Distant Friendship Quotes

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The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers & cities; but to know someone who thinks & feels with us, & who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The distant soul can shake the distant friend's soul and make the longing felt, over untold miles.
John Masefield
I don’t want to be one of those easily forgotten people, so important at the time, so special, so influential, and so treasured, yet years later just a vague face and a distant memory.
Cecelia Ahern
A truly virtuous man would come to the aid of the most distant stranger as quickly as to his own friend. If men were perfectly virtuous, they wouldn’t have friends.
Montesquieu
I wish that all nations may recover and retain their independence; that those which are overgrown may not advance beyond safe measures of power, that a salutary balance may be ever maintained among nations, and that our peace, commerce, and friendship, may be sought and cultivated by all. It is our business to manufacture for ourselves whatever we can, to keep our markets open for what we can spare or want; and the less we have to do with the amities or enmities of Europe, the better. Not in our day, but at no distant one, we may shake a rod over the heads of all, which may make the stoutest of them tremble. But I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power, the greater it will be.
Thomas Jefferson (Writings: Autobiography / Notes on the State of Virginia / Public and Private Papers / Addresses / Letters)
Dispassionately, reasonably, he contemplated the failure that his life must appear to be. He had wanted friendship and the closeness of friendship that might hold him in the race of mankind; he had had two friends, one of whom had died senselessly before he was known, the other of whom had now withdrawn so distantly into the ranks of the living that... He had wanted the singleness and the still connective passion of marriage; he had had that, too, and he had not known what to do with it, and it had died. He had wanted love; and he had had love, and had relinquished it, had let it go into the chaos of potentiality. Katherine, he thought. "Katherine." And he had wanted to be a teacher, and he had become one; yet he knew, he had always known, that for most of his life he had been an indifferent one. He had dreamed of a kind of integrity, of a kind of purity that was entire; he had found compromise and the assaulting diversion of triviality. He had conceived wisdom, and at the end of the long years he had found ignorance. And what else? he thought. What else? What did you expect? he asked himself.
John Williams (Stoner)
Here is the easiest way to explain the genius of Johnny Cash: Singing from the perspective of a convicted muderer in the song "Folsom Prison Blues,: Cash is struck by pangs of regret when he sits in his cell and hears a distant train whistle. This is because people on that train are "probably drinkin' coffee." And this is also why Cash seems completely credible as a felon: He doesn't want freedom or friendship or Jesus or a new lawyer. He wants coffee. Within the mind of a killer, complex feeling are eerily simple. This is why killers can shoot men in Reno just to watch them die, and the rest of us usually can't.
Chuck Klosterman (Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto)
But why do you have to keep your distance from me, why can’t you see me, talk to me like a real person…like Drew, not some kind of distant non-friend.” “Non-friend?” Drew smiled drily at my choice of words. “I like the sound of that better than ‘friends’, Summer. It probably describes us best.” - Perfect Summer
Kailin Gow (Perfect Summer (Loving Summer, #3))
All the idylls of youth: beauty manifest in lakes, mountains, people; richness in experience, conversation, friendships. Nights during a full moon, the light flooded the wilderness, so it was possible to hike without a headlamp. We would hit the trail at two A.M., summiting the nearest peak, Mount Tallac, just before sunrise, the clear, starry night reflected in the flat, still lakes spread below us. Snuggled together in sleeping bags at the peak, nearly ten thousand feet up, we weathered frigid blasts of wind with coffee someone had been thoughtful enough to bring. And then we would sit and watch as the first hint of sunlight, a light tinge of day blue, would leak out of the eastern horizon, slowly erasing the stars. The day sky would spread wide and high, until the first ray of the sun made an appearance. The morning commuters began to animate the distant South Lake Tahoe roads. But craning your head back, you could see the day’s blue darken halfway across the sky, and to the west, the night remained yet unconquered—pitch-black, stars in full glimmer, the full moon still pinned in the sky. To the east, the full light of day beamed toward you; to the west, night reigned with no hint of surrender. No philosopher can explain the sublime better than this, standing between day and night. It was as if this were the moment God said, “Let there be light!” You could not help but feel your specklike existence against the immensity of the mountain, the earth, the universe, and yet still feel your own two feet on the talus, reaffirming your presence amid the grandeur.
Paul Kalanithi (When Breath Becomes Air)
The sun and the moon shared the horizon in a distant friendship, each unfazed by the other.
Toni Morrison (God Help the Child)
If Gilbert had been asked to describe his ideal woman the description would have answered point for point to Anne … He had made up his mind, also, that his future must be worthy of its goddess. … But he meant to keep himself worthy of Anne’s friendship and perhaps some distant day her love; and he watched over word and thought and deed as jealously as if her clear eyes were to pass in judgment on it.
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Avonlea (An Anne of Green Gables Novel))
The barriers between animal and human come down very easily. We belong to a single great family, and if we are lonely and unhappy we gladly accept the friendship of our distant relations.
Marlen Haushofer
A young nurse, someone new whom he didn't recognise, came up to Henry and patted him on the arm. "Are you a friend or a family member?" She whispered the question in his ear, trying not to disturb Sheldon. The question hung there like a beautiful chord, ringing in the air. Henry was Chinese, Sheldon obviously wasn't. They looked nothing alike. Nothing at all. "I'm distant family," Henry said.
Jamie Ford (Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet)
Two weeks earlier than scheduled, she flew into Vancouver and signed on with Greenpeace. The work was neither taxing nor truly exciting but the people she met more than compensated and she forged many new friendships. The high points were the trips they made by sea kayak, exploring the wild inlets farther up the coast. They watched bears scoop salmon from the shallows and paddled among pods of orcas, so close you could have reached out and touched them. At night they camped at the water's edge, listening to the blow of whales in the bay and the distant howls of wolves in the forest above.
Nicholas Evans (The Divide)
Looking back on months and years of intimacy, to feel that your friend, while you still remember the moving words you exchanged, is yet growing distant and living in a world apart—all this is sadder far than partings brought by death.
Yoshida Kenkō (Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō)
The Friendship Bond There is that one friend whom you no longer speak to, who is no longer part of your life. If you saw them across the street, you would turn your head away and they would do the same. But if they ever called you in the middle of the night, you would be there for them, sure as the sun. And you know that if you were the one to make that call, no matter how much time has passed or how distant you’ve become, they would be there for you.
Lang Leav (Love Looks Pretty on You)
I have no hesitation in saying that Serena was my life's most present person. Even more so than my own wife, God rest her soul. Ever since I was a little boy in the distant past, she would come up the hill to visit me on weekends.
C.J. Thorin (The Wolf and the Shepherd)
I was never one to connect. I've been that way my entire life. I went to work, kept my head down, and came home. I let old friendships fizzle. I orbited my family and all of you like a distant planet - there and yet nearly impossible to reach.
Sequoia Nagamatsu (How High We Go in the Dark)
Autumn was her happiest season. There was an expectancy about its sounds and shapes: the distant thunk pomp of leather and young bodies on the practice field near her house made her think of bands and cold Coca-Colas, parched peanuts and the sight of people's breath in the air. There was even something to look forward to when school started - renewals of old feuds and friendships, weeks of learning again what one half forgot in the long summer. Fall was hot-supper time with everything to eat one missed in the morning when too sleepy to enjoy it.
