Quotes about stranger
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“For the first time, he looked at her, and she wasn’t a stranger, she was Clary—his friend. His family. The girl he’d sworn always to protect. The girl he loved as fiercely as he loved himself.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Lost Herondale

Love, Family, Girl, Time

“He is more worth to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone else's friend and brother. So which life is more important?”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

Life

“You never know when, and you never know who, but someday a stranger will burst through the door of your life and transform it utterly. The world will be turned upside down, and you will be happier for it.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Nothing but Shadows

Life, World

“He said that love was an emotion contra natura that condemned two strangers to a base and unhealthy dependence, and the more intense it was, the more ephemeral.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Of Love and Other Demons

Source: Of Love and Other Demons

Love, Dependency

“If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Source: Wuthering Heights

Wedding, Universe

“Sassenach." He had called me that from the first; the Gaelic word for outlander, a stranger. An Englishman. First in jest, then in affection.”

Diana Gabaldon book Dragonfly in Amber

Source: Dragonfly in Amber

“Love is candy from a stranger, but it's candy you've had before and it probably won't kill you.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Source: Adverbs

Love

“I love your bracelet!’ I said to the brunette next to me, because, while most girls are onto the whole stranger-with-candy thing, the strangers-with-compliments strategy is still remarkably effective.”

Ally Carter Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy

Source: Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy

Love, Girl

“I been with strangers all day and they treated me like family. I come in here to family and you treat me like a stranger.”

August Wilson The Piano Lesson

Source: The Piano Lesson

Family

“Last night I danced with a stranger, but she just reminded me you were the one.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Time Out of Mind (1997), Standing In The Doorway

Dance, Night

“I was very strict on that point. No devouring classmates." Jeremy rolled his eyes. "Other parents warn their kids not to talk to strangers. I had to warn mine not to eat them.”

Kelley Armstrong book Stolen

Source: Stolen

Parent

“Miracles happen quietly every day - in an operating room, on a stormy sea, in the sudden appearance of a road side stranger. They are rarely tallied. No one keeps score.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The First Phone Call from Heaven

Appearance, Sea

“I'm not a stranger to your love of lost causes, dear one. But you have to be careful who you meet," he said, stoking a pipe thoughtfully. "You can't unmeet them.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

Source: Tiger Lily

Love

“Now they were as strangers; worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted.”

Jane Austen book Persuasion

Source: Persuasion

“A couple of times in your life, it happens like that. You meet a stranger, and all you know is that you need to know everything about him.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Sugar Daddy

Life, Time

“There's an opposite to déjà vu. They call it jamais vu. It's when you meet the same people or visit places, again and again, but each time is the first. Everybody is always a stranger. Nothing is ever familiar.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

People, Time

“Do you want to know why men name their penis? So the most important decisions in their life aren't made by a stranger.”

Linda Howard (1950) American writer

Source: After the Night

Life, Men, Decision

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Beauty, Art, Science, Dead

“People who are strangers to liquor are incapable of talking about literature.”

Mo Yan (1955) Chinese novelist

People, Literature

“Our bodies aren't strangers,' he said, his voice ragged. 'Our spirits aren't strangers'. He held her face in his hands. 'Tell me what part of me is stranger to you and I'll destroy that part of me.'
And she wept to hear his words.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Quintana of Charyn

Parting

“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

Life

“I held her close for only a short time, but after she was gone, I'd see her smile on the face of a perfect stranger and I knew she would be there with me all the rest of my days.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Source: Strange Dreams: Collected Stories & Drawings

Smile, Time, Perfection

“Odd how it was so easy for a stranger to assume such familiarity. Especially when those who were supposed to know you best often didn't, not at all.”

Sarah Dessen book What Happened to Goodbye

Source: What Happened to Goodbye

“Strangers see you the way you want them to see you. You can't fool friends…that's what makes them friends…
Pretty Little Liars”

Sara Shepard (1973) Author

Fools, Way

“The question of the stranger in a society which estranges everybody from it--while forcing everybody to assimilate their own alienation--takes cover under dubious and sinister masks.”

Norman Manea (1936) Romanian writer

Question

“She was a stranger in her own life, a tourist in her own body.”

Melissa de la Cruz book The Van Alen Legacy

Source: The Van Alen Legacy

Life

“There is nothing more mysterious than a TV set left on in an empty room. It is even stranger than a man talking to himself or a woman standing dreaming at her stove. It is as if another planet is communicating with you.”

