Quotes About A Stranger

“I wasn't sure who I was most scared of at the moment. The stranger I was learning about too quickly, or the woman I'd known my entire life that was quickly becoming a stranger.”

— Megan Miranda

“It's common knowledge in the industry that people often lie, or minimize things, when they participate in surveys, No one wants to tell a stranger they drink four cocktails a night, or eat junk food for every meal. It's the same with their views on candidates and political issues. Most people won't tell you they don't like someone when they have to look you in the eye. None of that would matter for me, though, because I would know their true emotions whether they shared them or not.”

— Evette Davis

“I won't cheapen it by buying what you sell to strangers. I'm not a stranger. I'm the woman who loves you”

— Shelby Reed

“Seemed she should learn to smile when she was unhappy, to stop laughing, to speak up, to never speak to strangers, to share guilt for the acts of strangers, that strangers made the laws of the land, that the laws of the land valued things over life, that life ended if a stranger decided it, to be where she could be found, to feel one thing and do another. How could she hang so many contradictions in one skull”

— Steve Aylett

“A stranger could drive through Miguel Street and just say "Sum!" because he could see no more. But we who lived there saw our street as a world, where everybody was quite different from everybody else. Mam-man was mad; George was stupid; Big Foot was a bully; hat was an adventurer; Popo was a philosopher; and Morgan was our comedian.”

— V.S. Naipaul

“TEIRESIAS:
I tell you, king, this man, this murderer
(whom you have long declared you are in search of,
indicting him in threatening proclamation
as murderer of Laius)- he is here.
In name he is a stranger among citizens
but soon he will be shown to be a citizen
true native Theban, and he'll have no joy
of the discovery: blindness for sight
and beggary for riches his exchange,
he shall go journeying to a foreign country
tapping his way before him with a stick.
He shall be proved father and brother both
to his own children in his house; to her
that gave him birth, a son and husband both;
a fellow sower in his father's bed
with that same father that he murdered.
Go within, reckon that out, and if you find me
mistaken, say I have no skill in prophecy.”

— Sophocles

“It is not saying too much; I know what I feel, and how averse are my inclinations to the bare thought of marriage. No one would take me for love; and I will not be regarded in the light of a mere money-speculation. And I do not want a stranger
unsympathizing, alien, different from me. I want my kindred
those with whom I have full fellow-feeling.”

— Charlotte Brontë

“And all this business about what knife and fork you eat from, it's a deliberate puzzle set out to make a simple bloke like me feel like a stranger. Whatever you pick up isn't going to change what the food tastes like, but Effie presses my knee hard if I gets it wrong.”

— Terry Pratchett

“She would risk her life to protect either one of us! She would risk her life for a stranger if it was the right thing to do. But all you care about is yourself.”

— Marissa Meyer

“They did the best they could. Besides I was hardly a stranger. I had known your grandmother. We were like this. She twined her second and third fingers together as if they might strangle each other.”

— Gregory Maguire

“Possibly the only good to come out of these nightmares was that it brought Hans Hubermann, her new papa, into the room, to soothe her, to love her.
He came every night and sat with her. The first couple of times, he simply stayed - a stranger to kill the aloneness. A few nights after that, he whispered, "Shhh, I'm here, it's all right." After three weeks he held her. Trust was accumulated quickly, due primarily to the brute strength of the man's gentleness, his thereness. The girl knew from the outset that Hans Hubermann would always appear midscream, and he would not leave. (36)”

— Markus Zusak

“I am a stranger. You do not need to lie to me or pretend. Only with friends do you need masks”

— David Gemmell

“For, to be a stranger is naturally a very positive relation; it is a specific form of interaction.”

— Georg Simmel

“It feels like we are sitting on the tight bench of a bus with a stranger between us, one that neither of us is willing to admit or mention, and so we find ourselves talking around him and through him and sneaking glances when the other one isn't looking.”

— Jodi Picoult

“I had crossed the line. I was free; but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land.”

— Harriet Tubman

“Maltoni concludes her thoughts on the success of TOMS with an insightful nod to the power of this principle: "People remember. And when a message is a mission, they will tell your story to anyone who will hear it-even a stranger at an airport. And by doing that, they become your strongest advocates in marketing your product ... The lesson: influence is given."5”

— Dale Carnegie

“Goal; Be kind to a stranger today.”

