A beast does not know that he is a beast, and the nearer a man gets to being a beast, the less he knows it.
George MacDonald

A friend who is far away is sometimes much nearer than one who is at hand. Is not the mountain far more awe-inspiring and more clearly visible to one passing through the valley than to those who inhabit the mountain?
Kahlil Gibran

A rude nature is worse than a brute nature by so much more as man is better than a beast: and those that are of civil natures and genteel dispositions are as much nearer to celestial creatures as those that are rude and cruel are to devils.
Margaret Cavendish

A science which does not bring us nearer to God is worthless.
Simone Weil

Adventure upon all the tickets in the lottery, and you lose for certain; and the greater the number of your tickets the nearer your approach to this certainty.
Adam Smith

Advice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey's end.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable. However, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable.
Lord Chesterfield

Aloneness is nearer God, nearer reality.
Gwen John

Any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country.
Margaret Thatcher

Believers, look up - take courage. The angels are nearer than you think.
Billy Graham

But poetry is a way of language, it is not its subject or its maker's background or interests or hobbies or fixations. It is nearer to utterance than history.
Thomas Lynch

Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Human nature must have come much nearer perfection than it is now, or will be in many generations, to exclude from such a control prejudice, selfishness, ambition, and injustice.
Elihu Root

I don't think kids have a problem with death. It's us older ones who are nearer to it, that start being frightened.
Helena Bonham Carter

I lived in town until I was eight and then I moved nearer the farmland, so I had a mixture.
Stephen Sprouse

I really enjoy being single again. I spent a lot of time in a relationship and the nearer we came to the end, the more difficult it got. You don't see things clearly as long as you're still involved.
Dido Armstrong

I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.
Joseph Smith, Jr.

I'd like to get my public image nearer to my reality. People have a lot of misconceptions.
Jacqueline Bisset

If education, culture, the higher life were shining things to be worshiped from afar, he had still a means left whereby he could draw one step nearer to them.
Mary Antin

If I had my will I would live in a ship on the sea, and never come nearer to humanity than that!
Eleonora Duse