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French sociologist and philosopher

Source: America

Dreams, Communication

“An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

For Parents, Parent

“sometimes you have to get to know someone really well to realize you're really strangers”

Mary Tyler Moore (1936–2017) American actress, television producer

“I´m a stranger in a strange land.”

Carson McCullers book The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Source: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

“It is what a man does for strangers that counts more than what he does for his family.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Quintana of Charyn

Family

“Listen, three eyes," he said, "don't you try to outweird me, I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal.”

Douglas Adams book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Source: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“I am my remembering self, and the experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

"Bias, Blindness and How We Truly Think" (2011)
Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow
Context: An experiment about your next vacation will allow you to observe your attitude to your experiencing self: At the end of the vacation, all pictures and videos will be destroyed. Furthermore, you will swallow a potion that will wipe out all your memories of the vacation. How would this affect your vacation plans? How much would you be willing to pay for it, relative to a normally memorable vacation? My impression is that the elimination of memories greatly reduces the value of the experience.Imagine a painful operation during which you will scream in pain and beg the surgeon to stop. However, you are promised an amnesia-inducing drug that will wipe out any memory of the episode. Here again, my observation is that most people are remarkably indifferent to the pains of their experiencing self. Some say they don’t care at all. Others share my feeling, which is that I feel pity for my suffering self but not more than I would feel for a stranger in pain.I am my remembering self, and the experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me.

“An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

For Parents, Parent

“Like I, of all people, didn't know better than to lead a total stranger to the point where they could hurt me most, knowing how easily they'd be able to find their way back to it.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

People, Way, Hurt

“I urge you to examine in your own mind the assumptions which must lay behind using the police power to insist that once-sovereign spirits have no choice but to submit to being schooled by strangers.”

John Taylor Gatto (1935–2018) American teacher, book author

School

“Beauty Lures the Stranger More Easily into Danger

-Septimus Heap”

Angie Sage (1952) English author and illustrator

Beauty

“He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths - so that he could 'come over' some afternoon to a stranger's garden.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Waiting

“I ought to of shot that dog myself, George. I shouldn't ought to of let no stranger shoot my dog.”

John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men

Source: Of Mice and Men

Dogs

“I think I'd probably tell you that it's easier to desire and pursue the attention of tens of millions of total strangers than it is to accept the love and loyalty of the people closest to us.”

William Gibson book Idoru

Source: Idoru

Love, People, Thinking, Loyalty

“It is funny the things that run through your mind when you're sitting in your underpants in front of a pair of strangers.”

David Sedaris When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Source: When You Are Engulfed in Flames

“If she were a writer she would collect her pencils and notebooks and favourite cat and write in bed. Strangers and lovers would never get past the locked door.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

Cats, Lovers, Past

“Do you fall in love often?"

Yes often. With a view, with a book, with a dog, a cat, with numbers, with friends, with complete strangers, with nothing at all.”

Jeanette Winterson book Gut Symmetries

Source: Gut Symmetries

Love, Books, Dogs, Cats

“Humans were so stupid. They had something so precious, and they barely safeguarded it at all. They threw away their lives for money, for packets of powder, for a stranger's charming smile.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Money, Stupidity, Smile

“Friends, there is nothing like your own family to make you appreciate strangers!”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Family

“He had once thought it was strange to have a friend you'd never met. Now it was even stranger, losing a friend you'd never really had”

Tad Williams book City of Golden Shadow

Source: City of Golden Shadow

“Judging the mistakes of strangers is an easy thing to do - and it feels pretty good.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

Feeling

“Something inside me shuts down and I'm too numb to feel anything. It's like watching complete strangers in another Hunger Games. But I do notice they omit the part where I covered her in flowers.

Right. Because even that smacks of rebellion.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Hunger, Feeling, Game, Flowers

“I finally felt myself lifted definitively away on the winds of adventure toward worlds I envisaged would be stranger than they were, into situations I imagined would be much more normal than they turned out to be.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Source: The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

World, Imagination

“Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got used to it.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

1910s
Source: A Little Book in C Major (1916)

Truth

“Let us not ask for miracles, let us not ask for concern with what is good for the country of him who comes as a stranger to make his fortune and leave afterwards.”

José Rizal book Noli Me Tángere

Source: Noli Me Tángere

Country

“there are only so many ways to get rejected or ignored. It doesn't hurt at all anymore because why should someone who's a complete stranger have any control over your sense of selfworth?”

Neil Strauss book The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists

Source: The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists

Way, Sense, Hurt

“You are a total stranger and you want to take my library book.”