— Demi Lovato

“The secret seemed to me much more mysterious than that; it was the secret, I thought, of one who had known death; for I moved a stranger among ordinary people, like a man who has risen from the grave, and at first I merely felt rather painfully out of my element; but soon I became aware of a very different feeling.
Was it pride now? Perhaps; but at any rate there was no trace of vanity mixed with it. It was rather, for the first time, the consciousness of my own worth. What separated me - distinguished me - from other people was crucial; what no one said, what no one could say but myself, that was my task to say.”

— André Gide

“Try calculating the probability of getting a call from an old friend after just thinking about them. Or, your favorite song coming on the radio just as you turn on the car. Or, you smiling at a stranger, just as they needed to receive a smile. These are the events unexplained by logic, reason, and probability, yet are the foundation and guiding principles of faith.”

— Charles F. Glassman

“We've made it private, contained it in family, when its audacity is in its potential to cross tribal lines. We've fetishized it as romance, when its true measure is a quality of sustained, practical care. We've lived it as a feeling, when it is a way of being. It is the elemental experience we all desire and seek, most of our days, to give and receive. The sliver of love's potential that the Greeks separated out as eros is where we load so much of our desire, center so much of our imagination about delight and despair, define so much of our sense of completion. There is the love the Greeks called filia-the love of friendship. There is the love they called agape-love as embodied compassion, expressions of kindness that might be given to a neighbor or a stranger. The Metta of the root Buddhist Pali tongue, "lovingkindness," carries the nuance of benevolent, active interest in others known and unknown, and its cultivation begins with compassion towards oneself.”

— Krista Tippett

“For the Romantic, it is only the briefest of steps from a glimpse of a stranger to the formulation of a majestic and substantial conclusion: that he or she may constitute a comprehensive answer to the unspoken questions of existence. The”

— Alain De Botton

“I knew very well that this hope was chimerical. I was like a pauper who mingles fewer tears with his dry bread if he tells himself that at any moment a stranger will bequeath to him his fortune. We must all, in order to make reality more tolerable, keep alive in us a few little follies.”

— Marcel Proust

“It is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else's meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“When the main crowd of worshipers reached the short bridge spanning the pond, the ragged sound of honky-tonk music assailed them. A barrelhouse blues was being shouted over the stamping of feet on a wooden floor. Miss Grace, the good-time woman, had her usual Saturday-night customers. The big white house blazed with lights and noise. The people inside had forsaken their own distress for a little while. Passing near the din, the godly people dropped their heads and conversation ceased. Reality began its tedious crawl back into their reasoning. After all, they were needy and hungry and despised and dispossessed, and sinners the world over were in the driver's seat. How long, merciful Father? How long? A stranger to the music could not have made a distinction between the songs sung a few minutes before and those being danced to in the gay house by the railroad tracks. All asked the same questions. How long, oh God? How long?”

— Maya Angelou

“Why does a person spend money on a stamp to spout bile at a stranger?”

— Barbara Kingsolver

“For me, that's one of the best validations as an artist. To have a stranger come up to you and say that something you've created and put out there in the world has had some sort of impact on other people's lives.”

— Sarah McLachlan

“You need to begin to network with angels and VCs while you are still ideating. It is easier to ask someone you know for funding than a stranger. Build your financial network by attending as many industry functions and reaching out for advice from experts online.”

— Jay Samit

“Did you have to try for a while?" He thought it a bold question, coming from a stranger. But he was honest with her, his thoughts still loose from the spiked lemonade. "Would you believe, with Maya it happened the first time," he said. He remembered how proud he'd felt, how powerful. The first time in his life he'd had sex without contraception a life had begun.”

— Jhumpa Lahiri

“Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.”

— Khalil Gibran

“There are times when the kindness of strangers only makes things worse because one realizes how badly one is in need of kindness and that the only source is a stranger.”

— Nicole Krauss

“Look in the mirror. Half close your eyes. Pretend you are an old lady and ask yourself if you had the chance again to have sex with a stranger would you take it?”

— Chloe Thurlow

“I'm a stranger wherever I go, but I'm happy.”