Harper Lee (Go Set a Watchman)
Some years ago I had a conversation with a man who thought that writing and editing fantasy books was a rather frivolous job for a grown woman like me. He wasn’t trying to be contentious, but he himself was a probation officer, working with troubled kids from the Indian reservation where he’d been raised. Day in, day out, he dealt in a concrete way with very concrete problems, well aware that his words and deeds could change young lives for good or ill. I argued that certain stories are also capable of changing lives, addressing some of the same problems and issues he confronted in his daily work: problems of poverty, violence, and alienation, issues of culture, race, gender, and class... “Stories aren’t real,” he told me shortly. “They don’t feed a kid left home in an empty house. Or keep an abusive relative at bay. Or prevent an unloved child from finding ‘family’ in the nearest gang.” Sometimes they do, I tried to argue. The right stories, read at the right time, can be as important as shelter or food. They can help us to escape calamity, and heal us in its aftermath. He frowned, dismissing this foolishness, but his wife was more conciliatory. “Write down the names of some books,” she said. “Maybe we’ll read them.” I wrote some titles on a scrap of paper, and the top three were by Charles de lint – for these are precisely the kind of tales that Charles tells better than anyone. The vital, necessary stories. The ones that can change and heal young lives. Stories that use the power of myth to speak truth to the human heart. Charles de Lint creates a magical world that’s not off in a distant Neverland but here and now and accessible, formed by the “magic” of friendship, art, community, and social activism. Although most of his books have not been published specifically for adolescents and young adults, nonetheless young readers find them and embrace them with particular passion. I’ve long lost count of the number of times I’ve heard people from troubled backgrounds say that books by Charles saved them in their youth, and kept them going. Recently I saw that parole officer again, and I asked after his work. “Gets harder every year,” he said. “Or maybe I’m just getting old.” He stopped me as I turned to go. “That writer? That Charles de Lint? My wife got me to read them books…. Sometimes I pass them to the kids.” “Do they like them?” I asked him curiously. “If I can get them to read, they do. I tell them: Stories are important.” And then he looked at me and smiled.
Terri Windling
When the author admits to Christians that he was not a Christian himself, he says their dialogue became "distant and rehearsed, like a pitch for Ginsu knives.
Kevin Roose (The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University)
What could be more than being friends? What could be more than what it felt like to wait by the phone to hear that she was okay? More than waiting to discuss every case with her?
Sonali Dev (A Distant Heart (Bollywood, #4))
Myth 2: Some types of relationships are inherently closer than others.        Myth 2 reframed: Any relationship can be close, and any relationship can be distant.
Kira Asatryan (Stop Being Lonely: Three Simple Steps to Developing Close Friendships and Deep Relationships)
I was never one to connect. I've been that way my entire life. I went to work, kept my head down, and came home. I let old friendships fizzle. I orbited my family and all of you like a distant planet--there and yet nearly impossible to reach. I know I can't survive alone.
Sequoia Nagamatsu (How High We Go in the Dark)
Success had put me on the wrong track and I did not know that there is a kind of success worse than failure, and a kind of failure worth all the success in the world. Neither did I know that the distant friendship of Rainer Maria Rilke would one day console me for having seen his lamp burn without knowing that it was signalling me to go and singe my wings against its flame.
Jean Cocteau
Men's souls are crooked and unsound things, not good materials out of which to build friendships, families, households, cities, civilizations. But good or no, these things must be built, and we must craft them with the materials at hand, and make as strong and stubborn redoubt as we can make, lest the horrors of the Night should triumph over us, not in some distant age to come, but now.
John C. Wright
You don’t unconditionally adore your friends every moment of every day. They can unintentionally hurt your feelings, or make you mad, or upset you by doing something you consider totally inappropriate. You take what they dish out because accepting they’re not perfect is part of a true friendship.
Linda Welch (Demon on a Distant Shore: Whisperings Paranormal Mystery Book Five)
Every moment of our existence is linked by a peculiar triple thread to our past—the most recent and the most distant—by memory. Our present swarms with traces of our past. We are histories of ourselves, narratives. I am not this momentary mass of flesh reclined on the sofa typing the letter a on my laptop; I am my thoughts full of the traces of the phrases that I am writing; I am my mother’s caresses, and the serene kindness with which my father calmly guided me; I am my adolescent travels; I am what my reading has deposited in layers in my mind; I am my loves, my moments of despair, my friendships, what I’ve written, what I’ve heard; the faces engraved on my memory. I am, above all, the one who a minute ago made a cup of tea for himself. The one who a moment ago typed the word “memory” into his computer. The one who just composed the sentence that I am now completing. If all this disappeared, would I still exist? I am this long, ongoing novel. My life consists of it.
Carlo Rovelli (The Order of Time)
Are not friends and sworn brothers as important as blood-brothers? A true friend will know your heart, and hear the roar of running waters and the distant wind over the mountains in the song of your zither, without any need for you to speak aloud.
Aliette de Bodard (On a Red Station, Drifting)
Edith’s clothes were flung in disarray on the floor beside the bed, the covers of which had been thrown back carelessly; she lay naked and glistening under the light on the white unwrinkled sheet. Her body was lax and wanton in its naked sprawl, and it shone like pale gold. William came nearer the bed. She was fast asleep, but in a trick of the light her slightly opened mouth seemed to shape the soundless words of passion and love. He stood looking at her for a long time. He felt a distant pity and reluctant friendship and familiar respect; and he felt also a weary sadness, for he knew that he would never again be moved as he had once been moved by her presence. The sadness lessened, and he covered her gently, turned out the light, and got in bed beside her.
John Williams (Stoner)
In Siena, where more than half the inhabitants died of the plague, work was abandoned on the great cathedral, planned to be the largest in the world, and never resumed, owing to loss of workers and master masons and “the melancholy and grief” of the survivors. The cathedral’s truncated transept still stands in permanent witness to the sweep of death’s scythe. Agnolo di Tura, a chronicler of Siena, recorded the fear of contagion that froze every other instinct. 'Father abandoned child, wife husband, one brother another,' he wrote, 'for this plague seemed to strike through the breath and sight. And so they died. And no one could be found to bury the dead for money or friendship.… And I, Angolo di Tura, called the Fat, buried my five children with my own hands, and so did many others likewise.
Barbara W. Tuchman (A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century)
Death finally comes, usually in the evening, when something in the raconteur fades out for good and in the midst of his story his eyes fix on the horizon and he trails off into silence, thinking of nothing. For this reason the Phaeacians consider silence an act of kindness, as sacred as guest friendship, a grant of repose to a distant stranger.
Zachary Mason
With a long distant friend, I enjoy changing this obstacle into an opportunity by creating annual 'frienditions' to see and do something new and different together.
Judy Dippel (Friendship Interrupted: Challenges and Practical Solutions - What You Can Do)
It was like they were strangers. Maybe they were, again.
Sara Shepard (The Amateurs (The Amateurs, #1))
We want to state this carefully: a spouse who is evil, distant, cruel, unloving, or abusive should not use this information to demand more sex from his wife without first dealing with his sin.