Elizabeth Kostova book The Historian

Source: The Historian

Books

“In this world of memories, there's no need for strangers.
-Kenshin to Kaoru”

Nobuhiro Watsuki (1970) Japanese manga artist

World, Memory

“Dogs are here to remind us life really is a simple thing. You eat, sleep, take walks, and pee when you must. That's about all there is. They are quick to forgive trespasses and assume strangers will be kind.”

Jonathan Carroll book The Marriage of Sticks

Source: The Marriage of Sticks

Life, Dogs, Forgiveness, Sleep

“Don't take in no strangers while I'm gone.
She sighed deeply. They ain't a soul in this world but what is a stranger to me, she said.”

Cormac McCarthy book Outer Dark

Outer Dark (1968)

World, Soul

“More tears. Disgraceful. I was getting just like Kester, weeping at the drop of a hat, but of course I was Kester. I'd become him, and now there was just this other stranger who wrote me debonair notes and who sounded just like me.”

Susan Howatch book The Wheel of Fortune

The Wheel of Fortune (1984), Part 5: Harry

Tear

“In this assembly, every political school has its teachers — every creed has its adherents — and I may safely say, that this banquet is the tribute of United Ireland to the representative of American benevolence. Being such, I am at once reminded of the dinner which took place after the battle of Saratoga, at which Gates and Burgoyne — the rival soldiers — sat together. Strange scene! Ireland, the beaten and the bankrupt, entertains America, the victorious and the prosperous! Stranger still! The flag of the Victor decorates this hail — decorates our harbour — not, indeed, in triumph, but in sympathy — not to commemorate the defeat, but to predict the resurrection, of a fallen people! One thing is certain — we are sincere upon this occasion. There is truth in this compliment. For the first time in her career, Ireland has reason to be grateful to a foreign power. Foreign power, sir! Why should I designate that country a "foreign power," which has proved itself our sister country? England, they sometimes say, is our sister country. We deny the relationship — we discard it. We claim America as our sister, and claiming her as such, we have assembled here this night. Should a stranger, viewing this brilliant scene inquire of me, why it is that, amid the desolation of this day — whilst famine is in the land — whilst the hearse-plumes darken the summer scenery of the island, whilst death sows his harvest, and the earth teems not with the seeds of life, but with the seeds of corruption — should he inquire of me, why it is, that, amid this desolation, we hold high festival, hang out our banners, and thus carouse — I should reply, "Sir, the citizens of Dublin have met to pay a compliment to a plain citizen of America, which they would not pay — 'no, not for all the gold in Venice'”

Thomas Francis Meagher (1823–1867) Irish nationalist & American politician

to the minister of England."
Ireland and America (1846)

Life, Death, People, Truth

“When the Stranger says: "What is the meaning of this city?
Do you huddle close together because you love each other?"
What will you answer? "We all dwell together
To make money from each other"? or "This is a community"?”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

Love, Money, Communication

“"The gods are on the side of the stronger," according to Tacitus. The prophets proclaimed that the heart of God is on the side of the weaker. God's special concern is not for the mighty and the successful, but for the lowly and the downtrodden, for the stranger and the poor, for the widow and the orphan.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

Volume 1, p. 167
The Prophets (1962)

God, Success, Heart

“You have to find out for yourself. Take the leap. Go as far as you can. Try staying out of touch. Become a stranger in a strange land. Acquire humility. Learn the language. Listen to what people are saying.”

Paul Theroux (1941) American travel writer and novelist

Fresh Air Fiend (2000)

People, Learning

“We often hear, “Rape is rape, right?” No. A stranger forcing himself on a woman at knife point is different from a man and woman having sex while drunk and having regrets the morning. What is different? When a woman agrees to a date, she does not make a choice to be sexual, but she does make a choice to explore sexual possibilities. The woman makes no such choice with a stranger or an acquaintance.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 315.

Sex

“We are undercover passion on the run,
Chasing love up against the sun,
We are strangers by day, lovers by night,
Knowing it's so wrong but feeling so right.”

Stevie Wonder (1950) American musician

Part-Time Lover
Song lyrics, In Square Circle (1985)

Love, Feeling, Lovers, Passion

“My answer to this dilemma was self-discipline. I figured I could just make myself do good things, think good thoughts about other people, but that was no easier than walking up to a complete stranger and falling in love with them. I could go through the motions for a while, but sooner or later my heart would testify to its true love: darkness. Then I would get up and try again. The cycle was dehumanizing.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

Love, People, Thinking, Heart

“Without comprehension, the immigrant would forever remain shut—a stranger in America. Until America can release the heart as well as train the hand of the immigrant, he would forever remain driven back upon himself, corroded by the very richness of the unused gifts within his soul.”

