Quotes about mile
page 2

“My dinner party,' Miles grated. 'It's just breaking up.”

Lois McMaster Bujold A Civil Campaign

Source: A Civil Campaign

“People of excellence go the extra mile to do what's right.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

People

“It was worth it, Lia,” He said. “Every mile, every day. I’d do it all again. I’d chase you across three continents if that’s what it took to be with you.”

Mary E. Pearson (1955) young-adult fiction writer

Source: The Heart of Betrayal

“You shouldn't judge someone until you've walk a mile through an underground tunnel in her uncomfortable shoes”

Ally Carter I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Source: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Shoe

“And I began walking. A thousand miles, or two, I would carry her all the way to Dalbreck if I had to. No one would pry her from my arms again.”

Mary E. Pearson (1955) young-adult fiction writer

Source: The Heart of Betrayal

Way

“Miles and years become suddenly invisible when you find yourself back where you started from, as if you've learned nothing and you are once again the person you once were.”

Karen White (1964) American writer

Source: The Memory of Water

Learning, Personality

“Intoxicated? The word did not express it by a mile. He was oiled, boiled, fried, plastered, whiffled, sozzled, and blotto.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Source: Meet Mr. Mulliner

“It always rains on tents. Rainstorms will travel thousands of miles, against prevailing winds for the opportunity to rain on a tent.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Travel

“You're my closest friend and you're thousands of miles away.”

Anthony Horowitz book Scorpia Rising

Source: Scorpia Rising

“We connect through our dreams. Like we could be a thousand miles apart and I'd still know you were there.”

Pete Hautman (1952) American children's writer

Source: The Big Crunch

Dreams

“It's amazing the way one can take a step ten and a half miles long and still always land in a cowpat.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Howl's Moving Castle

Source: Howl's Moving Castle

Way

“You can get so confused
that you'll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place…”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Source: Oh, The Places You'll Go!

Fear, Waiting

“As Rilke observed, love requires a progressive shortening of the senses: I can see you for miles; I can hear you for blocks, I can smell you, maybe, for a few feet, but I can only touch on contact, taste as I devour”

William H. Gass (1924–2017) Fiction writer, critic, philosophy professor

Love, Sense

“Myst hasn't returned yet, But you know that, or else you'd both be naked and fornicating on the front lawn"
"The night's young. Give us time, and it was a field a mile away."

A Valkyrie and Nikolai Wroth pg 322”

Kresley Cole book A Hunger Like No Other

Source: A Hunger Like No Other

Time, Night

“Love stories are written in millimeters and milliseconds with a fast, dull pencil whose marks you can barely see, they are written in miles and eons with a chisel on the side of a mountiantop”

Gabrielle Zevin book Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

Source: Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

Love

“Charlie …" Silena’s eyes were a million miles away. "See Charlie.”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

“What kind of love would drive a man for miles through solid rock?”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Crimson Crown

Love

“All the miles of a hard road are worth a moment of true happiness.”

Arnold Lobel book Fables

Source: Fables

Happiness

“I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walking

Source: Walking

“They always call depression the blues, but I would have been happy to waken to a periwinkle outlook. Depression to me is urine yellow, washed out, exhausted miles of weak piss.”

Gillian Flynn book Sharp Objects

Source: Sharp Objects

Happiness, Depressing

“Here's a tip, Alyconeus. Next time you choose the biggest state for your home, don't set up base in the part that's only 10 miles wide.
Welcome to Canada, idiot.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

Home, Time, Parting

“No miles of level desert, no jagged mountain heights, no sea of endless blue
Neither words nor tears, nor silent fears
will keep me from coming back to you.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Again the Magic

Fear, Mountain, Tear, Sea

“Cecil flashed a grin. "Quite. Plus your rather irritating habit of treating your superior officers as your, ah…" Cecil paused, apparently groping again for just the right word.

"Equals?" Miles hazarded.

"Cattle," Cecil corrected judiciously.”

Lois McMaster Bujold book The Vor Game

Source: The Vor Game

“Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Men

“And when you'd finished running you'd be thousands of miles away from people who love you and your problem would still be there except you'd have nobody to help you.”

