Quotes about distance

„What world lies beyond that stormy sea I do not know, but every ocean has a distant shore, and I shall reach it.“

—  Cesare Pavese Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator 1908 - 1950

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

„Longing is the agony of the nearness of the distant.“

—  Martin Heidegger German philosopher 1889 - 1976

„And also to the alien, who is not of Thy people Israel, but comes from a distant land on account of Thy fame; for hearing of Thy great name and Thy strong hand, and Thine outstretched arm, he comes to this house to pray… do Thou listen in the heavens, the place where Thou dwellest, and perform all that the alien begs of Thee, so that all the peoples of the earth may know Thy name, to fear Thee like Thine own people Israel, and to know that Thy name is proclaimed over this house that I have built.“

—  Solomon king of Israel and the son of David -1011 - -931 BC

I Kings 8:41-43 on the dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem

„I was already almost 30, and by then everyone was talking about the Americans. Picasso was irrelevant. He was history. I found myself in this deep pool, and there were all these figures swimming around, like Rauschenberg and Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein|Lichtenstein]]. I wanted to go where they were. Seeing Pollock and Fontana in Kassel had given me a sense of what it meant to be a modern artist and take risks, but it was a distant admiration because they were a different generation. This was my generation“

—  Gerhard Richter German visual artist, born 1932 1932

on the art academy in Düsseldorf
after 2000

„In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things.“

—  Miyamoto Musashi Japanese martial artist, writer, artist 1584 - 1645

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Water Book
Context: The gaze should be large and broad. This is the twofold gaze "Perception and Sight". Perception is strong and sight weak.
In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things. It is important in strategy to know the enemy's sword and not to be distracted by insignificant movements of his sword. You must study this. The gaze is the same for single combat and for large-scale combat.

„Do we have to be so distant
How can you be so unreal?
What's the reason for hiding and
How this crying make you feel?“

—  Mike Oldfield English musician, multi-instrumentalist 1953

Song lyrics, Discovery (1984)

„What is love? For the rabble love is a kind of variety, a transient vulgarity; the rabble's conception of love is best found in their obscene ditties, in prostitution and in the foul idioms they use when they are halfway sober, such as "shoving the donkey's foreleg in mud," or "putting dust on the head." My love for her, however, was of a totally different kind. I knew her from ancient times— strange slanted eyes, a narrow, half-open mouth, a subdued quiet voice. She was the embodiment of all my distant, painful memories among which I sought what I was deprived of, what belonged to me but somehow I was denied. Was I deprived forever?“

—  Sadegh Hedayat, book The Blind Owl

The Blind Owl

„The need to go astray, to be destroyed, is an extremely private, distant, passionate, turbulent truth.“

—  Georges Bataille French intellectual and literary figure 1897 - 1962

„As a fraction of the lifespan of the universe as measured from the beginning to the evaporation of the last black hole, life as we know it is only possible for one-thousandth of a billion billion billionth, billion billion billionth, billion billion billionth, of a percent (10^-84). And that's why, for me, the most astonishing wonder of the universe isn't a star or a planet or a galaxy. It isn't a thing at all. It's an instant in time. And that time is now. Humans have walked the earth for just the shortest fraction of that briefest of moments in deep time. But in our 200,000 years on this planet we've made remarkable progress. It was only 2,500 years ago that we believed that the sun was a god and measured its orbit with stone towers built on the top of a hill. Today the language of curiosity is not sun gods, but science. And we have observatories that are almost infinitely more sophisticated than those towers, that can gaze out deep into the universe. And perhaps even more remarkably through theoretical physics and mathematics we can calculate what the universe will look like in the distant future. And we can even make concrete predictions about its end. And I believe that it's only by continuing our exploration of the cosmos and the laws of nature that govern it that we can truly understand ourselves and our place in this universe of wonders.“

—  Brian Cox (physicist) English physicist and former musician 1968

Conclusion in Wonders of the Universe - Destiny

„A nomad I will remain for life,
in love with distant and uncharted places.“

—  Isabelle Eberhardt Swiss explorer and author 1877 - 1904

„Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.“

—  Carl Sagan, book Pale Blue Dot

Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994), p. 8, Supplemental image at randi.org http://www.randi.org/images/122801-BlueDot.jpg

„Reverence the highest, have patience with the lowest. Let this day's performance of the meanest duty be thy religion. Are the stars too distant, pick up the pebble that lies at thy feet, and from it learn the all.“

—  Margaret Fuller American feminist, poet, author, and activist 1810 - 1850

„It’s the situations that these distant relationships create that interest me more than the distance itself.“

—  Makoto Shinkai Japanese anime director and former graphic designer 1973

Interviewed on the Electric Sheep magazine http://www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk/features/2008/06/01/interview-with-makoto-shinkai/
About 5 Centimeters per Second

„Even with all our technological accomplishments and urban sophistication, we consider ourselves blessed, healed in some manner, forgiven, and for a moment transported into some other world, when we catch a passing glimpse of an animal in the wild: a deer in some woodland, a fox crossing a field, a butterfly in its dancing flight southward to its wintering region, a hawk soaring in the distant sky, a hummingbird come into our garden, fireflies signaling to each other in the evening. So we might describe the thousandfold moments when we experience our meetings with the animals in their unrestrained and undomesticated status. Such incidents as these remind us that the universe is composed of subjects to be communed with, not of objects to be exploited.“

—  Thomas Berry American priest 1914 - 2009

Source: Evening Thoughts, Chapter 3, pp. 37-38

„This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours.“

—  Jimmy Carter American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981) 1924

„This Voyager spacecraft was constructed by the United States of America. We are a community of 240 million human beings among the more than 4 billion who inhabit the planet Earth. We human beings are still divided into nation states, but these states are rapidly becoming a single global civilization.

We cast this message into the cosmos. It is likely to survive a billion years into our future, when our civilization is profoundly altered and the surface of the Earth may be vastly changed. Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some--perhaps many--may have inhabited planets and spacefaring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message:

This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe“

—  Jimmy Carter American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981) 1924

„The days …. come and go like muffled and veiled figures, sent from a distant friendly party; but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.“

—  Ralph Waldo Emerson American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803 - 1882

Works and Days http://www.rwe.org/comm/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=37&Itemid=148
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870)

„He took his way to the abode of sacred Loyalty, seeking to discover her hidden purpose. It chanced that the goddess, who loves solitude, was then in a distant region of heaven, pondering in her heart the high concerns of the gods. Then he who gave peace to Nemea accosted her thus with reverence: "Goddess more ancient than Jupiter, glory of gods and men, without whom neither sea nor land finds peace, sister of Justice…"“

—  Silius Italicus, Punica

Book II, lines 479–486
Punica
Original: (la) Ad limina sanctae
contendit Fidei secretaque pectora temptat.
arcanis dea laeta polo tum forte remoto
caelicolum magnas uoluebat conscia curas.
quam tali adloquitur Nemeae pacator honore:
'Ante Iouem generata, decus diuumque hominumque,
qua sine non tellus pacem, non aequora norunt,
iustitiae consors...'

„Christ ought to be preached with this goal in mind — that we might be moved to faith in him so that he is not just a distant historical figure but actually Christ for you and me.“

—  Martin Luther seminal figure in Protestant Reformation 1483 - 1546

Source: The Freedom of a Christian (1520), p. 69