Anzia Yezierska (1880–1970) American writer

How I Found America, pt. 3, from Hungry Hearts and Other Stories (1920)

Soul, Heart, Training

“Assuming her most gracious manner, my Wife advanced towards the Stranger, "Permit me, Madam, to feel and be felt by— " then, suddenly recoiling, "Oh! it is not a Woman, and there are no angles either, not a trace of one. Can it be that I have so misbehaved to a perfect Circle?" "I am indeed, in a certain sense a Circle," replied the Voice, "and a more perfect Circle than any in Flatland; but to speak more accurately, I am many Circles in one."”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

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Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART II: OTHER WORLDS, Chapter 15. Concerning a Stranger from Spaceland

Feeling, Sense, Perfection

“'Kant ought to be arrested and given three years in Solovki asylum for that "proof" of his!' Ivan Nikolayich burst out completely unexpectedly. 'Ivan!' whispered Berlioz, embarrassed. But the suggestion to pack Kant off to an asylum not only did not surprise the stranger but actually delighted him. 'Exactly, exactly!' he cried and his green left eye, turned on Berlioz glittered. 'That's exactly the place for him! I said to him myself that morning at breakfast: "If you'll forgive me, professor, your theory is no good. It may be clever but it's horribly incomprehensible. People will think you're mad."' Berlioz's eyes bulged. At breakfast… to Kant?”

Mikhail Bulgakov book The Master and Margarita

Book One in 'Never Talk to Strangers', MG, here Woland, Berlioz and Ivan are talking about Kant's views on existence of God
The Master and Margarita (1967)

People, Forgiveness, Thinking, Madness

“Feeling that the silver chord of life is loosing, and that his spirit is ready to quit her old companion the body, he extends himself on his bed — closes his eyes for the last time, with his own hands — folds his arms decently on his breast, then breathing out "Father of mercies! take me to thyself," — he fell asleep. Swift on angels' wings the brightening saint ascended; while voices more than human were heard (in Fancy's ear) warbling through the happy regions, and hymning the great procession towards the gates of heaven. His glorious coming was seen far off, and myriads of mighty angels hastened forth, with golden harps, to welcome the honored stranger.”

Mason Weems (1759–1825) fictionalizing biographer of George Washington

Description of Washington's death in Life of Washington (1800); this fanciful account bears no relation to the report of Washington's last words by his personal secretary Tobias Lear, who wrote in his journal (14 December 1799) http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/project/exhibit/mourning/lear.html: About ten o'clk he made several attempts to speak to me before he could effect it, at length he said, — "I am just going. Have me decently buried; and do not let my body be put into the Vault in less than three days after I am dead." I bowed assent, for I could not speak. He then looked at me again and said, "Do you understand me? I replied "Yes." "Tis well" said he.

Life, Angels, Feeling, Time

“My cell phone number," she says with a wry expression. "I'm staying at my friend's place for a while buy if you ever feel like sseeing somebody, give me a call. We can go out for a bite or whatever. Don't be a stranger, okay? 'Even chance meetings'… how does the rest of that go?”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

"'Are the results of karma.'"
Kafka on the Shore (2002)

Feeling, Chance

“Is it any surprise, then, that Jesus felt such intense compassion for the poor and marginalized? That he constantly asked his disciples to care for the poor, the sick, the forgotten, the stranger? He was one of these throwaway people, and he lived among them for 30 years before his public ministry began. Christians tend to see Jesus’ commands to care for the poor as divine. And they were — Jesus was fully divine. But they also came from his human experience. He was fully human as well. I’m always amazed by people who feel they can be Christian without caring for the poor. Not only did Jesus command us to do this, Jesus himself was from this class. When God chose to join us, he joined us in Nazareth, to make sure that we wouldn’t forget.”

James Martin (priest) (1960) Jesuit priest and writer

"How can you be Christian without caring for the poor?" (2017)

God, People, Feeling, Forgetting

“The fact that men have a same origin and live in the same universe means that they are representatives of a same unity. Deep down, they are also related (or connected) among them; that they consider (or not) themselves as strangers, this just depends on the feeling (or sensation) that dictate their relationships. In their country, two fellow coutrymen whose paths berely cross (or see each only only briefly) with inferrence, would effusively rush themselves up (or throw themselves) into each other arms if they would happen to meet in a desert, among Cannibles.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 42.