Mark Driscoll (Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship, & Life Together)
Without making any great show of it, Mather withdrew from him. Though they saw each other in company, and he was never obviously distant toward Edward, the friendship was never the same. Edward was in agonies when he considered that Mather was actually repelled by his behavior, but he did not have the courage to raise the subject. Besides, Mather made sure they were never alone together. At first Edward believed that his error was to have damaged Mather's pride by witnessing his humiliation, which Edward then compounded by acting as his champion, demonstrating that he was tough while Mather was a vulnerable weakling. Later on, Edward realized that what he had done was simply not cool, and his shame was all the greater. Street fighting did not go with poetry and irony, bebop or history. He was guilty of a lapse of taste. He was not the person he had thought. What he believed was an interesting quirk, a rough virtue, turned out to be a vulgarity. He was a country boy, a provincial idiot who thought a bare-knuckle swipe could impress a friend. It was a mortifying reappraisal. He was making one of the advances typical of early adulthood: the discovery that there were new values by which he preferred to be judged.
Ian McEwan (On Chesil Beach)
Love, friendship -- with her it had never been two different things. Him and her -- they had never been different either. If they had, all the destruction around them would have separated them. But it hadn't.
Sonali Dev (A Distant Heart (Bollywood, #4))
I knew deep down that things were changing. That hope that I could burn out this fire between us, so all that was left was easy affection and friendship was a distant memory. I wanted more. I wanted everything.
Catherine Cowles (Beautifully Broken Spirit (Sutter Lake, #3))
It’ll be a blunder to ‘transplant’ those you should leave at their distant habitat of acquaintance to the vicinity of friendship. If you naively embrace a slimy, slippery, serpent, you will nonetheless get bitten.
Vincent Okay Nwachukwu (Weighty 'n' Worthy African Proverbs - Volume 1)
He stood looking at her for a long time. He felt a distant pity and reluctant friendship and familiar respect; and he felt also a weary sadness, for he knew that no longer could the sight of her bring upon him the agony of desire that he had once known, and knew that he would never again be moved as he had once been moved by her presence. The sadness lessened, and he covered her gently, turned out the light, and got in bed beside her.
John Williams (Stoner)
A Friendship Blessing May you be blessed with good friends. May you learn to be a good friend to yourself. May you be able to journey to that place in your soul where there is great love, warmth, feeling, and forgiveness. May this change you. May it transfigure that which is negative, distant, or cold in you. May you be brought in to the real passion, kinship, and affinity of belonging. May you treasure your friends. May you be good to them and may you be there for them; may they bring you all the blessings, challenges, truth, and light that you need for your journey. May you never be isolated. May you always be in the gentle nest of belonging with your anam ċara.
John O'Donohue (Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom)
I have no hesitation in saying that Serena was my life's most pre-sent person. Even more so than my own wife, God rest her soul. Ever since I was a little boy in the distant past, she would come up the hill to visit me on weekends.
C.J. Thorin (The Wolf and the Shepherd)
There is currently a real relationship, which is not determined by the past, which exists at the moment we are living; two souls who touch each other, influenced more by the future than by the distant past – by the still-no, by the destiny that awaits us. The friendship between us, the fact that we meet to face and endure the vicissitudes of life. And that a relationship of this form – pure, full of understanding, mutual, equal – sets you free and represents the most powerful force we have to heal.
Irvin D. Yalom (Lying on the Couch)
Charles de Lint creates a magical world that’s not off in a distant Neverland but here and now and accessible, formed by the “magic” of friendship, art, community, and social activism. Although most of his books have not been published specifically for adolescents and young adults, nonetheless young readers find them and embrace them with particular passion. I’ve long lost count of the number of times I’ve heard people from troubled backgrounds say that books by Charles saved them in their youth, and kept them going.
Terri Windling
Because horizon is the end of vision, and because every move we make gives the field an aspect we couldn't have noticed before, what lies beyond the horizon cannot be known. (Otherwise it would be within the horizon.) As with the angelic messenger, there is no control over what comes into our vision... There are experiences and new information that will show the familiar as strange the comforting as dangerous, the adjacent as distant. Moreover, not every shift of the viewer will reveal something significant. It can be just more of the same, or nothing worth reflecting on. And yet without that shift, we begin to lose our vision altogether: what is seen over and over again ceases to be seen. What doesn't appear in a fresh way will be thought changeless and ordinary, no longer a stimulus to thought. Learning is reduced to mere repetition and can only confirm what has already been known. Friendships become static, empty of expectations of the future. The outcome of all our efforts become predictable. All mysteries can be explained. All dimensions and measurements hold. To be aware of our horizons is to live in wonder.
James P. Carse (The Religious Case Against Belief)
Like many of the kids I write about, I once was a runaway myself—and a few (but not all) of the other writers in the series also come from troubled backgrounds. That early experience influences my fiction, no doubt, but I don't think it's necessary to come from such a background in order to write a good Bordertown tale. To me, "running away to Bordertown" is as much a metaphorical act as an actual one. These tales aren't just for kids who have literally run away from home, but also for every kid, every person, who "runs away" from a difficult or constrictive past to build a different kind of life in some new place. Some of us "run away" to college . . . or we "run away" to a distant city or state . . . or we "run away" from a safe, secure career path to follow our passions or artistic muse. We "run away" from places we don't belong, or from families we have never fit into. We "run away" to find ourselves, or to find others like ourselves, or to find a place where we finally truly belong. And that kind of "running away from home"—the everyday, metaphorical kind—can be just as hard, lonely, and disorienting as crossing the Nevernever to Bordertown . . . particularly when you're in your teens, or early twenties, and your resources (both inner and outer) are still limited. I want to tell stories for young people who are making that journey, or contemplating making that journey. Stories in which friendship, community, and art is the "magic" that lights the way. (speaking about the Borderland series she "founded")
Terri Windling
Strong Woman Sometimes I think, that I know her, From a distant past, where images are blur, Her smile, coffee and morning walk, Her questions, songs and random talk, She is from a distant land, Where the sun shines bright, Her attitude, love and courage, makes everything right, - To my friend Grozdana
Ratish Edwards
Ged saw all these things from outside and apart, alone, and his heart was very heavy in him, though he would not admit to himself that he was sad. As night fell he still lingered in the streets, reluctant to go back to the inn. He heard a man and a girl talking together merrily as they came down the street past him towards the town square, and all at once he turned, for he knew the man's voice. He followed and caught up with the pair, coming up beside them in the late twilight lit only by distant lantern-gleams. The girl stepped back, but the man stared at him and then flung up the staff he carried, holding it between them as a barrier to ward off the threat or act of evil. And that was somewhat more than Ged could bear. His voice shook a little as he said, "I thought you would know me, Vetch." Even then Vetch hesitated for a moment. "I do know you," he said, and lowered the staff and took Ged's hand and hugged him round the shoulders-" I do know you! Welcome, my friend, welcome! What a sorry greeting I gave you, as if you were a ghost coming up from behind– and I have waited for you to come, and looked for you-
Ursula K. Le Guin (A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1))
What is distinctive about the customs surrounding hospitality in [archaic Greek] culture is that elite men who have entered one another's homes and have been entertained appropriately are understood to have created a bond of "guest-friendship" (xenia) between their households that will continue into future generations. ... It is created not by proximity and kinship, but by a set of behaviors that create bonds between people who are geographically distant from each other. Xenia is thus a networking tool that allows for the expansion of Greek power, from the unit of the family to the city-state and then across the Mediterranean world. It is the means by which unrelated elite families can connect to one another as equals, without having to fight for dominance. ... The poem's episodes can be seen as a sequence of case studies in the concept of xenia.