Melina Marchetta book Looking for Alibrandi

Source: Looking for Alibrandi

Love, People, Problem, Help

“We each owe a death, there are no exceptions, I know that, but sometimes, oh God, the Green Mile is so long.”

Stephen King book The Green Mile

Variant: We each owe a death, there are no exceptions, I know that, but sometimes, oh God, the Green Mile is so long.
Source: The Green Mile (1996)

Death, God

“You will wake only if kissed by a young man who is truly your love, truly your destiny, one who would walk miles and face torturous tests to find you.”

Alex Flinn (1966) American children's writer

Love, Kiss

“When this is over… we will got to the rainforest, or a beach as white as bone. We will eat grapes from the vine, we will swim with sea turtles, we will walk miles on cobblestone streets. We will laugh and talk and confess. We will.”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

Sea

“Come, butterfly
It's late-
We've miles to go together.”

Bashō Matsuo (1644–1694) Japanese poet

Source: On Love and Barley: Haiku of Basho

“An Englishman thinks a hundred miles is a long way; and American thinks a hundred years is a long time”

Diana Gabaldon book Drums of Autumn

Source: Drums of Autumn

Way, Thinking, Time

“The thing about plummetting downhill at fifty miles an hour on a snack platter - if you realize it's a bad idea when you're halfway down, it's too late.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

Idea

“It just goes to show you: you can put nine insane miles between you and another person. You can make a vow to never speak his name. You can surgically remove someone from your life. And still, he'll haunt you.”

Jodi Picoult book Lone Wolf

Source: Lone Wolf

Life, Personality

“You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Fate
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)

“And when demigods use cell phones, the signals agitate every monster within a hundred miles. It's like sending up a flare: Here I am! Please rearrange my face!”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

“It was so quiet, a reservation kind of quiet, where you can hear somebody drinking whiskey on the rocks three miles away.”

Sherman Alexie book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Source: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Drink

“From that point of view, I realized that my hole was not miles deep after all. My father, in fact, could stand on the bottom and it only reached up to his chest.
Darkness, you know, is relative.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

“Is it not unsupportable to be held down to a canter when you long to gallop for miles?”

Georgette Heyer book The Grand Sophy

Source: The Grand Sophy

“Some people cannot see a good thing when it is right here, right now. Others can sense a good thing coming when it is days, months, or miles away.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

People, Sense

“I've never understood why people run to get out of the rain in the summertime… People will drive miles and miles to go jump in a cool swimming hole, but when it rains, they scatter.”

Silas House (1971) American writer

Source: Eli the Good

People

“Too late, he recalled Miles's dictum that the reward for a job well done was usually a harder job.”

Lois McMaster Bujold A Civil Campaign

Source: A Civil Campaign

“There are parts of Texas where a fly lives ten thousand years and a man can't die soon enough. Time gets strange there from too much sky, too many miles from crack to crease in the flat surface of the land.”

Katherine Dunn book Geek Love

Source: Geek Love

Time, Parting, Flying

“1lb beefstak, with
1pt bitter beer
every 6 hours.
1 ten-mile walk every morning.
1 bed at 11 sharp every night.
And don't stuff your head with things you don't understand.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Three Men in a Boat

Source: Three Men in a Boat

Beer, Understanding, Night

“The Angel Gabriel disappeared once for sixty years and they found him on earth hiding in the body of a man named Miles Davis.”

Christopher Moore book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Source: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Angels

“I can't believe anyone would voluntarily run 26 miles. Sometimes I sit on the couch cross-legged because I don't feel like walking to the bathroom.”

Jen Lancaster (1967) American writer

Feeling

“A man on a thousand mile walk has to forget his goal and say to himself every morning, 'Today I'm going to cover twenty-five miles and then rest up and sleep.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

Sleep, Forgetting

“Only a rank degenerate would drive 1,500 miles across Texas without eating a chicken fried steak.”

