Distance

Distance is the quality of objects being physically separated from one another.

Quotes

• Yon foaming flood seems motionless as ice;
  Its dizzy turbulence eludes the eye,
  Frozen by distance.
  • William Wordsworth, Address to Kilchurn Castle.

• I see not a step before me as I tread on another year;
  But I've left the Past in God's keeping,—the Future
  His mercy shall clear;
  And what looks dark in the distance may brighten as I draw near.
  • Mary Gardiner Brainard, Not knowing, published in The Congregationalist, March 1869, and set to music as a hymn by Philip Paul Bliss in the 1870s. Thomas Corts, Glimpses of Christian History Presents More Stories: Blessed Bliss, 2007.

• By this time, like one who had set out on his way by night, and travelled through a region of smooth or idle dreams, our history now arrives on the confines, where daylight and truth meet us with a clear dawn, representing to our view, though at a far distance, true colours and shapes.
  • John Milton, The History of England, Book i.

• Life is like a landscape. You live in the midst of it but can describe it only from the vantage point of distance.
  • Charles Lindbergh, as quoted in Lindbergh: Flight's Enigmatic Hero (2002) by Von Hardesty

Distance makes things more sweet

• Distance sometimes endears friendship, and absence sweeteneth it.
  • James Howell, Familiar Letters, book i, section i, No. 6.

• In notes by distance made more sweet.
  • William Collins, The Passions, an Ode for Music (1747), line 60.

• Sweetest melodies.
  Are those that are by distance made more sweet.
  • William Wordsworth, Personal Talk, stanza 2.

Distant things appear better

• Glories, like glow-worms, afar off shine bright,
  But look'd too near have neither heat nor light.
  • John Webster, The White Devil (1612), Act IV, scene 4.

• Love is like a landscape which doth stand
  Smooth at a distance, rough at hand.
  • Robert Hegge, On Love, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

• We're charm'd with distant views of happiness,
  But near approaches make the prospect less.
  • Thomas Yalden, Against Enjoyment, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

• As distant prospects please us, but when near
  We find but desert rocks and fleeting air.
  • Samuel Garth, The Dispensatory, canto iii, line 27.

• 'T is distance lends enchantment to the view,
  And robes the mountain in its azure hue.
  • Thomas Campbell, Pleasures of Hope, part i, line 7.