Interpersonal Distance Quotes

Every body we know surrounds himself with a fine house, fine books, conservatory, gardens, equipage, and all manner of toys, as screens to interpose between himself and his guest. Does it not seem as if man was of a very sly, elusive nature, and dreaded nothing so much as a full rencontre front to front with his fellow?

The hands of those I meet are dumbly eloquent to me. The touch of some hands is an impertinence. I have met people so empty of joy, that when I clasped their frosty finger-tips, it seemed as if I were shaking hands with a northeast storm.

Surely if each one saw another's heart, There would be no commerce, No sale or bargain pass: all would disperse And live apart.

Men and women -- even man and wife are foreigners. Each has reserves that the other cannot enter into, nor understand. These have the effect of frontiers.

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.

Everything he'd done with regard to her in the last three years had been calculated to foreclose the intensely personal sort of talks they'd had when he was younger: to get her to shut up, to train her to contain herself, to make her stop pestering him with her overfull heart and her uncensored self. And now that the training was complete and she was obediently trivial with him, he felt bereft of her and wanted to undo it.

There will just always be a distance between you and the people around you. Now, [Hillary Clinton] can clearly emotionally connect with her intimates within the zone of trust. It's just the wall outside the zone of trust is so impermeable.

If, when you talk to people, they keep backing away from you, it's because you're TOO CLOSE, alright? SO DON'T KEEP ADVANCING ON THEM LIKE A HUMAN GLACIER.

even those who call themselves 'intimate' know very little about each other - hardly ever know just how a sorrow is felt, and hurt each other by their very attempts at sympathy or consolation. We can bear no hand on our bruises.

You just have to decide how close you want them. Not every person in your life needs to be your best friend: some can be friends or just friendly acquaintances.

They walked along, two continents of experience and feeling unable to communicate.

Love requires that we overcome the traditional and self-defeating fears that place distance between ourselves and others.

I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.

At the same time, you have to find the right distance between people. Too close, and they overwhelm you, too far and they abandon you. How to hold them in the right relation?

Each organism, no matter how simple or complex, has around it a sacred bubble of space, a bit of mobile territoriality which only a few other organisms are allowed to penetrate and then only for short periods of time.

I've never tried to artificially create distance between myself and the players.

All men were alien one to another, at times, not only aliens.

No one will ever know anyone. We just have to deal with each other. You're not ever gonna know me.

I thought of the infinitely many points that can divide the space between two human hearts.

I begin to see what marriage is for. It's to keep people away from each other. Sometimes I think that two people who love each other can be saved from madness only by the things that come between them - children, duties, visits, bores, relations - the things that protect married people from each other.

Every spoken word double-crosses us. The written word is the only tolerable form of communication, as it isn't a stone in a bridge between souls but a ray of light between stars.

Nobody knows anybody. Not that well.

... for the modern soul, for which it is mere child's play to bridge oceans and continents, there is nothing so impossible as to find the contact with the souls dwelling just around the corner.

Sometimes apparent resemblance of character will bring two men together and for a certain time unite them. But their mistake gradually becomes evident, and they are astonished to find themselves not only far apart, but even repelled, in some sort, at all their points of contact.

One passes through the world knowing few, if any, of the important things about even the people with whom one has been from time to time in the closest intimacy.