Larry McMurtry (1936) American novelist, essayist, bookseller and screenwriter

Source: In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas

“Miles clutched Quinn's elbow. "Don't Panic."
"I'm not panicking," Quinn observed, "I'm watching you panic. It's more entertaining.”

Lois McMaster Bujold book Brothers in Arms

Variant: "Don't panic."
"I'm not panicking, I'm watching you panic. It's more entertaining."
Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Brothers in Arms (1989)

“You're free to join us, but only if you promise not to stare at the new kid." Miles laughs.
"Staring is very rude. Didn't anyone ever tell you that?”

Alyson Nöel book Evermore

Source: Evermore

“The distant soul can shake the distant friend's soul and make the longing felt, over untold miles.”

John Masefield (1878–1967) English poet and writer

Soul, Distant

“My head was throbbing, and my hands were shaking, but I went down the ladder to my workroom - and started figuring out how to rip someone's heart out of his chest from fifty miles away.
Who says I never do anything fun on a Friday night?”

Jim Butcher book Storm Front

Source: Storm Front

Heart, Night

“Are you calling about the ad?"
"Ad?"
"For the gently used Bentley for sale. It has zero miles!"
Well, that explained the backward driving.

Macrieve & Nix”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: MacRieve

“I ran three miles, staggered into the lobby, and took the elevator back to my apartment. No point to overdoing this exercise junk. --Stephanie Plum”

Janet Evanovich Two for the Dough

Source: Two for the Dough

Exercises

“When she didn't say anything more, he frowned, thinking this was the pair of them in a nutshell: Standing three feet away from each other and being separated by miles.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Thinking

“I knew I had to keep him to myself, as I'd slowly begun to keep everything. We had secrets now, truths and half-truths, that kept her always at arm's length, behind a closed door, miles away.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Source: Someone Like You (1998)

Truth, Secret

“A cannonball travels only two thousand miles an hour; light travels two hundred thousand miles a second. Such is the superiority of Jesus Christ over Napoleon.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Travel, Light, Christ

“I mean she's Cleopatra… shouldn't she and Antony have known better? They were so different…"
"Variety is the spice of life"
"And from a thousand miles apart"
"Absence makes the heart grow fonder”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Uncommon Criminals

Life, Heart

“The slightest stirring in the air can set a hurricane in motion a thousand miles off. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Unleash the Night

“Victory is won not in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later, win a little more.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Victory

“every seven miles, in America, there is at least one McDonald's. Not a hospital, mind you, or a police station, but a McDonald's, every seven miles. I mean, that's sort of scary, if you think about it.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Code Name Cassandra

Thinking

“I think there was a layer of several inches of crystal clear ice, probably in the form of metallic hydrogen, about 10-20 miles up. It could have been held up by the earth’s magnetic field or the internal air pressure like a giant inflatable building or even helped by the centrifugal force of the spinning earth. It could also have had its own spin to help suspend it. Maybe a combination of effects.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 44

Thinking, Help

“Young Lithuanian baritone Vytautas Juozapaitis was well cast as the suave serial seducer with his aristocratic good looks and deep voice. Most women would find him charismatic if not irresistible. From the first moments it became evident that this company, with attractive sets and costumes, is miles ahead of most touring troupes. Theatrically and musically gratifying were the other cast members, all with international experience.”

Vytautas Juozapaitis (1963) Lithuanian opera singer

Corrine Dunn, "A polished Don Giovanni graces the Phil Stage", Naples Daily News (November, 2003) http://www.jennykellyproductions.com/prod_mozart_review.htm

Women, Music

“Yay, Old Uns’ Smart mastered sicks, miles, seeds an' made miracles ord’nary, but it din’t master one thing, nay, a hunger in the hearts o' humans, yay, a hunger for more.”