Emily Wilson (The Odyssey)
My dearest Lydia I do not wish to disturb your thoughts with sad tidings, and yet to do otherwise than write to you at this time with an honest heart would give cause for you to reproach me in years to come, years when you will live and breathe the warm air while I rest beneath the turf, and the very thought of such reproach grieves my heavy heart as it prepares to beat its last. For I am fading, and henceforth you will not hear word of this frail shell whom once you graced with friendship, except, perhaps, through another's report or distant memory. Whether our encounter in this life has brought me more joy than pain is a question that once I asked myself, but now see as a thing of no concern. My love for you is not to be judged by degrees of pleasure. It is not of the world of matter to be placed on the scale or weighed in the balance. Our flesh, the deeds we commit and things we created may be subject to the measure, but not a love like this. Joy and pain are but the distant resonance, while my love for you is the present song; they are but patterns of dust caught on the edge of the morning light, while my love is the blazing sun that illuminates them. My love abides, my love existed before we met, and my love will continue as the centuries roll by when we and our story are shades forgotten. But my love must perforce now return to its cave, to its sleeping state, whence it emerged that morning long ago by the water's edge, when our eyes met and the spirit took wing. And so farewell in this life, most beautiful of beings, song of my soul, my sunlight, my love. Do not judge me by the deeds of my body, which is frail, finite and blemished. Remember me instead as the soul of all that you cherish, for that I truly aspire to be, and I shall live and shine with you perpetually, in an everlasting embrace. Your devoted friend Godwin Tudor
Roland Vernon
Dispassionately, reasonably, he contemplated the failutre that his life must appear to be. He had wanted friendship and the closeness of friendship that might hold him in the race of mankind; he had had two friends, one of whom had died senselessly before he was known, the other of whom had now withdrawn so distantly into the ranks of the living that... He had wanted the singleness and the still connective passion of marriage; he had had that, too, and he had not known what to do with it, and it had died. He had wanted love; and he had had love, and had relinquished it, had let it go into the chaos of potentiality. Katherine, he thought. "Katherine." And he had wanted to be a teacher, and he had become one; yet he knew, he had always known, that for most of his life he had been an indifferent one. He had dreamed of a kind of integrity, of a kind of purity that was entire; he had found compromise and the assaulting diversion of triviality. He had conceived wisdom, and at the end of the long years he had found ignorance. And what else? he thought. What else? What did you expect? he asked himself.
John Williams (France: Summer 1940 (Ballantine's Illustrated History of World War II: Campaign book No. 6))
my advice is; Let’s join the caravan of humanity, and ally ourselves with a conscious progress, let’s join the secular non-sectarian societies, lets distant ourselves from military tradition, and join the human race in benefiting humanity as a whole, let’s heal our environment, and adapt social justices, that will empower the poor and the oppressed to gain his or her fundamental human rights, let’s find mercy and compassion in our souls without reference to any religious fanaticism or national extremism…if we could do that, only then we can begin the return journey back to civilization….
Husam Wafaei (Honourable Defection)
Maybe that's where it started and they brought it back from the desert, some kind of contagious psychic wound, guilt based. Maybe it's the dark matter, invisibly making up most of the universe. Maybe it was methane thawing at the bottom of the sea, releasing some ancient spore from the melted icebergs. Maybe it was the hole in the ozone, the collapse of the upper atmosphere. Maybe it was the overload of information, the swarms of data generated by every human gesture. Maybe it was the networking craze, the resurrection of dead friendships and memories meant to be lost, now resurfacing like rusted shipwrecks to reclaim our attention and scramble our sense of time. Maybe it was the death of an artist at the hands of a zealot. Maybe it was the particles made to collide. Maybe the mapping of the genome. Maybe the clashing of gods, the tug-of-war over our souls, not one of them refusing to let go, instead opting to see us sliced in two by Soloman's sword. Maybe it was food becoming a prop for food. Maybe it was a distant comet dusting us with its tail of poisoned ice. Maybe it was someone uttering a combination of syllables that should never be uttered. Maybe it was the emergence of collective intelligence, the flattening of the world. Maybe the game we inhabit had a glitch. Maybe the angel's horn had finally been blown.
Kenneth Calhoun (Black Moon)
For six years, I’d assumed this was an inevitable transformation, an inherent part of parenthood. It seemed to be what most parents (but especially women) did, moving their children to the absolute center of their lives and pushing everything else—marriage, friendship, civic engagement, creative work—out to the distant edges where maybe, possibly, it could be revisited in fifteen or twenty years. Or at least, I thought it was parenthood we were moving to the center, but what if that was only part of it? What if the thing taking up so much space was not the fact of parenthood itself, the actual relationship with our children, but the feeling surrounding that relationship, the fearful feeling that we could never quite do enough?
Kim Brooks (Small Animals: Parenthood in the Age of Fear)
Remember that once we were all the children of tomorrow's light and hope. Someone, somewhere dreamed of you even before you were born. We have already met in a thousand wishes or more. As the nights pass and the days turn into sand, Let us remember our gentleness and the beauty of our soul. Never forget that our faces have been kissed by a hundred Angels welcoming us into this world. A thousand moments have flown past our eyes and with each caress of the wind, it carries a prayer, whispering... Oh how I miss you. Many of our tears have fallen and we have all stood with regret holding our hand and loneliness laying beside us. Even when the distant memories come and knock at the doors of our heart, Each one remind us of the embraces we shared with those we love. But do not fear dear ones, True love never dies, it lives beyond time and space, it lives forever. Our souls will always be connected, We now have to rise to the frequency of a higher Divine love calling our name. And one day soon we will all be reunited in a far more beautiful and magnificent way that we could only have ever dreamed about. So my beloved ones, take a deep breath, put your hand on your heart and embrace this moment, with courage and faith. Turn your gaze towards the horizon of hope. We can do this magnificent journey together with love beneath our wings. Let us embrace love like never before and before you know it we will have flown towards each other realising that we had our wings of freedom all along. Until we meet again...We walk in dreams.
Mimi Novic (Brilliance of Dawn)
we should not be content with “a level of fruitfulness” when, in fact, we can experience the supernatural life as our normal Christian life, not the occasional exception. 3.As exciting as miracles are, they fail to satisfy our hungry hearts unless we embrace them for what they are—invitations to see the personality and nature of Jesus in action. a)Miracles are invitational in nature. They invite us to visibly see who God is and what He is like. The miracle points to a greater reality—the Person of Jesus! b)Miracles bring God near. They remind us that God is not distant and detached, but He is present, near, and ever ready to invade impossible situations in our lives. c)Miracles reveal the compassionate heart of God. Jesus revealed the Father’s nature, time after time, as He was moved by compassion and healed. 4.The overflow of our friendship with Jesus is a life marked by signs, wonders, and miracles.
