Proximity

“ Divine proximity means the attainment of godly virtues by abstaining from the promptings of the flesh and hence it implies approach from the point of view of quality and not of space. For example, two persons meet together either when both of them proceed towards each other or one is stationary and the other starts and approaches him. ”

“ By travel, by migration, by correspondence—through the post, the newspaper, and the telegraph—men are fetched nowadays from the farthest corners of the earth into acquaintance with one another. For the civilized man of our time, most of the world has become a neighborhood. ”

“ The signs by which we judge of distance from us, here mislead, because those signs are found in conjunction with real distances widely different from those with which they coexist in our ordinary experience. The association, however, persists, and is irresistible, in one person as much as in another; for every one recognises that the object, thus looked at, seems nearer, or farther off, than we know it to be. ”

“ Have the pupils learn what two places in the neighborhood are about one mile apart; in a city, how many blocks there are to a mile. Have pupils tell about their walks or drives, noting distance and time.
1. What we Mean by Distance.—It is not easy to find a place if we know only in what direction it is from us. We should know also how far away it is, or the distance we shall have to go before reaching it.
If we know only that the house of a friend is east of ours, we cannot tell just where it is. ”

“ How many a traveller moves from place to place, not realising anything beyond the transportation of his body! Yet in every town there is this fresh acquaintance, this lifelong friendship, that shall last while his own memory lasts, that is as fresh for him as for a thousand before him, and for tens of thousands after. ”

“ But it counts much whether we have had good companions, in that time; — almost as much as what we have been doing. And see the overpowering importance of neighborhood in all association. As it is marriage, fit or unfit, that makes our home, so it is who lives near us of equal social degree, — a few people at convenient distance, no matter how bad company, — these, and these only, shall be your life's companions: and all those who are native, congenial, and by many an oath of the heart, sacramented to you, are gradually and totally lost. ”

“ But this modification of distance we call place, being made by men for their common use, that by it they might be able to design the particular position of things, where they had occasion for such designation; men consider and determine of this place by reference to those adjacent things which best served to their present purpose, without considering other things which, to another purpose, would better determine the place of the same thing. ”

“ Shall we so often, when describing to our neighbors the color of something we have seen, refer them, not to some natural object in our neighborhood, but perchance to a bit of earth fetched from the other side of the planet, which possibly they may find at the apothecary's, but which probably neither they nor we ever saw ? Have we not an earth under our feet,—ay, and a sky over our heads? ”

“ Indeed it was my desire to acquaint them as fully and as soon as possible with the fact of their having a neighbor: a weak-eyed half-alive innocent to be sure, but yet a neighbor who would keep his door open night and day—for the warmth of the hall of course—and who with the fretful habit of an old man who had once been a gentleman and a beau, went rambling about through the hall speaking to those he met and expecting a civil word in return. ”

“ For example, the walls of a city, reared in a vast level plain, and descried at a distance, appear to be far nearer than the traveller will find them to be; again, when standing on the beach, we look at a ship in the distance, we are apt to think it closer to the shore than we should prove it to be were we to traverse the distance in a boat. ”

“ We dream of foreign countries, of other times and races of men, placing them at a distance in history or space; but let some significant event like the present occur in our midst, and we discover, often, this distance and this strangeness between us and our nearest neighbors. ”

“ It is 'distance lends enchantment to the view.' Here in this country, where, thank the Lord, there is no hereditary rank,—no titles and no coronets,—these things, from their remoteness, impress your imagination, and disturb your judgment. ”

“ I have to seek all possible kinds of by-ways, through alleys profound and obscure; and when I cross a thoroughfare, it is with the same dogged straight-forward look with which a man swims across a dangerous river. When I do happen, in a moment of facility or confidence, to venture upon an open street, I have all kinds of expedients for avoiding and diminishing the pains of recognition. When you see an acquaintance approaching, you must consider the relative circumstances. ”

“ They, I say, will not dim or efface his glory, but they are now giving the last finish and consummation to his work. Hitherto the inhabitants of the two worlds have associated perhaps in the chilling atmosphere of distance with each other—a sort of bowing distance ”

“ As you move about on all sides you see more or less of the near neighbour country according as the Mountain you stand upon is in different parts steep or rounded—but the most new thing of all is the sudden leap of the eye from the extremity of what appears a plain into so vast a distance. ”

“ Let him not stay long in one city or town; more or less as the place deserveth, but not long; nay, when he stayeth in one city or town, let him change his lodging from one end and part of the town to another; which is a great adamant [3] of acquaintance. ”

“ No central association at a distance could possibly do for those working men what this local association does. No central association at a distance could possibly understand them as this local association does. ”

“ Those who were near wished themselves anywhere else, especially when appealed to. Those who were at a distance did not mind so much. A domestic squabble at a certain distance is interesting, like an engagement viewed from a point beyond the range of guns. ”

“ To dream of distance, signifies travel and a long journey. To see men plowing with oxen at a distance, across broad fields, denotes advancing prosperity and honor. For a man to see strange women in the twilight, at a distance, and throwing kisses to him, foretells that he will enter into an engagement with a new acquaintance, which will result in unhappy exposures. ”

“ Our neighbor includes any one of the human race with whom we may come in contact, without regard to place of residence; whether he or she resides in the vicinity of our home or far from us. Generally speaking of those people who reside near our homes, we speak of them as neighbors because we meet them frequently, and generally treat each other like the Good Samaritan treated the man who fell among thieves, which makes us neighborly. ”