David Mitchell book Cloud Atlas

"Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After", p. 286
Cloud Atlas (2004)

Hunger, Heart

“It might have been supposed that the building of 30,000 miles of railways would have brought a measure of prosperity to India. But these railways were built not for India but for England; not for the benefit of the Hindu, but for the purposes of the British army and British trade.”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

The Case for India (1931)

“realities of our own countries rather than catching up with the western economic models, [Bhatt urged] the people to follow a principle which ensures six basic necessities- food, shelter, clothing, primary education, primary healthcare and primary banking- are available within a 100 mile distance. If these necessities are locally produced and consumed, we will have the growth of a new holistic economy.”

Ela Bhatt (1933) founder of the Self-Employed Women's Association of India (SEWA)

Quoted in in "Ela Bhatt of SEWA awarded Indira Gandhi Prize for promoting peace".

People, Education, Food, Reality

“You're so hopelessly monosexual, Miles.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Borders of Infinity (1989)

“If I had remained in India, I would probably have lived my whole life within a five-mile radius of where I was born. I would undoubtedly have married a woman of my identical religious and socioeconomic background. I would almost certainly have become a medical doctor, or an engineer, or a computer programmer. I would have socialized entirely within my ethnic community. I would have a whole set of opinions that could be predicted in advance; indeed, they would not be very different from what my father believed, or his father before him. In sum, my destiny would to a large degree have been given to me… The typical American could come to India, live for 40 years, and take Indian citizenship. But he could not 'become Indian'. He wouldn't see himself that way, nor would most Indians see him that way. In America, by contrast, hundreds of millions have come from far-flung shores and over time they, or at least their children, have in a profound and full sense 'become American'.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Articles, 10 Things to Celebrate: Why I'm an Anti-Anti-American (June 2003)

Life, Children, Way, Communication

“He turned his head, reacted in a microsecond, and hit the deck just before a hundred-mile-an-hour fastball zipped past his ear and clanged into the wire backstop. Had the pitch been another inch lower or a few miles an hour faster, he would have been beaned and, at that speed, possibly killed.”

Lis Wiehl (1961) American legal scholar

Source: Waking Hours: Book 1 in East Salem Trilogy with Pete Nelson (Thomas Nelson), p. 140

Past, Speed

“You really could call the new TVR Cerbera heavy metal were it not fashioned from plastic. The best way to experience this car is to be about seven miles away. As it comes toward you, it's like being in a horror movie. The monster is getting closer. The Thing. The Blob. Terror has no shape. But God, what a noise.”

Jeremy Clarkson book Born to be Riled

Source: Born to be Riled (1999), p. 6

God, Cars, Way, Fashion

“The difference between the first- and second-best things in art absolutely seems to escape verbal definition — it is a matter of a hair, a shade, an inward quiver of some kind — yet what miles away in the point of preciousness!”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

To Henry Rutgers Marshall (7 February 1899)
1920s, The Letters of William James (1920)

Art

“Compare Holland with Russia; you see only marshy and sterile islands in the former, which rise from the center of the ocean: a small republic which is only 48 miles length by 40 wide. But this small body is the very nerve-center of the region: immense people live in it, and these industrious people are both powerful and rich. They shook the yoke of the Spanish domination, which was then the most formidable monarchy of Europe. The trade of this republic extends to the ends of the world; and new trade appears almost immediately; it can maintain in times of war an army fifty thousand men, without counting a many and well maintained fleet.”

Frederick II of Prussia book Anti-Machiavel

Source: Anti-Machiavel, Ch. 5 : How It Is Necessary To Control The Cities, Or The Principalities, Which Are Controlled By Their Own Laws Before They Were Conquered

Men, War, People, World

“Until last year, although this town was barely fifty miles from Denver, the road had been bad and only a handful of visitors had chanced on it. The increasing tendency for people to take mountain vacations, however, since the sea had become too filthy to be tolerable, could not be ignored. The road now was excellent and the area had exploded.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

January “SNOW JOB”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

People, Mountain, Chance, Sea

“Vorreedi stated dangerously, "I am not a mushroom, Lieutenant Vorkosigan."
To be kept in the dark and fed on horseshit, right. Miles sighed inwardly.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Cetaganda (1996)

“First off, the whole point of airborne troops is surprise: you don't know they're coming until they're there. But because Cain arrived 24 hours after the first wave, the surprise was gone. And to make matters worse, the landing zone was some eight miles from the bridge. So, thanks to some incompetent planning by the top brass in England, the Germans knew that Cain and his men were coming, they knew where he landed, they knew where he was going, and they had the wherewithal to do something about it.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

The Victoria Cross: For Valour (2003)

Men

“I ran three miles today… finally I said, "Lady, take your purse."”

