ~ Amanda M. Lyons

Your second choice is to give me the chance to be everything you want in a husband and father. I want us to be a family, Ruby. I want to grow with you, learn with you, be with you. I want to love you and our baby, but whichever option you choose I want to be near this child forever. I'm done running from love. I've found it in you and I'm here to stay. I love you, Ruby Fleming."
-- Christo ~ Barbara DeLeo

They would carry their books to the woods and read aloud to one another. At picnic lunches near Cooper's Bluff, they recited their favorite poems. "In the early days," Fanny recalled, "we all delighted in Longfellow and Mrs. Browning and Owen Meredith." Later, they turned to Swinburne, Kipling, Shelley, and Shakespeare. The Roosevelts ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

To hunger and thirst after righteousness is when nothing in the world can fascinate us so much as being near God. ~ Smith Wigglesworth

Take Charge and Move Out (TACAMO) planes would quickly get off the ground, climb steeply, and send an emergency war order on a very-low-frequency radio, using an antenna five miles long. SAC began to develop a Post Attack Command and Control System. It would rely on airborne command posts, a command post on a train, a command post at the bottom of an abandoned gold mine in Cripple Creek, Colorado, and a command post, known as The Notch, inside Bare Mountain, near Amherst, Massachusetts. The ~ Eric Schlosser

There are brains so large that they unconsciously swamp all individualities ties which come in contact or too near, and brains so small that they cannot take in the conception of any other individuality as a whole, only in part or parts. ~ Anna Brownell Jameson

The warmth of summer, the richness of expansion that creates the perfect environment for a body that wants to feel at least the illusion of warmth on top of its' old persevering soul that dwells within. This season, I no longer try to reach for that external warmth, but rather pray to find that spark that could light me up from deep inside. I trust my intuition and I know it is near, if only my eyes wouldn't be blinded by the sun. ~ Virgil Kalyana Mittata Iordache

And the danger is that in this move toward new horizons and far directions, that I may lose what I have now, and not find anything except loneliness. ~ Sylvia Plath

Standing near the door, we dipped our fingers in the holy water, crossed and blessed ourselves, and proceeded up to the sleeping-room, in the usual order, two by two. ~ Maria Monk

Unfortunately for novelists, real life is getting way too funny and far-fetched. ~ Carl Hiaasen

Whatever is almost true is quite false, and among the most dangerous of errors, because being so near truth, it is more likely to lead astray. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

Today we are fighting Communism. Okay. If I'd been alive fifty years ago, the brand of Conservatism we have today would have been damn near called Communism and we should have been told to go and fight that. History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts. ~ Ian Fleming

I feel like there are women who are genuinely born to be mothers, and women who are born to be aunties, and women who really probably not should be allowed near children. The tragedy that happens is when any one of those women ends up in the wrong category. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

He is a demon, Clarissa," said Valentine, still in the same soft voice. "A demon with a man's face. I know how deceptive such monsters can be. Remember, I spared him once myself."
"Monster?" echoed Clary. She thought of Luke, Luke pushing her on the swings when she was five years old, higher, always higher; Luke at her graduation from middle school, camera clicking away like a proud father's; Luke sorting through each box of books as it arrived at his store, looking for anything she might like and putting it aside. Luke lifting her up to pull apples down from the trees near his farmhouse. Luke, whose place as her father this man was trying to take. "Luke isn't a monster," she said in a voice that matched Valentine's, steel for steel. "Or a murderer. You are."
"Clary!" It was Jace.
Clary ignored him. Her eyes were fixed on her father's cold black ones. "You murdered your wife's parents, not in battle but in cold blood," she said. "And I bet you murdered Michael Wayland and his little boy, too. Threw their bones in with my grandparents' so that my mother would think you and Jace were dead. Put your necklace around Michael Wayland's neck before you burned him so everyone would think those bones were yours. After all your talk about the untainted blood of the Clave - you didn't care at all about their blood or their innocence when you killed them, did you? Slaughtering old people and children in cold blood, that's monstrous. ~ Cassandra Clare

Once upon a time there lived a King and Queen whose children had all died, first one and then another, until at last only one little daughter remained, and the Queen was at her wits' end to know where to find a really good nurse who would take care of her, and bring her up. A herald was sent who blew a trumpet at every street corner, and commanded all the best nurses to appear before the Queen, that she might choose one for the little Princess. So on the appointed day the whole palace was crowded with nurses, who came from the four corners of the world to offer themselves, until the Queen declared that if she was ever to see the half of them, they must be brought out to her, one by one, as she sat in a shady wood near the palace. ~ Andrew Lang

