Meeting

Meeting is the event of two or more people encountering one another, whether accidentally or by arrangement, and especially for the first time.

Quotes

• As two floating planks meet and part on the sea,
  O friend! so I met and then drifted from thee.
  • William R. Alger, "The Brief Chance Encounter", Poetry of the Orient (1865), p. 196.

• Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,
  Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness:
  So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another,
  Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863-1874), The Theologian's Tale, Elizabeth, Part IV.

• In life there are meetings which seem
  Like a fate.
  • Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton), Lucile (1860), Part II, Canto III, Stanza 8.

• Talk helps people consider the possibilities open for social change ... Movements begin when people get together to think out loud about the kind of city they might help to create. One person said, "Freedom is an endless meeting."
  • "A Movement of Many Voices", Economic Research and Action Project recruiting pamphlet (1965)

• Some day, some day of days, threading the street
  With idle, heedless pace,
  Unlooking for such grace,
  I shall behold your face!
  Some day, some day of days, thus may we meet.
  • Nora Perry, "Some Day of Days", in After the Ball and Other Poems (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1875), p. 158.

• And so he'll die; and, rising so again,
  When I shall meet him in the court of heaven
  I shall not know him.
  • William Shakespeare, King John (1598), Act III, scene 4, line 86.

• When shall we three meet again
  In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
  • William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act I, scene 1, line 1.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 504-05.

• Like a plank of driftwood
  Tossed on the watery main,
  Another plank encountered,
  Meets, touches, parts again;
  So tossed, and drifting ever,
  On life's unresting sea,
  Men meet, and greet, and sever,
  Parting eternally.
  • Edwin Arnold, Book of Good Counsel. Translation from the Sanscrit of the Hitopadéesa. A literal translation. by Max Müller appeared in The Fortnightly, July, 1898. He also translated the same idea from the Mahavastu.

• Like driftwood spars which meet and pass
  Upon the boundless ocean-plain,
  So on the sea of life, alas!
  Man nears man, meets, and leaves again.
  • Matthew Arnold, Terrace at Berne.

• As drifting logs of wood may haply meet
  On ocean's waters surging to and fro,
  And having met, drift once again apart,
  So, fleeting is the intercourse of men.
  E'en as a traveler meeting with the shade
  Of some o'erhung tree, awhile reposes,
  Then leaves its shelter to pursue his ways,
  So men meet friends, then part with them for ever.
  • Translation of the Code of Manu. In Words of Wisdom.

• We met—'twas in a crowd.
  • Thomas Haynes Bayly, We Met.

• Two lives that once part, are as ships that divide
  When, moment on moment, there rashes between
  The one and the other, a sea;—
  Ah, never can fall from the days that have been
  A gleam on the years that shall be!
  • Edward Bulwer-Lytton, A Lament, line 10.

• As vessels starting from ports thousands of miles apart pass close to each other in the naked breadths of the ocean, nay, sometimes even touch in the dark.
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Professor at the Breakfast Table.

• The joy of meeting not unmixed with pain.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Morituri Salutamus, line 113.

• And soon, too soon, we part with pain,
  To sail o'er silent seas again.
  • Thomas Moore, Meeting of the Ships.

• We twain have met like the ships upon the sea,
  Who behold an hour's converse, so short, so sweet;
  One little hour! and then, away they speed
  On lonely paths, through mist, and cloud, and foam,
  To meet no more.
  • Alexander Smith, Life Drama, scene IV.

• Alas, by what rude fate
  Our lives, like ships at sea, an instant meet,
  Then part forever on their courses fleet.
  • Edmund Clarence Stedman, Blameless Prince, Stanza 51.

• We shall meet but we shall miss her.
  • H. S. Washburn, Song.