Emo Philips (1956) American comedian

E=MO² (1985), A Fine How Ya Do

“Now a life of leisure and a pirate's treasure
Don't make much for tragedy.
But it's a sad man my friend who's livin' in his own skin
And can't stand the company.
Every fool's got a reason to feelin' sorry for himself
And turn his heart to stone.
Tonight this fool's halfway to heaven and just a mile outta hell,
And I feel like I'm comin' home.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Better Days"
Song lyrics, Lucky Town (1992)

Life, Sadness, Fools, Feeling

“A superintendent of a road fifty miles in length can give its business his professional attention and may be constantly on the line engaged in the direction of its details; each person is personally known to him, and all questions in relation to its business are at once presented and acted upon; and any system however imperfect may under such circumstances prove comparatively successful.
In the government of a five hundred miles in length a very different state exists. Any system which might be applicable to the business and extent of a short road would be found entirely inadequate to the wants of a long one. and I am fully convinced that in the want of system perfect in its details, properly adapted and vigilantly enforced, lies the true secret of their [the large roads’] failure; and that this disparity of cost per mile in operating long and short roads, is not produced by a difference in length, but is in proportion to the perfection of the system adopted.”

Daniel McCallum (1815–1878) Canadian engineer and early organizational theorist

Source: Report of the Superintendent of the New York and Erie Railroad to the Stockholders (1856), p. 34: Third paragraph. Cited in: Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. (1962). Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise. p. 21-22

Secret, Failure, Question, Business

“Americans cleave to the things of this world as if assured that they will never die,… They clutch everything but hold nothing fast, and so lose grip as they hurry after some new delight. An American will build a house in which to pass his old age and sell it before the roof is on; he will plant a garden and rent it just as the trees are coming into bearing; he will clear a field and leave others to reap the harvest; he will take up a profession and leave it, settle in one place and soon go off elsewhere with his changing desires. If his private business allows him a moment’s relaxation, he will plunge at once into the whirlpool of politics. Then, if at the end of a year crammed with work he has a little spare leisure, his restless curiosity goes with him traveling up and down the vast territories of the United States. Thus he will travel five hundred miles in a few days as a distraction from his happiness. Death steps in in the end and stops him before he has grown tired of this futile pursuit of that complete felicity which always escapes him. At first sight there is something astonishing in this spectacle of so many lucky men restless in the midst of abundance. But it is a spectacle as old as the world; all that is new is to see a whole people performing in it.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Book Two, Chapter XIII.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Two

Death, Men, Happiness, People

“The savage, rocky shores of Christmas Island, 200 miles south of Java, in the Indian Ocean. It's November, the moon is in its third quarter, and the sun is just setting. And in a few hours from now, on this very shore, a thousand million lives will be launched.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

Opening words
The Trials of Life (1990)

Sun, Christmas

“THOUGH the sun was hot on this July morning Mrs Lucas preferred to cover the half-mile that lay between the station and her house on her own brisk feet, and sent on her maid and her luggage in the fly that her husband had ordered to meet her.”

E. F. Benson book Queen Lucia

. p. 7.
Queen Lucia (1920)

Sun, Housing, Flying

“Ten years ago, you could have traveled thousands of miles through the United States and never seen a baseball cap turned back to front. Today, the reverse baseball cap is ubiquitous. I do not know what the pattern of geographical spread of the reverse baseball cap precisely was, but epidemiology is certainly among the professions primarily qualified to study it.”

Richard Dawkins book Viruses of the Mind

Viruses of the Mind (1993)

Travel, Study

“Moving eight miles a minute for months at a time
Breaking all of the rules that would bend
I began to find myself searchin'
Searching for shelter again and again.Against the wind
A little something against the wind
I found myself seeking shelter
Against the wind.”