Men, Feeling, Universe, Dependency

“We all have that heritage, no matter what old land our fathers left. All colors and blends of Americans have somewhat the same tendencies. It's a breed — selected out by accident. And so we're overbrave and overfearful — we're kind and cruel as children. We're overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers. We boast and are impressed. We're oversentimental and realistic. We are mundane and materialistic — and do you know of any other nation that acts for ideals? We eat too much. We have no taste, no sense of proportion. We throw our energy about like waste. In the old lands they say of us that we go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture. Can it be that our critics have not the key or the language of our culture? That's what we are, Cal — all of us. You aren't very different.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

East of Eden (1952)

Children, Color, Sense, Time

“Lima frightened him, it was too big, you could lose yourself in it and never find your way home; the people on the street were total strangers.”

Mario Vargas Llosa book The Time of the Hero

The Time of the Hero (1963)

People, Way, Home

“Now if plurality and difference belong only to the appearance-form; if there is but one and the same Entity manifested in all living things: it follows that, when we obliterate the distinction between the ego and the non-ego, we are not the sport of an illusion. Rather are we so, when we maintain the reality of individuation, — a thing the Hindus call Maya, that is, a deceptive vision, a phantasma. The former theory we have found to be the actual source of the phaenomenon of Compassion; indeed Compassion is nothing but its translation into definite expression. This, therefore, is what I should regard as the metaphysical foundation of Ethics, and should describe it as the sense which identifies the ego with the non-ego, so that the individual directly recognises in another his own self, his true and very being. From this standpoint the profoundest teaching of theory pushed to its furthest limits may be shown in the end to harmonise perfectly with the rules of justice and loving-kindness, as exercised; and conversely, it will be clear that practical philosophers, that is, the upright, the beneficent, the magnanimous, do but declare through their acts the same truth as the man of speculation wins by laborious research … He who is morally noble, however deficient in mental penetration, reveals by his conduct the deepest insight, the truest wisdom; and puts to shame the most accomplished and learned genius, if the latter's acts betray that his heart is yet a stranger to this great principle, — the metaphysical unity of life.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book On the Basis of Morality

Part IV, Ch. 2, pp. 273 https://archive.org/stream/basisofmorality00schoiala#page/273/mode/2up-274 <br class="br">On the Basis of Morality (1840)

Love, Life, Wisdom, Truth

“Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: "My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly." This stranger is a theologian. — Number VIII”

Denis Diderot book Addition aux Pensées philosophiques

Addition aux Pensées philosophiques (1770)

Way, Light, Appearance, Night

“But while, to the immigrant, entry to this country was admission to privileges and opportunities eagerly sought, the impact upon the existing population was very different. For reasons which they could not comprehend, and in pursuance of a decision by default, on which they were never consulted, they found themselves made strangers in their own country.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

The 'Rivers of Blood' speech

Decision, Country

“They came here—the exile and the stranger, brave but frightened—to find a place where a man could be his own man. They made a covenant with this land. Conceived in justice, written in liberty, bound in union, it was meant one day to inspire the hopes of all mankind; and it binds us still. If we keep its terms, we shall flourish.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Inaugural address (1965)

Justice, Hope

“I'm of the opinion that anyone--even strangers--can sense the urgency of a request, and most people will usually do the right thing. … But when that didn't work, I offered to pay them.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Jeremy Marsh, Chapter 14, p. 218
2000s, True Believer (2005)

People, Sense

“Got a home on high
Ain't nothing but a stranger in this world
I'm nothing but a stranger in this world
I got a home on high
In another land
So far away.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Astral Weeks
Song lyrics, Astral Weeks (1969)

World, Home

“In the end, the Labour party could cease to represent labour. Stranger historic ironies have happened than that.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Article for The Sunday Telegraph, citing the swing to the Conservatives in his constituency and others with large working-class electorates (18 October 1964), from Simon Heffer, Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell (Phoenix, 1999), p. 364
1960s

“From "Beware of the Beautiful Stranger". title song of 1970 album, sung by Pete Atkin.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Poems and song lyrics

Beauty

“Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger.
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

Soul, Question

“As soon as the sound of the Peace-cry of my departing Wife had died away, I began to approach the Stranger with the intention of taking a nearer view and of bidding him be seated: but his appearance struck me dumb and motionless with astonishment. Without the slightest symptoms of angularity he nevertheless varied every instant with gradations of size and brightness scarcely possible for any Figure within the scope of my experience. The thought flashed across me that I might have before me a burglar or cut-throat, some monstrous Irregular Isosceles, who, by feigning the voice of a Circle, had obtained admission somehow into the house, and was now preparing to stab me with his acute angle.”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART II: OTHER WORLDS, Chapter 16. How the Stranger Vainly Endeavoured to Reveal to Me in Words the Mysteries of Spaceland

