Elude Quotes

• For lack of attention a thousand forms of loveliness elude us every day.

  Evelyn Underhill

  Beauty, Elude Us, Attention

  Evelyn Underhill, Dana Greene (1988). “Evelyn Underhill: Modern Guide to the Ancient Quest for the Holy”, p.75, SUNY Press

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• Success is not something you pursue.
  
  What you pursue will elude you; it can be like trying to chase butterflies.
  
  Success is something you attract by the person you become.

  Jim Rohn

  Butterfly, Elude You, Trying

  FaceBook post by Jim Rohn from Feb 08, 2013

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• I am a happy camper so I guess I’m doing something right. Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Happiness, Happy, Butterfly

  179 Copy quote

• We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end. When we think to attach ourselves to any pointand to fasten to it, it wavers and leaves us; and if we follow it, it eludes our grasp, slips past us, and vanishes for ever. Nothing stays for us.

  Blaise Pascal

  Knowledge, Past, Thinking

  Blaise Pascal, W. F. Trotter, T. S. Eliot (2003). “Pensees”, p.19, Courier Corporation

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• Many women long for what eludes them, and like not what is offered them.

  Ovid

  Women, Long

  Ovid (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ovid (Illustrated)”, p.311, Delphi Classics

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• It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Time, Memories, Past

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2009). “The Crack-Up”, p.50, New Directions Publishing

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• I'm certain that most couples expect to find intimacy in marriage, but it somehow eludes them.

  James Dobson

  Marriage, Couple, Intimacy

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• It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.

  Norman Maclean

  Friendship, Elude Us, Elude You

  Norman Maclean (2009). “A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition”, p.104, University of Chicago Press

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• Each one of us here today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question: We are willing to help, Lord, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don't know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted. And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them - we can love completely without complete understanding.

  Norman Maclean

  Love, Inspirational, God

  128 Copy quote

• Human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barrier of systems.

  Miguel de Unamuno

  Believe, Elude Us, Growth

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• To be honest I live among the English and have always found them to be very honest in their business dealings. They are noble, hard-working and anxious to do the right thing. But joy eludes them, they lack the joy that the Irish have.

  Fiona Shaw

  Hard Work, Joy, Noble

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Popularity, I have always thought, may aptly be compared to a coquette - the more you woo her, the more apt is she to elude your embrace.

  John Tyler

  Elude You, Elude Us, Presidential

  Message to the House, December 18, 1816.

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• It is rash to intrude upon the piety of others: both the depth and the grace of it elude the stranger.

  George Santayana

  Grace, Depth, Stranger

  George Santayana (1937). “The Works of George Santayana: Dialogues in limbo. Platonism and the spiritual life. A long way round to Nirvana. The prestige of the infinite. Ultimate religion”

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• At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear.

  Norman Maclean

  Elude You, Elude Us, Sunrise

  Norman Maclean, Barry Moser (1989). “A River Runs Through It”, p.45, University of Chicago Press

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• Look for the stars, you'll say that there are none; / Look up a second time, and, one by one, / You mark them twinkling out with silvery light, / And wonder how they could elude the sight!

  William Wordsworth

  Stars, Light, Sight

  William Wordsworth, Stephen Gill (2000). “The Major Works”, p.369, Oxford University Press, USA

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• General principles are not the less true or important because from their nature they elude immediate observation; they are like the air, which is not the less necessary because we neither see nor feel it.

  William Hazlitt

  Philosophy, Elude Us, Air

  William Hazlitt (1809). “The Eloquence of the British Senate: Being a Selection of the Best Speeches of the Most Distinguished English, Irish, and Scotch Parliamentary Speakers, from the Beginning of the Reign of Charles I. to the Present Time”, p.209

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• In 50 years - or 20 years, or 200 years - our current epistemic horizon (the Big Bang, roughly) may look as parochial as the horizon Newton had to settle for in his day, but no doubt there will still be good questions whose answers elude us.

  Daniel Dennett

  Elude Us, Years, Doubt

  6 Copy quote

• There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed. My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone, in fact I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape, but even after admitting this there is no catharsis, my punishment continues to elude me and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself; no new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing.

  Bret Easton Ellis

  Pain, Punishment, Evil

  FaceBook post by Bret Easton Ellis from Jan 11, 2014

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• But, as we have before been led to remark, most of Mr. Darwin's statements elude, by their vagueness and incompleteness, the test of Natural History facts.

  Richard Owen

  Elude Us, Vagueness, Tests

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• At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear. It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us. You can love completely without complete understanding.

  Norman Maclean

  Love, Elude You, Elude Us

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• But what you could perhaps do with in these days is a word of most sincere sympathy. Your movement is carried internally by so strong a truth and necessity that victory in one form or another cannot elude you for long.

  Hjalmar Schacht

  Sympathy, Strong, Elude You

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• The want of logic annoys. Too much logic bores. Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced.

  Andre Gide

  Bores You, Annoyed, Literature

  The journals, 1889-1949. Vol 2. (p. 20), 1956.

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• What is the student but a lover courting a fickle mistress who ever eludes his grasp?

  William Osler

  Love, Mistress, Fickle

  Sir William Osler (2001). “Osler's "a Way of Life" and Other Addresses, with Commentary and Annotations”, p.337, Duke University Press

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• Crime is a fact of the human species, a fact of that species alone, but it is above all the secret aspect, impenetrable and hidden. Crime hides, and by far the most terrifying things are those which elude us.

  Georges Bataille

  Elude Us, Scary, Secret

  Georges Bataille (1991). “The Trial of Gilles de Rais”, Amok Books

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• Why something in the public interest such as television news can be fought over, like a chain of hamburger stands, eludes me.

  Jimmy Breslin

  Ties, News, Television

  7 Copy quote