Strangers

I told you when I came I was a stranger. ~ Leonard Cohen

Strangers are people whom one does not know, and may in particular be outsiders, foreigners, or newcomers.

Quotes

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. ~ Paul of Tarsus

• I told you when I came I was a stranger.
  • Leonard Cohen in "The Stranger Song" (1966)

• It's you my love, you who are the stranger.
  • Leonard Cohen in "The Stranger Song" (1966)

• Farewell to ye all! In the land of the stranger I rise or I fall.
  • Davy Crockett (att.), Col. Crockett's Exploits and Adventures in Texas, 1836, ch. 2

• Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger.
  Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.
  • T. S. Eliot, The Rock (1934)

• We die to each other daily.
  What we know of other people
  Is only our memory of the moments
  During which we knew them. And they have changed since then.
  To pretend that they and we are the same
  Is a useful and convenient social convention
  Which must sometimes broken. We must also remember
  That at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.
  • T. S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party (1949)

• He wanted them to meet as the completest of strangers — strangers-across-the-seas — all the more strangers because they knew each other already. He wanted them to meet far from their friends and relatives — in a place without a past, without history, free, really free, two people coming together with the utter freedom of strangers.
  • Amitav Ghosh, ; The Shadow Lines (1988), p. 144

• For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
  • Jesus, in Matthew 25:35–36 (KJV)

• People far too easily neglect or abuse us, as soon as we become intimate with them. To live pleasantly, one must almost always remain a stranger in the crowd.
  • Adolf Freiherr Knigge, Über den Umgang mit Menschen ("On Human Relations"), 1788

• People are strange when you're a stranger.
  • Jim Morrison, "People Are Strange", Strange Days (1967)

• I have been a stranger in a strange land.
  • Moses, Exodus 2:22 (KJV)

• Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
  • Paul of Tarsus, Hebrews 13:2 (KJV)

• By Jove the stranger and the poor are sent,
  And what to those we give, to Jove is lent.
  • Alexander Pope, The Odyssey of Homer, Book VI, line 247

• 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.
  • John Steinbeck, East of Eden (1952)

• Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place.
  • Tecumseh, attributed by Lee Sulzman, Shawnee History

• Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,
  You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me
  as of a dream,)
  I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
  • Walt Whitman, "To a Stranger" (1860; 1867), in Leaves of Grass

• I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
  • Tennessee Williams; said by his character Blanche DuBois, in A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)