In abstract mathematics or abstract art, the purpose is to describe inner states of our mind, and to explore the limits of our own imagination and our capacity for creativity. While this has some applications in the world, I think it leads to a distance from the world. Going to Congo was for me an act of seeking proximity, of breaking that distance. With abstraction, which is brilliant and vain, you divorce yourself from any kind of proximity to other people.
I've been a soldier all my life. I've fought from the ranks on up, you know my service. But sir, I must tell you now, I believe this attack will fail. No 15,000 men ever made could take that ridge. It's a distance of more than a mile, over open ground. When the men come out of the trees, they will be under fire from Yankee artillery from all over the field. And those are Hancock's boys! And now, they have the stone wall like we did at Fredericksburg. - Lieutenant General James Longstreet to General Robert E. Lee after the initial Confederate victories on day one of the Battle of Gettysburg.
Huskies get in trouble. Huskies are well-known to be escape artists. Why? Because they were bred to go long-distance. They're not bred to be in the backyard and just look beautiful because they have blue eyes.
Photography is a way of putting distance between myself and the work which sometimes helps me to see more clearly what it is that I have made.
You don't always have to look in the distance for what's going on over there, when you actually see what's right in front of you.
What a splendid thing watercolour is to express atmosphere and distance, so that the figure is surrounded by air and can breathe in it.
Love doesn't hide. It stays and fights. It goes the distance, that's why love is so strong. So it can carry you all the way home.
Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances.
I guess if you split the difference between the U. K. and the U. S. , you would get Canada. But that's just due to proximity. Just because of distance, we get a lot more cultural spillover from America.
In the space between our bodies there is a cup holder filled with pennies a distance which can often take years to cross.
From the window, I watch the city and the freeway. In the distance, the sky-rises look like mystic spires, unbearably close and far. I want to pick them up and eat them. I want to scream out loud sometimes, but I never do.
Let us hope that the advent of a successful flying machine, now only dimly foreseen and nevertheless thought to be possible, will bring nothing but good into the world; that it shall abridge distance, make all parts of the globe accessible, bring men into closer relation with each other, advance civilization, and hasten the promised era in which there shall be nothing but peace and goodwill among all men.
In this way, Edwin Hubble worked out the distances to nine different galaxies. We now know that our galaxy is only one of some hundred thousand million that can be seen using modern telescopes, each galaxy itself containing some hundred thousand million stars.
Perhaps we can only truly serve those we are willing to touch, not only with our hands but with our hearts and even our souls. Professionalism has embedded in service a sense of difference, a certain distance. But on the deepest level, service is an experience of belonging, an experience of connection to others and to the word around us. It is this connection that gives us the power to bless the life in others. Without it, the life in them would not respond to us.
There IS more criticism of puritanism, and more distance from Christian morality, than there has been before.
Serendipity looks a lot like creativity, at least at a distance, and if I can tap into these ways in which one thing resembles another.
I've come to the realization that if I don't feel like sharing, then I'm just not going to share. But I'm not going to go out of my way to mislead people or keep them at a distance, because that doesn't really get me anywhere either.
The ability to laugh at life is right at the top, with love and communication, in the hierarchy of our needs. Humour has much to do with pain; it exaggerates the anxieties and absurdities we feel, so that we gain distance and through laughter, relief.
The aikido term ma ai, which means "space harmony" ("ai" is Chinese for "love," and it translates into Japanese as harmonious connection) refers to the optimal distance point, where you're close enough to connect well and far enough to enjoy your own space.
Exhaustion was pressing upon and overpowering her. "Good-by--because I love you. " He did not know; he did not understand. He would never understand. Perhaps Doctor Mandelet would have understood if she had seen him--but it was too late; the shore was far behind her, and her strength was gone. She looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an instant, then sank again.