Chris Gore (A Practical Guide to Walking in Healing Power)
The visitor had a brown, weatherbeaten face, like a friendly pirate, and piercing eyes twinkling with humour. Over tea, the talk turned at once to distant places, Arabia and Kanchenjunga; atlases were dragged from their shelves and laid open on the floor, and it was as if the world had suddenly opened wide its doors. Later, Daphne explained that Clara Vyvyan had indeed travelled all over the world, mostly alone, with her few worldly possessions in a pack on her back. She had explored the Greek islands, had met with bandits in Montenegro, had crossed Canada to camp out with trappers in Alaska ... but she always came home again to Trelowarren, a beautiful eighteenth-century Gothic-style house close to the River Helford, where her roots lay. These were embedded as deeply in the garden as in the house, for Clara was a passionate gardener, and was often rewarded by the discovery of some particularly rare plant in one of the unlikely places to which her pioneering spirit led her. She wrote excellent books about her travels, which won her a small but faithful public, and which were published by Peter Owen; but, like so many good things, are probably now out of print.
Daphne du Maurier (Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship)
The move to London was followed by two results of great importance for Elizabeth Barrett. In the first place, her health, which had never been strong, broke down altogether in the London atmosphere, and it is from some time shortly after the arrival in Gloucester Place that the beginning of her invalid life must be dated. On the other hand, residence in London brought her into the neighbourhood of new friends; and although the number of those admitted to see her in her sick-room was always small, we yet owe to this fact the commencement of some of her closest friendships, notably those with her distant cousin, John Kenyon, and with Miss Mitford, the authoress of ‘Our Village,’ and of a correspondence on a much fuller and more elaborate scale than any of the earlier period. To this, no doubt, the fact of her confinement to her room contributed not a little; for being unable to go out and see her friends, much of her communication with them was necessarily by letter. At the same time her literary activity was increasing. She began to contribute poems to various magazines, and to be brought thereby into connection with literary men; and she was also employed on the longer compositions which went to make up her next volume of published verse.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning)
And thus by degrees was lit, half-way down the spine, which is the seat of the soul, not that hard little electric light which we call brilliance, as it pops in and out upon our lips, but the more profound, subtle and subterranean glow which is the rich yellow flame of rational intercourse. No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself. We are all going to heaven and Vandyck is of the company--in other words, how good life seemed, how sweet its rewards, how trivial this grudge or that grievance, how admirable friendship and the society of one's kind, as, lighting a good cigarette, one sunk among the cushions in the window-seat. If by good luck there had been an ash-tray handy, if one had not knocked the ash out of the window in default, if things had been a little different from what they were, one would not have seen, presumably, a cat without a tail. The sight of that abrupt and truncated animal padding softly across the quadrangle changed by some fluke of the subconscious intelligence the emotional light for me. It was as if someone had let fall a shade. Perhaps the excellent hock was relinquishing its hold. Certainly, as I watched the Manx cat pause in the middle of the lawn as if it too questioned the universe, something seemed lacking, something seemed different. But what was lacking, what was different, I asked myself, listening to the talk? And to answer that question I had to think myself out of the room, back into the past, before the war indeed, and to set before my eyes the model of another luncheon party held in rooms not very far distant from these; but different. Everything was different.
Virginia Woolf (A Room of One's Own (Classics To Go))
Eventually the term ended and I was on the windy mountain road to camp, still slightly worried that I’d made a wrong turn in life. My doubt, however, was short-lived. The camp delivered on its promise, concentrating all the idylls of youth: beauty manifest in lakes, mountains, people; richness in experience, conversation, friendships. Nights during a full moon, the light flooded the wilderness, so it was possible to hike without a headlamp. We would hit the trail at two A.M., summiting the nearest peak, Mount Tallac, just before sunrise, the clear, starry night reflected in the flat, still lakes spread below us. Snuggled together in sleeping bags at the peak, nearly ten thousand feet up, we weathered frigid blasts of wind with coffee someone had been thoughtful enough to bring. And then we would sit and watch as the first hint of sunlight, a light tinge of day blue, would leak out of the eastern horizon, slowly erasing the stars. The day sky would spread wide and high, until the first ray of the sun made an appearance. The morning commuters began to animate the distant South Lake Tahoe roads. But craning your head back, you could see the day’s blue darken halfway across the sky, and to the west, the night remained yet unconquered—pitch-black, stars in full glimmer, the full moon still pinned in the sky. To the east, the full light of day beamed toward you; to the west, night reigned with no hint of surrender. No philosopher can explain the sublime better than this, standing between day and night. It was as if this were the moment God said, “Let there be light!” You could not help but feel your specklike existence against the immensity of the mountain, the earth, the universe, and yet still feel your own two feet on the talus, reaffirming your presence amid the grandeur.
Paul Kalanithi (When Breath Becomes Air)
It was then that I made the discovery that his talk created reverberations, that the echo took a long time to reach one's ears. I began to compare it with French talk in which I had been enveloped for so long. The latter seemed more like the play of light on an alabaster vase, something reflective, nimble, dancing, liquid, evanescent, whereas the other, the Katsimbalistic language, was opaque, cloudy, pregnant with resonances which could only be understood long afterwards, when the reverberations announced the collision with thoughts, people, objects located in distant parts of the earth. The Frenchman puts walls about his talk, as he does about his garden: he puts limits about everything in order to feel at home. At bottom he lacks confidence in his fellow-man; he is skeptical because he doesn't believe in the innate goodness of human beings. He has become a realist because it is safe and practical. The Greek, on the other hand, is an adventurer: he is reckless and adaptable, he makes friends easily. The walls which you see in Greece, when they are not of Turkish or Venetian origin, go back to the Cyclopean age. Of my own experience I would say that there is no more direct, approachable, easy man to deal with than the Greek. He becomes a friend immediately: he goes out to you. With the Frenchman friendship is a long and laborious process: it may take a lifetime to make a friend of him. He is best in acquaintanceship where there is little to risk and where there are no aftermaths. The very word ami contains almost nothing of the flavor of friend, as we feel it in English. C'est mon ami cannot be translated by "this is my friend." There is no counterpart to this English phrase in the French language. It is a gap which has never been filled, like the word "home." These things affect conversation. One can converse all right, but it is difficult to have a heart to heart talk.