— Hualing Nieh Engle

“Even if he hadn't spent the past three years in the field and more than a decade before that studying for the priesthood, he would have felt a stranger among these students-the young men in brilliantly colored, intricately pleated coats that broadened shoulders and narrowed hips, the young women wasp-waisted and delicious in pale and shimmering fabrics the colors of peony blossoms and sherbet.”

— Mary Doria Russell

“Good teaching is an act of hospitality toward the young, and hospitality is always an act that benefits the host even more than the guest. The concept of hospitality arose in ancient times when this reciprocity was easier to see: in nomadic cultures, the food and shelter one gave to a stranger yesterday is the food and shelter one hopes to receive from a stranger tomorrow. By offering hospitality, one participates in the endless reweaving of a social fabric on which all can depend-thus the gift of sustenance for the guest becomes a gift of hope for the host. It is that way in teaching as well: the teacher's hospitality to the student results in a world more hospitable to the teacher.”

— Parker J. Palmer

“I loved love til' it resented me, and if it's still a stranger then I love who it pretends to be.”

— Joe Budden

“I am Patrick, yes a sinner and indeed untaught; yet I am established here in Ireland where I profess myself bishop. I am certain in my heart that 'all that I am,' I have received from God. So I live among barbarous tribes, a stranger and exile for the love of God.”

— Saint Patrick

“I had crossed de line of which I had so long been dreaming. I was free; but dere was no one to welcome me to de land of freedom, I was a stranger in a strange land, and my home after all
was down in de old cabin quarter, wid de ole folks, and my brudders and sisters. But to dis solemn resolution I came; I was free, and dey should be free also; I would make a home for dem in
de North, and de Lord helping me, I would bring dem all dere.”

— Harriet Tubman

“It has always happened hitherto that whenever I have begun to feel an attachment to places, persons, or things, of a merely temporary nature, I have been carried away from them. Amen! May I live as a stranger and pilgrim upon the earth. May we be brought to that better country where painful changes are known no more.”

— Henry Martyn

“Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.”

— Mark Twain

“In a universe suddenly divested of illusion and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land.”

— Albert Camus

“I was always told that Hoosier came from when settlers in the state, when a stranger came on their property they'd say, "Who's there? Who's there?" So people that were from Indiana were the people that said "Who's there?" But what do I know? I don't read or interact with people outside the Internet.”

— Jim Gaffigan

“My soul, the seas are rough, and thou a stranger In these false coasts; O keep aloof; there's danger; Cast forth thy plummet; see, a rock appears; Thy ships want sea-room; make it with thy tears.”

— Francis Quarles

“Of whom I can say with a grateful heart, 'I was hungry, and he gave me meat; I was thirsty, and he gave me drink; I was a stranger, and he took me in.'”

— Frederick Douglass

“To me there is no difference between one person and another; I behold all as soul-reflection s of the one God. I can't think of anyone as a stranger, for I know that we are all part of the One Spirit.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

“Hospitality is always an act that benefits the host even more than the guest. The concept of hospitality arose in ancient times when the reciprocity was easier to see: in nomadic cultures, the food and shelter one gave to a stranger yesterday is the food and shelter one hopes to receive from a stranger tomorrow. By offering hospitality, one participates in the endless reweaving of a social fabric on which all can depend-thus the gift of sustenance for the guest becomes a gift of hope for the host.”

— Parker J. Palmer

“I wasn't a stranger to hard times. I used to read the Bible - well, I still do, but when I was young I read the Bible quite a bit.”

— Patti Smith

“Jobs and money are never the primary cause of stress.
Thinking, negative thinking causes stress.
The real cause of all problems lie in our thoughts, not in things or circumstances.
You and I possess the power to change our thoughts.
It is our greatest power - the power to choose.
If you are feeling stressful, choose to relax.
Look at your problems as a stranger might then do something about them - NOW!”

— Bob Proctor

“Give bread to a stranger, in the name of the universal brotherhood which binds together all men under the common father of nature.”

— Quintilian

“But if a stranger in the train asks me my occupation, I never answer "writer" for fear that he may go on to ask me what I write, and to answer "poetry" would embarrass us both, for we both know that nobody can earn a living simply by writing poetry.”

— W. H. Auden

“Born in a stable,
Cradled in a manger,
In the world His hands have made,
Born a stranger.”

— Christina Rossetti