Peace, Appearance, Housing, Cry

“Another example — maybe a better one, in a way — was when it was confirmed that Michael Jackson was going to marry Elvis Presley's daughter. [loud, game-show buzzer noise] A good friend of mine in the States faxed me, and he simply … he said, "This makes your job more difficult." And I knew exactly, I knew exactly what he meant. 'Cos something … a scenario that seemed to belong to the universe of the late Terry Southern, was suddenly, suddenly real. It's that truth-is-stranger-than-fiction factor keeps getting jacked up on us on a fairly regular, maybe even exponential, basis. I think that's something peculiar to our time. I don't think our grandparents had to live with that.”

William Gibson (1948) American-Canadian speculative fiction novelist and founder of the cyberpunk subgenre

No Maps for These Territories (2000)

Truth, Way, Game, Thinking

“Men who cannot believe in the mystery of our Saviour's redemption can believe that spirits from the dead have visited them in a stranger's parlour, because they see a table shake and do not know how it is shaken; because they hear a rapping on a board, and cannot see the instrument that raps it; because they are touched in the dark, and do not know the hand that touches them.”

Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) English novelist (1815-1882)

The New Zealander (1965), p. 73

Men, Dead

“The more a man is trained to “be a man,” the more he is trained to protect women and children, not hurt women and children. He is trained to volunteer to die before even a stranger is hurt – especially a woman or child.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

Women, Children, Hurt, Training

“Never floss with a stranger.”

Joan Rivers (1933–2014) American comedian, actress, and television host

As quoted in Words of Wisdom (1990), ed. by W. Safire & L. Safir, p. 358

“Took a stranger to teach me to look into justice's beautiful face, and to see an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Infidels (1983), I and I

Justice, Beauty

“Truth may be stranger than fiction, goes the old saw, but it is never as strange as lies.”

John Hodgman book The Areas of My Expertise

Or, for that matter, as true.
Source: The Areas of My Expertise (2005), p. 18

Truth

“Although I can look a bit grumpy myself, I love it when the sun shines in the water, but besides that I think my country is colored and what I particularly noticed when I came from abroad: our country is colored sappy fat, that's why our beautiful- colored and built cattle, their flesh, milk and butter, nowhere you can find this, but they [the cows] are also fed by that sappy, greasy and colored land - I have often heard strangers say, those Dutch painters all paint gray and their land is green.... the more I observe the more colored and transparent nature becomes and then the air seen altogether, something very different and yet so [strong] in harmony, it is delightful when one has learned to see, because that too must be learned, I repeat, our country is not gray, even not in gray weather, the dunes aren't gray either.”

Paul Gabriël (1828–1903) painter (1828-1903)

translation from the Dutch original: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch / citaat van Paul Gabriël, in Nederlands: Alhoewel ik er zelf wat knorrig uit kan zien houd ik er veel van dat het zonnetje in het water schijnt, maar buiten dat ik vind mijn land gekleurd en wat mij bijzonder opviel wanneer ik uit den vreemde kwam: ons land is gekleurd sappig vet, vandaar onze schoone gekleurde en gebouwde runderen, hun vleesch melk en boter, nergens vind men dat zoo maar ze worden ook door dat sappige vette en gekleurde land gevoed - ik heb vreemdelingen dikwijls horen zeggen, die Hollandsche schilders schilderen allemaal grijs en hun land is groen.. ..hoe meer ik opserveer hoe gekleurder en transparanter de natuur word en dan de lucht erbij gezien een heel ander iets en toch zoo in harmonie, het is verrukkelijk wanneer men heeft leeren zien, want ook dat moet geleerd worden, ik herhaal het ons land is niet grijs, zelfs niet bij grijs weer, de duinen zijn ook niet grijs.
written note of Paul Gabriël, 1901; as cited in De Haagse School. Hollandse meesters van de 19de eeuw, ed. R. de Leeuw, J. Sillevis en C. Dumas); exhibition. cat. - Parijs, Grand Palais / Londen, Royal Academy of Arts / Den Haag, Haags Gemeentemuseum, Parijs, Londen, Den Haag 1983, p.183 - 23
after 1900

Love, Beauty, Color, Nature