Good strong banks are essential for every family and for every business in the country and extraordinary times call for the bold and far-reaching solutions that the Treasury has announced today. ~ Gordon Brown

Is there a bird among them, dear boy?" Charity asked innocently, peering not at the things on the desk, but at his face, noting the muscle beginning to twitch at Ian's tense jaw.
"No."
"Then they must be in the schoolroom! Of course," she said cheerfully, "that's it. How like me, Hortense would say, to have made such a silly mistake."
Ian dragged his eyes from the proof that his grandfather had been keeping track of him almost from the day of his birth-certainly from the day when he was able to leave the cottage on his own two legs-to her face and said mockingly, "Hortense isn't very perceptive. I would say you are as wily as a fox."
She gave him a little knowing smile and pressed her finger to her lips. "Don't tell her, will you? She does so enjoy thinking she is the clever one."
"How did he manage to have these drawn?" Ian asked, stopping her as she turned away.
"A woman in the village near your home drew many of them. Later he hired an artist when he knew you were going to be somewhere at a specific time. I'll just leave you here where it's nice and quiet." She was leaving him, Ian knew, to look through the items on the desk. For a long moment he hesitated, and then he slowly sat down in the chair, looking over the confidential reports on himself. They were all written by one Mr. Edgard Norwich, and as Ian began scanning the thick stack of pages, his anger at his grandfather for this outrageous invasion of his privacy slowly became amusement. ~ Judith McNaught

My county? Another concept to which you attach from a distance a rather vague ideal. You want to know what "my country" really is? Nothing more or less than a gathering of shareholders, a form of property, bourgeois mentality, and vanity. Think about all the people in your country whom you wouldn't go near, and you'll see that the ties that are supposed to bind us together don't go very deep.... ~ Gabriel Chevallier

In my life, the stories I have heard from my family, my friends, my community, and from willing strangers all over the world have been the true source of my education. ~ Holly Near

I want you to give in to what I see behind your eyes every time I'm near you. I want you to give in to the way you trembled in my arms when I touched you ... the way your breathing becomes faster when I look at you. I loved the way your lips felt against mine, and I'm pretty sure you did, too. I also enjoy the way I can almost feel you becoming wet for me right now. Are you going to pretend that you don't feel anything for me, Emily? ~ Gail McHugh

Like any art, the creation of self is both natural and seemingly impossible. It requires training as well as magic. ~ Holly Near

I still try to keep my eyes open. I'm always on the lookout for antlion traps in sandy soil, monarch pupae near milkweed, skipper larvae in locust leaves. These things are utterly common, and I've not seen one ~ Annie Dillard

We may speak of love and humility as the true flowers of spiritual growth; and they give off a wonderful scent, which benefits all those who come near. ~ Teresa Of Avila

He resisted for a while and there were some legal boundaries, you know, keeping me from being near him or his family, but in the end, love overcame. And I got what I wanted. I always get what I want ... ~ Kristen Schaal

Reading the Bible responsibly and respectfully today means learning what it meant for ancient Israelites to talk about God the way they did, and not pushing alien expectations onto texts written long ago and far away. ~ Peter Enns

The sun glowed over them, throwing a miniature shadow on the road. Warm air was accompanying the heating of the day and the
fluttering of leaves made multiple shadows dancing on the footpath. They could imagine fairies in the sky, dancing with the air, throwing their shadows near their plastic home. ~ Debalina Haldar

The Recent Past

Perhaps we ought to feel with more imagination.
As today the sky 70 degrees above zero with lines falling
The way September moves a lace curtain to be near a pear,
The oddest device can't be usual. And that is where
The pejorative sense of fear moves axles. In the stars
There is no longer any peace, emptied like a cup of coffee
Between the blinding rain that interviews.

You were my quintuplets when I decided to leave you
Opening a picture book the pictures were all of grass
Slowly the book was on fire, you the reader
Sitting with specs full of smoke exclaimed
How it was a rhyme for "brick" or "redder."
The next chapter told all about a brook.
You were beginning to see the relation when a tidal wave
Arrived with sinking ships that spelled out "Aladdin."
I thought about the Arab boy in his cave
But the thoughts came faster than advice.
If you knew that snow was a still toboggan in space
The print could rhyme with "fallen star. ~ John Ashbery

recruiters wooed interesting candidates they had spotted with a cloak-and-dagger shtick. They would hand out blank envelopes that contained invitations to meet at a specific time and place, usually a bar or restaurant near the event, for an initial interview. The candidates that showed up would discover they were among only a handful of people who been anointed out of all the conference attendees. They were immediately made to feel special and inspired. Like many ~ Ashlee Vance

