Themes

"Glories, like glow-worms, afar off shine bright, But look'd too near have neither heat nor light."

"When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket."

"Our senses enable us to perceive only a minute portion of the outside world. Our hearing extends to a small distance. Our sight is impeded by intervening bodies and shadows. To know each other we must reach beyond the sphere of our sense perceptions. We must transmit our intelligence, travel, transport the materials and transfer the energies necessary for our existence. Following this thought we now realize, forcibly enough to dispense with argument, that of all other conquests of man, without exception, that which is most desirable, which would be most helpful in the establishment of universal peaceful relations is — the complete ANNIHILATION OF DISTANCE."

"Already, the distance between what I was and am is insurmountable — like an ant contemplating the Cosmos. I knew it would be so … yet still I hoped. I guess there is really nothing left to say."

"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."

"From a distance, there is harmony And it echoes through the land It's the voice of hope, it's the voice of peace It's the voice of every man."

"As distant prospects please us, but when near We find but desert rocks and fleeting air."

"In notes by distance made more sweet."

"'T is distance lends enchantment to the view, And robes the mountain in its azure hue."

"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."

"Australia's distance from Europe was probably only tolerable because it had strategic commodities which England, threatened by changing European alliances, might some day be unable to produce in the northern hemisphere. Flax was the first conqueror — a hollow conqueror — of the distance which so often shaped Australia's destiny."

"DISTANCE, n. The only thing that the rich are willing for the poor to call theirs, and keep."

"We're charm'd with distant views of happiness, But near approaches make the prospect less."

"Yon foaming flood seems motionless as ice; Its dizzy turbulence eludes the eye, Frozen by distance."

"Life is like a landscape. You live in the midst of it but can describe it only from the vantage point of distance."

"Distance sometimes endears friendship, and absence sweeteneth it."

"Love is like a landscape which doth stand Smooth at a distance, rough at hand."

"Remote fountains are of little help to nearby fires."

"From a distance there is harmony And it echoes through the land And it's the hope of hopes, it's the love of loves It's the heart of every man (Every man). It's the hope of hopes, it's the love of loves This is the song of every man."

"From a distance you look like my friend Even though we are at war From a distance I just cannot comprehend What all this war is for."

"From a distance we are instruments Marching in a common band Playing songs of hope, playing songs of peace They're the songs of every man."

"In Einstein’s corrected formula m has the value m=\frac {{m}_}{\sqrt} where the “rest mass” m0 represents the mass of a body that is not moving and c is the speed of light, which is about 3×105 km⋅sec−1 or about 186,000 mi⋅sec−1."

"Speed has never killed anyone. Suddenly becoming stationary, that's what gets you."

"Ease and speed in doing a thing do not give the work lasting solidity or exactness of beauty."

"It would be relevant … to point out the sinister part played by speed, by belief in speed as a value, by, in a word, a kind of impatience that has had a profound effect in changing even the very rhythms of the life of the spirit for the worse."

"Ares (The God of War) hates those who hesitate."

"Be wise with speed; A fool at forty is a fool indeed."

"LT Pete "Maverick" Mitchell: I feel a need… a need for speed."

"Speed is the essence of war. Take advantage of the enemy's unpreparedness; travel by unexpected routes and strike him where he has taken no precautions."

"But the speed was power, and the speed was joy, and the speed was pure beauty."

"I have sometimes suspected that the only thing that holds no mystery is happiness, because it is its own justification."

"We are children shut up as yet in the narrow hollow of our native valley, with all the universe, outside the closely engirdling hills, for a great wonderland, of which we dream childish dreams, as the light of morning or evening kindles from beyond. "Laws of Nature" — what dost thou know of them, O man? Look out on the great miracles of nature, blooming in flowers and stars, away to the gates of the city of God, what dost thou know of its laws and wonders?"