Bob Seger (1945) American singer-songwriter

Against the Wind.
Song lyrics, Against the Wind (1980)

Search, Time

“The highway construction truck tore up the street at forty miles an hour.”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

Source: Lies, Inc. (1984), Chapter 12 (p. 132)

“A railroad station? That was sort of a primitive airport, only you didn't have to take a cab 20 miles out of town to reach it.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"Inside the Suit, a Man!," The New York Times (1986-11-05)

“… we have a situation in which millions of vehicles, each a miracle of often unnecssary complication, are hurtling in all directions under the impulse of anything up to 200 horsepower. Many of them are the size of small houses and contain a couple of tons of sophisticated alloys — yet often carry a single passenger. They can travel at a hundred miles an hour, but are lucky if they average forty. In one lifetime they have consumed more irreplaceable fuel than has been used in the whole previous history of mankind. The roads to support them, inadequate though they are, cost as much as a small war; the analogy is a good one, for the casualties are on the same scale.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

Source: 1970s, Chapter 3 (The Future of Transport) in Profiles of the Future (7th printing, 1972)

War, Travel, History, Support

“He is potentially brilliant, and he is going to be exciting, but potential is nothing unless you can produce it. I would think he's way, way, way, miles away from international World Cup football.”

Theo Walcott (1989) English association football player

Bobby Robson, former manager of England, 2006 ( Source http://www.cnn.com/2006/SPORT/football/05/08/england.gamble/index.html) <br class="br">About

World, Way, Thinking, Football

“To those who work outside Washington, I would send a special message. At times it may be frustrating when it seems that the head office is thousands of miles away and the message is not getting through. But if I may, I'm going to issue a verbal Executive order: We're going to listen, because the heart of our government is not here in Washington, it's in every county office, every town, every city across this land. Wherever the people of America are, that's where the heart of our government is.”

George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) American politician, 41st President of the United States

George Bush: "Remarks to Members of the Senior Executive Service," January 26, 1989. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=16628&st <br class="br">Address to the Senior Executive Service (1989)

People, Time, Heart

“My living in Yorkshire was so far out of the way, that it was actually twelve miles from a lemon.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

Vol. I, ch. 9
Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

Way

“It's about the time I was riding my Motorcycle, going down a mountain road at 150 miles an hour, playing my guitar.”

Arlo Guthrie (1947) American folk singer

Spoken during some performances of the Motorcycle song, on how he wrote the song. Found on recordings on "Arlo, Live in Sydney, and the Significance of the Pickle".

Mountain, Time

“Kinchit nahin bhaybhit main, Kartavya path par jo bhi mile, Yeh bhi sahi woh bhi sahi
English translation:I am not afraid of defeat and victory, whatever comes my way of duty, I will accept it, because this is true and that is true.”

Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1924–2018) 10th Prime Minister of India

Quoted from The truth according to Vajpayee, 24 November 2009, The Telegraph http://www.telegraphindia.com/1091124/jsp/nation/story_11777931.jsp,

Way, Victory

“Oh, when I was in love with you
Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
How well did I behave.

And now the fancy passes by
And nothing will remain,
And miles around they'll say that I
Am quite myself again.”

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

No. 18.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

Love

“Einstein's theory was that everything about the laws of the universe and nature was relative. What you observe about something depends greatly upon your frame of reference at the time. That's why I can stand here in this concord cabin and drop my pen in comfort. In here I'm not traveling 1,400mph, am I? Everything works like that. Conditioned by its frame of reference. All the electronics in all the instruments in this cockpit obey the exact same laws they would if the plane were standing still. Because in this frame, like me they are not traveling at Mach two. And all the laws of nature behave the same way. This beam of light is going out in all directions at 186,000 miles per second. Being on the concord makes no difference to it's speed going forward, backwards sideways.”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

The Day the Universe Changed (1985)

Law, Way, Travel, Nature

“For John Howard to get to any high moral ground he would have to first climb out of the volcanic hole he's dug for himself over the last decade. You know, it's like one of those deep diamond mined holes in South Africa, you know, they're about a mile underground. He'd have to come a mile up to get to even equilibrium, let alone have any contest in morality with Kevin Rudd.”