Only men of the utmost simplicity can believe that the nature man knows can be changed into a purely logical nature. Yet were there steps affording approach to this goal, how utterly everything would be lost on the way! Even the most rational man needs nature again, from time to time, that is, his illogical fundamental relation (Grundstellung) to all things.
No practical knowledge of a man, for example, stood he never so near to us, can be complete - so that we could have a logical right to form a total estimate of him; all estimates are summary and must be so. Then the standard by which we measure, (our being) is not an immutable quantity; we have moods and variations, and yet we should know ourselves as an invariable standard before we undertake to establish the nature of the relation of any thing (Sache) to ourselves. Perhaps it will follow from all this that one should form no judgments whatever; if one could but merely live without having to form estimates, without aversion and without partiality! - for everything most abhorred is closely connected with an estimate, as well as every strongest partiality. An inclination towards a thing, or from a thing, without an accompanying feeling that the beneficial is desired and the pernicious contemned, an inclination without a sort of experiential estimation of the desirability of an end, does not exist in man. We are primordially illogical and hence unjust beings and can recognise this fact: this is one of the greatest and ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

It is commonly agreed that children spend more hours per year watching television than in the classroom, and far less in actual conversation with their parents. ~ Paul Weyrich

I'm not scared of dyin', and I don't really care if it's peace you find in dyin'. Well then let the time be near. And when I die and when I'm gone there'll be one child born and a world to carry on. ~ Laura Nyro

The conception that, instead of this, contemporary society is at or near a turning point is very prominent in the views of a school of social scientists who, though they are still comparatively few, are getting more and more of a hearing. ~ Talcott Parsons

Always choose the adventure ... unless, it's chilly outside and there's a cup of warm coffee resting near a book and comfy sofa. ~ Barbara Brooke

One of the seats of emotion and memory in the brain is the amygdala, he explained. When something threatens your life, this area seems to kick into overdrive, recording every last detail of the experience. The more detailed the memory, the longer the moment seems to last. "This explains why we think that time speeds up when we grow older," Eagleman said
why childhood summers seem to go on forever, while old age slips by while we're dozing. The more familiar the world becomes, the less information your brain writes down, and the more quickly time seems to pass. ~ Burkhard Bilger

'Cars' is simply near and dear to my heart. ~ John Lasseter

The writing of solid, instructive stuff fortified by facts and figures is easy enough. There is no trouble in writing a scientific treatise on the folk-lore of Central China, or a statistical enquiry into the declining population of Prince Edward Island. But to write something out of one's own mind, worth reading for its own sake, is an arduous contrivance only to be achieved in fortunate moments, few and far in between. Personally, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica. ~ Stephen Leacock

Near below peak of mount Merbabu in Java,
there is a forest known as the devil market.
I had been there once. And when you are there,
you will sense the crowd, voices of nothingness.
Your mind will say it is just accustics effect of the nature,
but your heart will tell you something totally different. ~ Toba Beta

He was sick of the noise and sight of so many people and determined to go quietly away, but it so happened that just at that moment the crowds about the door were particularly impenetrable; he was caught up in the current of people and carried away to quite another part of the room. Round and round he went like a dry leaf caught up in a drain; in one of these turns around the room he discovered a quiet corner near a window. A tall screen of carved ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl half-hid - ah! what bliss was this! - a bookcase. Mr Norrell slipped behind the screen, took down John Npier's A Plaine Discouverie of the Whole Revelation of St John and began to read. ~ Susanna Clarke

Keep things at arm's length ... If you let anything come too near you want to hold on to it. And there is nothing a man can hold on to. ~ Erich Maria Remarque

You threaten my balls every day."
"That's because they're hanging around my sister," Rose snaps. I hate that she makes a good point. "And you have full right to threaten my eggs or fallopian tubes. Have at them."
I grimace. "I'm not going anywhere near your vagina. ~ Krista Ritchie

I am lost if I attempt to take count of chronology. When I think over the past, I am like a person whose eyes cannot properly measure distances and is liable to think things extremely remote which on examination prove to be quite near. ~ Andre Gide

Gators are just something you have to accept where I come from. Most don't go anywhere near the houses, even though there are lots of delicious children and dogs there. Every once in a while, though, an alligator has a lightbulb moment and decides to take a stroll and see the world a bit. ~ Maureen Johnson