Elude Quotes - Page 3

• You know, without my telling you, how sometimes a word or name eludes you, and you seek it through running ghosts of shadow -- leaping at it, lying in wait for it to spring upon it, spreading faint snares for it of sense or sound: until, of a sudden, as if in a phantom forest, you hear it, see it flash among the branches, and scarcely knowing how, suddenly have it.

  Conrad Aiken

  Running, Lying, Spring

  Conrad Aiken (1970). “Collected poems”, Oxford Univ Pr

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• It is impossible to combat enthusiasm with reason; for though it makes a show of resistance, it soon eludes the pressure, refers you to distinctions not to be understood, and feelings which it cannot explain. A man who would endeavor to fix an enthusiast by argument might as well attempt to spread quicksilver with his finger.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Men, Feelings, Might

  Oliver Goldsmith (1837). “The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith, M. B.: Including a Variety of Pieces”, p.432

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• Time. It hangs heavy for the bored, eludes the busy, flies by the for young, and runs out for the aged.

  Erma Bombeck

  Running, Bored, Busy

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• From Lucifer to Jerry Sneak there is not an aspect of evil, imperfection, and littleness which can elude the lights of humor or the lightning of wit.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Light, Evil, Imperfection

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1859). “Lectures on Subjects Connected with Literature and Life”, p.125

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• Freedom, peace, and inner joy will continue to elude us until we become aware of our real truth, without hiding ourselves or being ashamed of what we are.

  Lynn Grabhorn

  Real, Elude Us, Joy

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• The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer: as perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to discover larger portions of it. Thus the observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy, and meets us at every turn, in spite of our endeavours to elude or avoid it.

  David Hume

  Philosophy, Ignorance, Perfect

  David Hume (1793). “Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects”, p.31

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• The contour eludes me.

  Paul Cezanne

  Difficulty

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• Yon foaming flood seems motionless as ice;Its dizzy turbulence eludes the eye,Frozen by distance.

  William Wordsworth

  Distance, Eye, Ice

  William Wordsworth (1994). “The Collected Poems of William Wordsworth”, p.290, Wordsworth Editions

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• I'm not a man deeply interested in technology. It eludes me. I confess I don't even have a computer, I don't have a cell phone.

  Paul Auster

  Men, Technology, Phones

  Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. November 5, 2009.

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• Basic Instincts It's the way mother birds build nests, and build them high enough to elude

  T. D. Jakes

  Mother, Bird, Nests

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• I know all about endings. It is beginnings that elude me.

  Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Knows

  Marion Zimmer Bradley, Diana L. Paxson (2013). “Marion Zimmer Bradley's Ancestors of Avalon: Avalon”, p.9, Hachette UK

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• The search for truth can be compared to a cat chasing her tail: frantic in her pursuit, her quarry nevetheless eludes her; despite the fact that all the world can see it's right there, it remains just beyond her reach. It cannot be possessed because, paradoxically, it is already part of her.

  Gina Barreca

  Cat, Humor, Facts

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• Thinking carries a moral imperative. The searcher for truth must be ready to obey truth without reservation or it will elude him.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Thinking, Moral, Reservations

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• The creative act is also in a small way a suffering act - we start out with our ego, this hope of making this thing whatever it be, but so often it eludes us and it collapses and we kind of regress into this mental suffering, we can't find what we're looking for.

  Michael Leunig

  Elude Us, Creative, Ego

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• The unique eludes us; yet we remain faithful to the ideal of it; and in spite of sense and of our merely abstract thinking, it becomes for us the most real thing in the actual world, although for us it is the elusive goal of an infinite quest.

  Josiah Royce

  Real, Unique, Thinking

  Josiah Royce (1952). “The Religious Philosophy of Josiah Royce; Edited, with an Introductory Essay, by Stuart Gerry Brown”

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• The observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy, and meets us at every turn, in spite of our endeavours to elude or avoid it.

  David Hume

  Philosophy, Weakness, Endeavour

  David Hume (1861). “Philosophical Essays concerning Human Understanding ... Second edition. With additions and corrections”, p.20

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• You can go to the moon or walk under the sea, or anything else you like, but painting remains painting because it eludes such investigation. It remains there like a question. And it alone gives the answer.

  Pablo Picasso

  Moon, Sea, Giving

  Denis Thomas, Pablo Picasso (1975). “Picasso and his art”

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• Love is always changing and unless we stay aware and change with it, it eludes us.

  Leo Buscaglia

  Love, Love Is, Elude Us

  "Leo Buscaglia - An Exclusive Interview". Interview with Veronica M. Hay, www.peopleandpossibilities.com. 1998.

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• A man develops a subtle power as a result of the strict observance of celibacy for twelve years. Then he can understand and grasp very subtle things which otherwise elude his intellect. Through that understanding the aspirant can have direct vision of God. That pure understanding alone enables him to realize Truth.

  Ramakrishna

  Inspirational, Men, Years

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• All that is best for us comes of itself into our hands-but if we strive to overtake it, it perpetually eludes us.

  Ananda Coomaraswamy

  Elude Us, Hands, Awareness

  Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy (1924). “The Dance of ?iva: Essays on Indian Art and Culture”, p.109, Courier Corporation

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• It is an absolutely vain endeavor to attempt to reconstruct or even comprehend the nature of a human being by simply knowing the forces which have acted upon him. However deeply we should like to penetrate, however close we seem to be drawing to truth, one unknown quantity eludes us: man's primordial energy, his original self, that personality which was given him with the gift of life itself. On it rests man's true freedom; it alone determines his real character.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Real, Character, Men

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• The fact that so many people choose to live in ways that narrow the community of fate to a very limited set of others and to define the rest as threatening to their way of life and values is deeply worrying because this contemporary form of tribalism, and the ideologies that support it, enable them to deny complex and more crosscutting mutual interdependencies-local, national, and international-and to elude their own role in creating long-term threats to their own wellbeing and that of others.

  Margaret Levi

  Fate, Creating, Long

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• If you investigate the matter deeply enough and widely enough, you will find that happiness eludes nearly all men despite the fact that they are forever seeking it. The fortunate and successful few are those who have stopped seeking with the ego alone and allow the search to be directed inwardly by the higher self. They alone can find a happiness unblemished by defects or deficiencies, a Supreme Good which is not a further source of pain and sorrow but an endless source of satisfaction and peace.

  Paul Brunton

  Pain, Successful, Men

  Paul Brunton (1984). “The Notebooks of Paul Brunton: Perspectives (posthumous)”

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• Absolute certainty will always elude us. We will always be mired in error. The most each generation can hope for is to reduce the error. . . .

  Carl Sagan

  Errors, Elude Us, Generations

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.52, Ballantine Books

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• The more we try and understand enlightenment the more it will elude us. And that's because enlightenment does not come from the mind. It comes form 'no-mind.' It comes form just being. You are already enlightened. You just have to realize it to allow it into your experience.

  Anita Moorjani

  Spiritual, Elude Us, Mind

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