#strangers

There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met. ↗

— William Butler Yeats

#haven #here #met #only #strangers

In my experience - and this is a very awkward way to put it, since I don't really know what the word experience means - the strangest people in one's life are the people one has known and loved, still know and will always love. Here, both I and the vocabulary are both in trouble, for strangest does not imply stranger. A stranger is a stranger is a stranger, simply, and you watch the stranger to anticipate his next move. But the people who elicit from you a depth of attention and wonder which we helplessly call love are perpetually making moves which cannot possibly be anticipated. Eventually, you realize that it never occurred to you to anticipate their next move, not only because you couldn't but because you didn't have to: it was not a question of moving on the next move, but simply, of being present. Danger, true, you try to anticipate and you prepare yourself, without knowing it, to stand in the way of death. For the strangest people in the world are those people recognized, beneath one's senses, by one's soul - the people utterly indispensable for one's journey. ↗

— James Baldwin

#love #people #strangers #death

Normally we divide the external world into that which we consider to be good or valuable, bad or worthless, or neither. Most of the time these discriminations are incorrect or have little meaning. For example, our habitual way of categorizing people as friends, enemies, and strangers depending on how they make us feel is both incorrect and a great obstacle to developing impartial love for all living beings. Rather than holding so tightly to our discriminations of the external world, it would be much more beneficial if we learned to discriminate between valuable and worthless states of mind. ↗

— Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

#discrimination #enemies #friends #good #mind

I do not accept reading tips from strangers, especially from indecisive men whose shirt collars are a dramatically different color from the main portion of the garment. ↗

— Joe Queenan

#reading #shirts #strangers #men

I find it utterly bizarre that total strangers write about your life in a completely fictional manner. ↗

— Helena Christensen

#bizarre #completely #fictional #find #i

Strangers he gulls, but friends make fun of him. ↗

— Phaedrus

#fun #him #make #strangers

we walk the plank with strangers. ↗

— Sylvia Plath

#strangers #death

Indeed, Miss Manners has come to believe that the basic political division in this country is not between liberals and conservatives but between those who believe that they should have a say in the love lives of strangers and those who do not. ↗

— Judith Martin

#believe #between #come #conservatives #country

You have to believe that people will be open to your advances. We psych ourselves out of approaching a potential BFF or emailing a role model because it seems far-fetched that they'd want to be friends or network with us in return. But, as has always been the case this year, people are happy to make new connections. ↗

— Rachel Bertsche

#strangers #friendship

Friend: a stranger in hard times. Friends: the street mob that robs you. ↗

— Bauvard

#friendship #funny #humor #strangers #friendship