Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye.
Interpretation
Distance alters our perspective, both physically and mentally.
This quote by Samuel Johnson suggests that the concept of distance influences our perceptions and thoughts, much like how it affects our vision. Just as physical distance can change how we see an object, emotional or intellectual distance can impact our understanding and feelings about people and situations, potentially leading us to view them in a new light or with less clarity.
In practice
During a speech on relationships, you could use this quote to illustrate how physical distance can impact emotional connections.
To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.
To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.
Fly-fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining; but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away.
A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.
It is in vain to hope to guard against events too mighty for human foresight or precaution, and it would be idle to object to a government because it could not perform impossibilities.
Wouldn't it be better to have a watertight law designed to catch the guilty, rather than a press release law designed to catch the headlines?
For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.
Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic conditions of slave labor.
Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul; and observe how all things have reference to one perception, the perception of this one living being; and how all things act with one movement; and how all things are the cooperating causes of all things which exist; observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the contexture of the web.
Let me be the child in the story and declare that the Emperor is naked β or that America is culturally bankrupt.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.