“ They have not perhaps an opportunity of going more than once in a quarter of a year, and, setting piety aside, have other motives to attend: they hear the news, public and private, and see their friends and neighbours; for, though the people who meet at these times may be gathered together from a circle of twenty miles’ diameter, a sort of neighbourly connexion must be so brought about. ”

“ Strangers to each other, unlike in life and character, coming from widely separated places, some probably from countries beyond the ocean, yet all here, silently gazing in one direction beyond that rocky foreland, with the same look of infinite weariness on their grey faces and in their dim sad eyes, as if one thought and feeling and motive had drawn them to this spot. ”

“ Distance, for example, soon closes up on itself; if we try to stop, halfway, a friend who is walking down a long corridor, we shall be likely to call out before he has gone more than a third of its length. ”

“ As a knowledge of distance is relative, a keen perception on the part of the prophet revealed to him, as he beheld the birds soaring in air, that the journey to lands beyond the sea was no greater distance to those winged creatures than a few miles would be to him. ”

“ However, I found time at intervals to spend a month or six weeks in these hills, and it was upon one of these occasions that we struck up the acquaintance that ripened into a sort of mutuality of interest. Neighbors are few and far between in the hill country, and those not exactly of the type that attract men of education. ”

“ Those families who made homes there when but two trains ran daily to and from town, felt, on the rare and rarer occasions of meeting one another in a stranger crowd, the drawing of a tie tender as that of kinship. ”

“ Distance lends enchantment to a holy place, and adds to the efficacy of a prayer-stone in the eyes of its owner, and they are valued highly or lightly according to the distance and the consequent holiness of the city they are brought from. ”

“ We should then be, for all purposes of quick communication, nearer to each other than we are in our crowded cities, while, at the same time, we should be surrounding ourselves with the most healthy and the most advantageous conditions. ”

“ Forty or forty-five or fifty houses, say, each with its little plot for private meditation and repose, yet sharing in common among them a spacious pleasaunce where friend should meet friend and none but friends should come—that was the idea. ”

“ But when the message turns out to be of evidential value it is presumably because this subliminal portion of the person is in touch, either telepathically or in some other way, with intelligences not ordinarily accessible,—with living people at a distance perhaps, or more often with the apparently more accessible people who have passed on, for whom distance in the ordinary sense seems hardly to exist, and whose links of connexion are of a kind other than spatial. ”

“ The Natives, Rugby, Tennessee. When all is said and sung, there is nothing so interesting as the man and woman who dwell on any corner of the earth; so, before giving you any further details of our surroundings, or doings, or prospects, let me introduce you to our neighbours, so far as I have as yet the pleasure of their acquaintance. ”

“ In the words of Mr Bailey, "Whether objects are seen to be external, or at some distance, is one question altogether distinct from the inquiry—whether objects are seen by the unassisted vision to be at different distances from the percipient." ”

“ The word neighbor has a larger meaning than merely one who lives near another. There is a wonderful description of a neighbor, given by One who is the World’s Good Neighbor. He tells of the traveler who found a stranger lying by the roadside, wounded and helpless. [16] At personal inconvenience and expense the traveler cared for the half dead man, and continued his aid until the stranger was again able to care for himself. ”

“ We may extend the social circle in which we move—a circle perhaps narrowed and restricted through circumstances beyond our control—by making intimate acquaintances, perhaps even close friends, among a society long departed, but which, when we have once learnt the trick of it, it rests with us to revive. ”

“ When we say that neighbouring events have a certain relation, we shall mean that the nearer two events are to each other, the more nearly they have this relation, and that they approximate to having it without limit as they are taken nearer and nearer together. ”

“ The first city at the lower end of the map is New Friendship. Now, inasmuch as love may be due to esteem, to gratitude, or to inclination, there are three cities called Tenderness, each situated on one of three different rivers that are approached by three distinct routes. ”

“ Its distance has generally grandeur enough to meet their moods of aspiration; its near aspect is of a more human interest than that of hill country, and harmonises more truly with the domestic feelings which are common to all mankind ”

“ They look at times as though they were putting their heads together to gossip and smile about their odd, old neighbor that has such out-of-date fan-lights, that has no electric bell, no folding-beds, and not a bit of zinc cornicing. ”

“ Some men of that exalted sight, either by art or nature, have told me they have seen at these meetings a double man, or the shape of some man in two places, that is, a superterranean and a subterranean inhabitant perfectly resembling one another in all points, whom he, notwithstanding, could easily distinguish one fro another by some secret tokens and operations, and so go speak to the man his neighbour and familiar, passing by the apparition or resemblance of him. ”

“ But nobody thinks much of distance; there are plenty of horses, good or bad, and by going a little further afield you may be better suited. Then people journeying up the country drop in occasionally for a dinner and a night’s lodging. ”

“ It is not only the natural beauty and quiet remoteness of the locale, but also the strength that we find in association with our neighbors, whose simplicity stems not from 113lack of sophistication, but from the directness of their relations with the forces of life and nature. ”

“ So far from one all-embracing space being given, there are several spaces for each person, according to the different senses which give relations that may be called spatial. Experience teaches us to obtain one space from these by correlation, and experience, together with instinctive theorising, teaches us to correlate our spaces with those which we believe to exist in the sensible worlds of other people. ”

“ The next neighbor was a prosperous pioneer, being master of a substantial frame-house in the midst of a large and well-tilled clearing. At times, though rarely, because it was forbidden, the younger child would make his way by a rough wood road to visit his poor little disreputable playmate. ”

“ Thirdly, one’s neighbour. In the expression, as thyself, the word as does not signify equality, but similarity of love. For we ought to love ourselves more than our neighbour; but yet the same things which we desire for ourselves we ought to desire for our neighbour. ”