"We live in the midst of infinite existence; and widely as we can see, and vastly as we have discovered, we have but crossed the threshold, we have but entered the vestibule of the Creator's temple. In this temple there is an everlasting worship of life, an anthem of many choruses, a hymn of incense that goes up forever."

"At some turning point of your life, when some great joy flashed, or some great shadow darkened upon you all at once; when some crisis that wanted an instantaneous decision appeared,— why, what regions of thought, purpose, plan, resolution, what wildernesses of desolate sorrow, and what paradises of blooming gladness, your soul has gone through in a moment."

"Can any thing be more mysterious than the union of soul and body, unless it be the still greater mystery, which some have professed to believe, that matter can be so organized as to produce the amazing intellectual results which we witness in man? In believing our own existence we believe a mystery as great as any that the Christian religion presents."

"The nature of Christ is, I grant it, from one end to another, a web of mysteries; but this mysteriousness does not correspond to the difficulties which all existence contains. Let it be rejected, and the whole world is an enigma; let it be accepted, and we possess a wonderful explanation of the history of man."

"We know, and we feel, that the vast business of our redemption, arranged in the councils of the far-back eternity, and acted out amid the wonderings and throbbings of the universe, could not have been that stupendous transaction which gave God glory by giving sinners safety, if the inspired account brought its dimensions within the compass of a human arithmetic, or denned its issues by the lines of a human demarcation."

"That great chain of causes, which, linking one to another, even to the throne of God Himself, can never be unraveled by any industry of ours."

"Providence is a greater mystery than revelation."

"In viewing the scheme of redemption, I seem like one viewing a vast and complicated machine of exquisite contrivance; what I comprehend of it is wonderful, what I do not, is, perhaps, more so still."

"The Bible tells me explicitly that Christ was God; and it tells me, as explicitly that Christ was man. It does not go on to state the modus or manner of the union. I stop, therefore, where the Bible stops. I bow before a God-man as my Mediator, but I own as inscrutable the mysteries of His person."

"The mysteries of the Bible should teach us, at one and the same time, our nothingness and our greatness; producing humility, and animating hope. I bow before these mysteries. I knew that I should find them, and I pretend not to remove them. But whilst I thus prostrate myself, it is with deep gladness and exultation of spirit. God would not have hinted the mystery, had He not hereafter designed to explain it. And, therefore, are my thoughts on a far-off home, and rich things are around me, and the voices of many harpers, and the shinings of bright constellations, and the clusters of the cherub and the seraph; and a whisper, which seems not of this earth, is circulating through the soul, " Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known.""

"Were there no mysteries in the Bible, we should doubt its being the transcript of the Eternal Mind. The "mystery of godliness" adapts it to our ruined race. Those mysteries of the Bible are like the mountains of the world; they give grandeur to the landscape and fertility to the soil."

"Augustine, the father of [[theologians], was walking on the ocean shore and pondering over the truth, "three distinct persons, not separate, but distinct; and yet but one God;" and he came upon a little boy that was playing with a colored sea-shell, scooping a hole in the sand, and then going down to the waves and getting his shell full of water and putting it into the hole. Augustine said, "What are you doing, my little fellow? " The boy replied, "I am going to pour the [sea]] into that hole." "Ah," said Augustine, "that is what I have been attempting. Standing at the ocean of infinity, I have attempted to grasp it with my finite mind.""

"Where is the subject that does not branch out into infinity? For every grain of sand is a mystery; so is every daisy in summer, and so is every snow-flake in winter. Both upwards and downwards, and all around us, science and speculation pass into mystery at last."

"There is no religion without mysteries. God Himself is the great secret of Nature."

"Whoever believes in a God at all, believes in an infinite mystery; and if the existence of God is such an infinite mystery, we can very well expect and afford to have many of His ways mysterious to us."

"Today for real mystery one has to look to cosmology and elementary particle physics."

"There is no mystery whatever — only inability to perceive the obvious."

"微乎微乎，至於無形；神乎神乎，至於無聲；故能為敵之司命。"