Henry Miller (The Colossus of Maroussi)
The other problem with empathy is that it is too parochial to serve as a force for a universal consideration of people’s interests. Mirror neurons notwithstanding, empathy is not a reflex that makes us sympathetic to everyone we lay eyes upon. It can be switched on and off, or thrown into reverse, by our construal of the relationship we have with a person. Its head is turned by cuteness, good looks, kinship, friendship, similarity, and communal solidarity. Though empathy can be spread outward by taking other people’s perspectives, the increments are small, Batson warns, and they may be ephemeral.71 To hope that the human empathy gradient can be flattened so much that strangers would mean as much to us as family and friends is utopian in the worst 20th-century sense, requiring an unattainable and dubiously desirable quashing of human nature.72 Nor is it necessary. The ideal of the expanding circle does not mean that we must feel the pain of everyone else on earth. No one has the time or energy, and trying to spread our empathy that thinly would be an invitation to emotional burnout and compassion fatigue.73 The Old Testament tells us to love our neighbors, the New Testament to love our enemies. The moral rationale seems to be: Love your neighbors and enemies; that way you won’t kill them. But frankly, I don’t love my neighbors, to say nothing of my enemies. Better, then, is the following ideal: Don’t kill your neighbors or enemies, even if you don’t love them. What really has expanded is not so much a circle of empathy as a circle of rights—a commitment that other living things, no matter how distant or dissimilar, be safe from harm and exploitation. Empathy has surely been historically important in setting off epiphanies of concern for members of overlooked groups. But the epiphanies are not enough. For empathy to matter, it must goad changes in policies and norms that determine how the people in those groups are treated. At these critical moments, a newfound sensitivity to the human costs of a practice may tip the decisions of elites and the conventional wisdom of the masses. But as we shall see in the section on reason, abstract moral argumentation is also necessary to overcome the built-in strictures on empathy. The ultimate goal should be policies and norms that become second nature and render empathy unnecessary. Empathy, like love, is in fact not all you need. SELF-CONTROL
Steven Pinker (The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and Humanity)
The lust of property, and love: what different associations each of these ideas evoke! and yet it might be the same impulse twice named: on the one occasion disparaged from the standpoint of those already possessing (in whom the impulse has attained something of repose, who are now apprehensive for the safety of their "possession"); on the other occasion viewed from the standpoint of the unsatisfied and thirsty, and therefore glorified as "good." Our love of our neighbor, is it not a striving after new property? And similarly our love of knowledge, of truth; and in general all the striving after novelties? We gradually become satiated with the old and securely possessed, and again stretch out our hands; even the finest landscape in which we live for three months is no longer certain of our love, and any kind of more distant coast excites our covetousness: the possession for the most part becomes smaller through possessing. Our pleasure in ourselves seeks to maintain itself by always transforming something new into ourselves, that is just possessing. To become satiated with a possession, that is to become satiated with ourselves. (One can also suffer from excess, even the desire to cast away, to share out, may assume the honorable name of "love.") When we see any one suffering, we willingly utilize the opportunity then afforded to take possession of him; the beneficent and sympathetic man, for example, does this; he also calls the desire for new possession awakened in him, by the name of "love," and has enjoyment in it, as in a new acquisition suggesting itself to him. The love of the sexes, however, betrays itself most plainly as the striving after possession: the lover wants the unconditioned, sole possession of the person longed for by him; he wants just as absolute power over her soul as over the body; he wants to be loved solely, and to dwell and rule in the other soul as what is highest and most to be desired. When one considers that this means precisely to exclude all the world from a precious possession, a happiness, and an enjoyment; when one considers that the lover has in view the impoverishment and privation of all other rivals, and would like to become the dragon of his golden hoard, as the most inconsiderate and selfish of all "conquerors "and exploiters; when one considers finally that to the lover himself, the whole world besides appears indifferent, colorless, and worthless, and that he is ready to make every sacrifice, disturb every arrangement, and put every other interest behind his own, one is verily surprised that this ferocious lust of property and injustice of sexual love should have been glorified and deified to such an extent at all times; yea, that out of this love the conception of love as the antithesis of egoism should have been derived, when it is perhaps precisely the most unqualified expression of egoism. Here, evidently, the non-possessors and desirers have determined the usage of language, there were, of course, always too many of them. Those who have been favored with much possession and satiety, have, to be sure, dropped a word now and then about the "raging demon," as, for instance, the most lovable and most beloved of all the Athenians Sophocles; but Eros always laughed at such revilers, they were always his greatest favorites. There is, of course, here and there on this terrestrial sphere a kind of sequel to love, in which that covetous longing of two persons for one another has yielded to a new desire and covetousness, to a common, higher thirst for a superior ideal standing above them: but who knows this love? Who has experienced it? Its right name — friendship.
Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs)
For there was no apparatus, no contentment, no dear friend, no conquest of the stars that could overcome the impoverishment of his soul; no matter what, he would remain aware of the vanity of friendship founded on dominance rather than on carnal love — and of the boredom of the most distant stars, in whose depths lay the same copper ores and which would need the same Supreme National Economic Soviet.
Andrey Platonov
It's as if we look at each other from distant shores and the river between widens and roars and darkens till our faces are pale shards of the moon in the deep night. More ideas of the boys we were than the men we are.
Pierce Brown (Morning Star (Red Rising Saga, #3))
I meditated on my childhood, vague and distant before high school, where Laura still flickered only on the edge of things.
Hannah Lillith Assadi (Sonora)
To smooth over Castro’s ruffled feathers; Khrushchev eventually wrote him a personal letter explaining his reasons for reaching an agreement with the United States following the Cuban Missile Crisis. In it, he also extended Castro an invitation to come and visit him in Moscow. The Cuban leader, feeling that this enhanced his international standing, set aside his resentments and swallowed his pride, knowing that his country would have to depend on the USSR for its many needs. He also understood that the ideology that brought his country to where it was had also created many divisions among its people. The United States, on which Cuba had depended on for so many years, was no longer an ally they could trade with, and the new friendship with a distant country created many of its own problems. Many of Cuba’s professional class had fled the country for the United States, when the companies they worked for became nationalized. The brain drain Cuba experienced was hard to replace, and most of those that had stayed, were not prepared to fill the more technical positions. The shelves were bare and people were becoming intolerant of the many domestic problems they were required to face.
Hank Bracker
Tell him this one thing. Distant rivers always reach the sea. Being far is just like being near. Would I think of him if I were far? The sun in the sky is very far from the lotus. From a distance, friendship is intense. Distant rivers reach the sea. The moment he looks at me, I look back at him. My face is turned only toward him. Clouds are in the sky, the peacock in the forest. Longing is in the look that connects. Distant rivers reach the sea.
Annamayya (God on the Hill: Temple Poems from Tirupati)
The Friendship Bond There is that one friend whom you no longer speak to, who is no longer part of your life. If you saw them across the street, you would turn your head away and they would do the same. But if they ever called you in the middle of the night, you would be there for them, sure as the sun. And you know that if you were the one to make that call, no matter how much time has passed or how distant you’ve become, they would be there for you
Lang Leav (Love Looks Pretty on You)
The way of grace is a pathway of change. it is a pathway of change that leads us to depths of character, integrity, joy, and true friendship with God. The truly good news of the gospel is that God wants us to be his friends and invites us to live in relationship with him. When we really see the outstretched hand of God, our whole view of the spiritual life changes. Instead of being just something else to do for a God who is distant, we see for what it really is: an offer for us to spend time with the Savior, who draws near every day and in every moment. Receiving is more than avoiding the harmful; it is cultivating openness to the spiritually helpful.
James C. Wilhoit (Spiritual Formation as if the Church Mattered: Growing in Christ through Community)
From distant realms they came, two worlds converging upon a single place. There, amidst shared laughter and newfound bonds, they discovered that life's richest moments are not about materialism; it’s about mutual understanding and acceptance and more importantly, friendship.
Steven Cuoco (Guided Transformation: Poems, Quotes & Inspiration)
Is this how it happens? Not with a bang, but with gaps between hangs that gradually get larger, and you forget to send that birthday message... and the only time you all get together is at weddings, but the weddings are running out, then months turn into years into decades and you're telling optimistic thirtysomethings that THIS is when friendships begin to fade. Please do not let me be that guy. I'm not resigning us to that fate, not yet. I'm old enough now to know that it's possible to grow distant from your closest friends. But it's not a foregone conclusion. These people mean too much to me. These people ARE me. The destabilizing feeling that sinks my stomach at the thought of losing them proves that better than any model of identity, better than even the brilliance of Virginia Woolf. So I'll work to stay in their lives. I'll make an effort to see them. I'll listen and share, ask for advice, tell them I love them. The distance between us makes it harder, but it's only our bodies that are distant. And the body misleads.