Paul Keating (1944) Australian politician, 24th Prime Minister of Australia

ABC Radio interview, March 5, 2007.

“As a dreamer of dreams and a travelin' man,
I have chalked up many a mile.
Read dozens of books about heroes and crooks,
And I've learned much from both of their styles.”

Jimmy Buffett (1946) American singer–songwriter and businessman

Son of a Son of a Sailor
Song lyrics, Son of a Son of a Sailor (1978)

Books, Dreams, Learning, Reading

“…but he distinctly remembered standing at the house door one summer morning in a passionate outburst of rebellion against going to school. Naturally his mother was the immediate victim of his rage; that is what mothers are for, and boys also; but in this case the boy had his mother at unfair disadvantage, for she was a guest, and had no means of enforcing obedience. Henry showed a certain tactical ability by refusing to start, and he met all efforts at compulsion by successful, though too vehement protest. He was in fair way to win, and was holding his own, with sufficient energy, at the bottom of the long staircase which led up to the door of the President's library, when the door opened, and the old man slowly came down. Putting on his hat, he took the boy's hand without a word, and walked with him, paralyzed by awe, up the road to the town. After the first moments of consternation at this interference in a domestic dispute, the boy reflected that an old gentleman close on eighty would never trouble himself to walk near a mile on a hot summer morning over a shadeless road to take a boy to school, and that it would be strange if a lad imbued with the passion of freedom could not find a corner to dodge around, somewhere before reaching the school door. Then and always, the boy insisted that this reasoning justified his apparent submission; but the old man did not stop, and the boy saw all his strategical points turned, one after another, until he found himself seated inside the school, and obviously the centre of curious if not malevolent criticism. Not till then did the President release his hand and depart.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

School, Way, Boy, Nature

“This mighty wall of four score miles in length is only exceeded by the Chinese wall, which makes a considerable figure upon the terrestrial globe, and may be discerned at the moon.”

William Stukeley (1687–1765) English antiquarian

Private letter published in The Family Memoirs of the Rev. William Stukeley (1887) Vol. 3, p. 142. (1754).

“We did not charge hundreds of miles into the heart of Iraq and pay a bitter cost of casualties and liberate 25 million people only to retreat before a band of thugs and assassins.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2003, Remarks on U.S.-British relations and foreign policy (November 2003)

People, Heart

“Beautiful Delilah, dressed in the latest style
Swingin' like a pendulum, walkin' down the aisle
Deep romantic eyes, speak so low in miles
Maybe she will settle down and marry after a while”

Chuck Berry (1926–2017) American rock-and-roll musician

"Beautiful Delilah" (1958)
Song lyrics

Beauty

“Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city. Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

The Fall of Rome (1947), lines 21–28

Bird, Wealth

“A few years ago I got a phone call from a marketing executive who wanted to light up the Moon with the logo of her company. She wanted to know how she might proceed. After slamming down the phone, I called her back and politely explained why it was a bad idea. Other corporate executives have asked me how to put into orbit mile-wide luminous banners with catchy slogans written across them, much like the skywriting or flag-dragging airplanes you see at sports events or over the ocean from a crowded beach. I always threaten to send the light police after them.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

Let There Be Dark, Natural History Magazine, October 2002, 2018-24-03 http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/read/2002/10/01/let-there-be-dark, <br class="br">2000s

Idea, Sport, Light

“The Badlands were extensive. Ancient bomb craters and soil erosion joined hands here; man’s talent for war, coupled with his inability to manage forested land, had produced thousands of square miles of temperate purgatory, where nothing moved but dust.”

Brian W. Aldiss (1925–2017) British science fiction author

“Who Can Replace a Man?” p. 19 (originally published in Infinity Science Fiction, June 1958)
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

War

Quotes about mile page 2

Quotes about mile
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