Evan Puschak (Escape into Meaning: Essays on Superman, Public Benches, and Other Obsessions)
Difficulties around social interaction include:   not understanding the unwritten social rules, e.g. around friendship; appearing to be insensitive because they have not recognized how someone is feeling (or don’t understand how they should react); not understanding other people’s intentions; not being able to predict other people’s feelings and reactions; becoming aloof, distant, or uninterested in other people as a result; not seeking comfort from other people; behaving strangely or inappropriately – because of not understanding what is appropriate in different social situations.
Alan Yau (Autism - A Practical Guide for Parents)
Sometimes I felt there were only memories in my life now, the clear and solid drifting from substance into a mysterious fog that rolled and shifted and entwined the past, the living and the dead, into a swirling labyrinth in which everything seemed equally distant and ethereal.
Sam Halpern (A Far Piece to Canaan: A Novel of Friendship and Redemption)
I began to recall my own experience when I was Mercutio’s age (late teens I decided, a year or two older than Romeo) as a pupil at a public school called Christ’s Hospital. This school is situated in the idyllic countryside of the Sussex Weald, just outside Horsham. I recalled the strange blend of raucousness and intellect amongst the cloisters, the fighting, the sport, and general sense of rebelliousness, of not wishing to seem conventional (this was the sixties); in the sixth form (we were called Grecians) the rarefied atmosphere, the assumption that of course we would go to Oxford or Cambridge; the adoption of an ascetic style, of Zen Buddhism, of baroque opera, the Velvet Underground, Frank Zappa, and Mahler; of Pound, Eliot and e. e. cummings. We perceived the world completely through art and culture. We were very young, very wise, and possessed of a kind of innocent cynicism. We wore yellow stockings, knee breeches, and an ankle length dark blue coat, with silver buttons. We had read Proust, we had read Evelyn Waugh, we knew what was what. There was a sense, fostered by us and by many teachers, that we were already up there with Lamb, Coleridge, and all the other great men who had been educated there. We certainly thought that we soared ‘above a common bound’. I suppose it is a process of constant mythologizing that is attempted at any public school. Tom Brown’s Schooldays is a good example. Girls were objects of both romantic and purely sexual, fantasy; beautiful, distant, mysterious, unobtainable, and, quite simply, not there. The real vessel for emotional exchange, whether sexually expressed or not, were our own intense friendships with each other. The process of my perceptions of Mercutio intermingling with my emotional memory continued intermittently, up to and including rehearsals. I am now aware that that possibly I re-constructed my memory somewhat, mythologised it even, excising what was irrelevant, emphasising what was useful, to accord with how I was beginning to see the part, and what I wanted to express with it. What I was seeing in Mercutio was his grief and pain at impending separation from Romeo, so I suppose I sensitised myself to that period of my life when male bonding was at its strongest for me.
Roger Allam (Players of Shakespeare 2: Further Essays in Shakespearean Performance by Players with the Royal Shakespeare Company)
Friends and Fellow Citizens, The period for a new election of a citizen to administer the executive government of the United States being not far distant . . . your thoughts must be employed in designating the person who is to be clothed with that important trust. . . . In the discharge of this trust, I will only say that I have, with good intentions, contributed towards the organization of the government the very best exertions of which a very fallible judgment was capable. —George Washington1 In his Farewell Address to the People of the United States in September 1796, George Washington emphasized that a public office is a public trust. He recognized that no person is expected to be infallible; indeed, to suppose that anyone can be infallible in the conduct of public or private life is arrogant and dangerous. The public trust, rather, calls for “good intentions” and the “very best exertions.” Public servants must intend and resolve to put the public good above private advantage for anyone—self, family, friends, political allies, factions, or interest groups. They are obliged to identify the public good and to serve it; this is the sort of “exertion” that public office demands. John Adams wrote that such devotion to the well-being of the public interest “must be Superior to all private Passions. Men must . . . be happy to sacrifice their private Friendships and dearest Connections, when they stand in Competition with the Rights of Society.”2
Edwin J. Delattre (Character and Cops: Ethics in Policing)
When God seems distant, you may feel that he is angry with you or is disciplining you for some sin. In fact, sin does disconnect us from intimate fellowship with God. We grieve God’s Spirit and quench our fellowship with him by disobedience, conflict with others, busyness, friendship with the world, and other sins.10
Rick Warren (The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?)
Comfort for Comfort For this reason Jesus had to be made like his brothers and sisters in every way so he could be their merciful and faithful high priest in service to God. Then Jesus could die in their place to take away their sins. And now he can help those who are tempted, because he himself suffered and was tempted. HEBREWS 2:17–18 NCV God chose to come to earth in human form to be made like us. To understand what it’s like to be human. To be able to fully take our place and remove our sins. Because He was fully human while being fully God, He can help. He can comfort. The Bible says that He “comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God” (2 Corinthians 1:4 NIV). It’s so encouraging that Jesus was just like us! Our God is not one who wants to remain as a distant high king, out of touch with the commoners. He wants a very personal relationship with each one of us. He lowered Himself to our level so that we could have personal and continual access to Him. His glory knows no bounds, yet He desires to be our Friend. Take great comfort in that. And then when people around you are troubled, you can step in. You can wrap your arms around someone else who needs a friend because of what Jesus has done for you. Dear Jesus, thank You for the great gift of Your friendship. Allow me the opportunity to be a friend and comfort to those around me in need. Amen.
Anonymous (Daily Wisdom for Women - 2014: 2014 Devotional Collection)
Jessica, Willow, and Abby burst through the door in a loud explosion of giggles and then stop at the counter to get their Diet Cokes before heading to the back to join us. I don’t really like these girls—I have never liked these girls—and yet somehow they are on the periphery of our friend group. Okay, fine, we are actually on the periphery of their friend group, since as a trio, Jessica, Willow, and Abby are by far the most popular girls in the junior class. I have no idea how they’ve managed to swing it—popularity is an undefinable thing at Mapleview, which as best I can tell involves a whole lot of unearned, effortless confidence and the ability to get other people to look at you for no reason at all. Jessica is a blonde, Willow is a brunette, and Abby is a redhead, just like every teen friend group on television (except, in this case, sans a sassy black sidekick). Boom! Best friends for life. I assume there’s more to their friendship than hair-color optics and an affinity for thong underwear. That taken individually there is the distant possibility they might actually be interesting people. I doubt I will ever know, though, since they travel as a pack
Julie Buxbaum (What to Say Next)
What do I do when my friendships turn “bad,” I who pride myself on the deep, loving friendships I have? Because this is a continuum we are talking about, maybe it is inevitable that some friends will feel badly toward each other in the end, or become too changed to go on. The distance can’t be crossed anymore; it is too great. And the memory of your former closeness will be comforting, or you will feel grief. Anything is possible. What does it mean to know someone? What does it mean to be close, or to be distant? And is there a part of you that can still be close in the midst of distance?
Amina Cain (A Horse at Night: On Writing)
Fairness meaning not to use fraud and trickery in the exchange of commodities and services, and in the exchange of feelings. 'I give you as much as you give me', in material goods as well as in love, is the prevalent ethical maxim in capitalist society. It may even be said that the development of fairness ethics is the particular ethical contribution of capitalist society. The reasons for this fact lie in the very nature of capitalist society. In pre-capitalist societies, the exchange of goods was determined either by direct force, by tradition, or by personal bonds of love or friendship. In capitalism, the all-determining factor is the exchange on the market. Whether we deal with the commodity market, the labor market, or the market of services, each person exchanges whatever he has to sell for that which he wants to acquire under the conditions of the market, without the use of force or fraud. Fairness ethics lend themselves to confusion with the ethics of the Golden Rule. The maxim 'to do unto others as you would like them to do unto you' can be interpreted as meaning 'be fair in your exchange with others.' But actually, it was formulated originally as a more popular version of the Biblical 'Love thy neighbor as thyself.' Indeed, the Jewish-Christian norm of brotherly love is entirely different from fairness ethics. It means to love your neighbor, that is, to feel responsible for and one with him, while fairness ethics means not to feel responsible, and one, but distant and separate; it means to respect the rights of your neighbor, but not to love him.
Erich Fromm (The Art of Loving)
She discovered with great delight that one does not love one’s children just because they are one’s children but because of the friendship formed while raising them. —Gabriel García Márquez
Sara Donati (Dawn on a Distant Shore (Wilderness, #2))
You were the best friend to the most elusive and beautifully distant boy I had ever seen. The boy that had it all, and I never really understood how you fit together. You were both so different. Yet, he looked at you like you were the most important thing in the world. I wanted that for myself. I wanted someone to care for me, just like Elliot cared for you.
Krystalle Bianca (Perfectly Entwined)
Nevertheless, these authors anchor their stories in the ancient idea of the Fall of Man: just as a force of evil entered our world in a distant past, so it inhabits and threatens the worlds of their imaginations. It is the deepest source of alienation and conflict in their stories. Even so, it cannot erase the longing for goodness and joy, so palpably alive in the best and noblest of their characters. They are haunted by the memory of Eden: take away this fundamental idea, and their moral vision collapses.
Joseph Loconte (A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-18)
In internal, imaginary conversations we are angry and accusatory, while our outward demeanor is politely distant. We turn the accusations on ourselves, convinced that everyone feels about us what that one person expressed or, with their actions, seemed to express.
Christine Hoover (Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships)
But there is a third ingredient in the foundation of our identity, and it is probably the essential one—it is the reason this delicate discussion is taking place in a book about time: memory. We are not a collection of independent processes in successive moments. Every moment of our existence is linked by a peculiar triple thread to our past—the most recent and the most distant—by memory. Our present swarms with traces of our past. We are histories of ourselves, narratives. I am not this momentary mass of flesh reclined on the sofa typing the letter a on my laptop; I am my thoughts full of the traces of the phrases that I am writing; I am my mother’s caresses, and the serene kindness with which my father calmly guided me; I am my adolescent travels; I am what my reading has deposited in layers in my mind; I am my loves, my moments of despair, my friendships, what I’ve written, what I’ve heard; the faces engraved on my memory. I am, above all, the one who a minute ago made a cup of tea for himself. The one who a moment ago typed the word “memory” into his computer. The one who just composed the sentence that I am now completing. If all this disappeared, would I still exist? I am this long, ongoing novel. My life consists of it.
Carlo Rovelli (The Order of Time)
There’s plenty of work to do; do your job with decency and an open heart. Love your brothers and sisters in all actions, in all relationships. Speak the truth. Extend your innate empathy to distant tribes and strange animals. Arm yourself with friendship and love the Earth.
Doug Peacock (Was It Worth It?: A Wilderness Warrior's Long Trail Home)
To understand this, you need frist to Know some words which are formed from Arabic to English by me : 1- farcashize (V) : يُفركش 2- farcashization (N) : الفركشة 3- farcashized/farcashizational (Adj) : مُفركش 4- farcashizationally (Adv) : مُفركشآ The logic of the dating does not express the relationship, it is the relationship, otherwise the time that I spend with special someone is a neutral phenomenon and the observation of the neutral phenomenon in the term of the relationships changes its nature. Like every single Sudanese man, I know that I would like to be a one-man multinational fashion phenomenon but to be described as farcashizational man by some students is something I don't expect it at all. The phenomenon of farcashization becomes a part of Sudanese girl's speech, unfortunately it is like gossiping, I was chicken-hearted when my closed friend told me that many female students at EDC said that we were in love together and then you were farcashized by me. At that time we were laughing but deeply inside myself, an idea was rambling which was "maybe I am one of their desires" because when one has achieved the object of one's desires, it is evident that one's real desire was not the ignorant possession of the desired object but to know it as possessed as actually contemplated as within one, so maybe I was farcashizationally farcashized by my friend in thier mind as a wish that the same thing to be done with me by them and that leads to say "girls are dangerous creatures especially when they are your students". When there is both love and friendship, we dwell in the realm of the relationship and when there is neither love nor friendship, we exist in a vacuity of relationships, we can feel and we can express feelings but the more we feel, the further off we are, so what is not yet felt can't be shown and what is already desired can't be hidden so farcashization and desire are not distant, it's their principle that can't be seen. It would be a very naive sort of dogmatism to assume that every beautiful girl is an impossible creature to be got or to accept the man as he is and she is always going to embarrass and farcashize him, as if she is an indocile black wild cat, the beautiful girl is not a unique and homogeneous but she is immensely diversified, having as many different schemes and patterns as there are different ways of beauty, so the phenomenons which we find in our certain relationships such as farcashization are not transferable with all people but the attitude of the relationship, therefore the dating of two people is like the contact of two chemical substances, if there is any reaction between them depending on that attitude, both are transformed. Finally there is no relationship between any two partners looks like what we really see, yours doesn't, mine doesn't and people are much more complicated than what we imagine, then their relationships are more perplexing too, so you can't judge any relationship according the actions of the relationship's partners, it is true of every relation.
Omer Mohamed
On her darkest days, the memories of the splintered floorboards crept in, along with the drip, drip, drip of old plumbing that had never been fixed. She still remembered the shouts from the others in the crew and how the mingle of voices was at first familiar and over time had grown as distant as the sea.
Katherine McIntyre (Forged Contracts (Tribal Spirits #3))
Women scholars taught judges and imams, issued fatwas, and traveled to distant cities on horse- or camelback to study with scholars. Some particularly learned ones made lecture tours across the Middle East,
Carla Power (If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran)
I might be that distant type of friend.. but my loyalty is 4ever locked in
Shaneika Marie
Chimpanzees are our nearest living relatives, and offer hints as to how our distant ancestors may have behaved. Chimps live in bands within territories, and show a ferocious in-group out-group consciousness. It has long been known that males drive off intruders from other bands and kill their young if they can. Psychologists watching chimps in Uganda found that even females are murderously territorial. On three occasions they saw females drive off invaders and kill their babies. People often behave according to genetic similarity theory, and the scholar who has probably written most extensively in this field is J. Philippe Rushton of the University of Western Ontario. “Genetically similar people tend to seek one another out and to provide mutually supportive environments such as marriage, friendship, and social groups,” he has written. For example, spouses tend to resemble each other, not just in age, ethnicity, and education (r = 0.6) but in opinions and attitudes (r = 0.5), intelligence (r = 0.4), and even in such things as personality and physical traits (r = 0.2). They are even like each other in undesirable traits such as aggressiveness, criminality, alcoholism, and mental disease. It is possible to predict how happy a couple is by know.
Jared Taylor (White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century)