Elusive Quotes - Page 3

• Depression is a disorder of mood, so mysteriously painful and elusive in the way it becomes known to the self -- to the mediating intellect-- as to verge close to being beyond description. It thus remains nearly incomprehensible to those who have not experienced it in its extreme mode.

  William Styron

  Self, Way, Painful

  William Styron (1990). “Darkness visible: a memoir of madness”, Random House Incorporated

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• Life is short, science is long; opportunity is elusive, experiment is dangerous, judgement is difficult.

  Hippocrates

  Life, Opportunity, Long

  Hippocrates, Geoffrey Ernest Richard Lloyd, John Chadwick, William Neville Mann (1978). “Hippocratic writings”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• Every body we know surrounds himself with a fine house, fine books, conservatory, gardens, equipage, and all manner of toys, as screens to interpose between himself and his guest. Does it not seem as if man was of a very sly, elusive nature, and dreaded nothing so much as a full rencontre front to front with his fellow?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Men, Garden

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.145, Graphic Arts Books

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• This too is a jihad. Yet we Americans find ourselves in the dangerous position of going to war not against a state but against a phantom. The jihad we have embarked upon is targeting an elusive and protean enemy. The battle we have begun is never-ending. But it may be too late to wind back the heady rhetoric. We have embarked on a campaign as quixotic as the one mounted to destroy us.

  Chris Hedges

  War, Wind, Enemy

  Chris Hedges (2014). “War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning”, p.4, PublicAffairs

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• Most of what I want simply slips away like water flowing through a net, and always what remains are only vague, elusive fragments of images... that sink into countless strata in my mind.

  Daido Moriyama

  Water, Mind, Want

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• When I started doing chemistry, I did it the way I fished - for the excitement, the discovery, the adventure, for going after the most elusive catch imaginable in uncharted seas.

  Karl Barry Sharpless

  Adventure, Discovery, Sea

  Nobel Lecture, www.nobelprize.org. December 08, 2001.

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• In a swamp, as in meditation, you begin to glimpse how elusive, how inherently insubstantial, how fleeting our thoughts are, our identities. There is magic in this moist world, in how the mind lets go, slips into sleepy water, circles and nuzzles the banks of palmetto and wild iris, how it seeps across dreams, smears them into the upright world, rots the wood of treasure chests, welcomes the body home.

  Barbara Hurd

  Letting Go, Dream, Home

  Barbara Hurd (2003). “Stirring the Mud: On Swamps, Bogs, and Human Imagination”, p.43, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The truth is that trout fishermen scheme and lie and toss in their sleep. They dream of great dripping trout, shapely and elusive as mermaids, and arise cranky and haggard from their fantasies. They are moody and neglectful and all of them a little daft. Moreover they are inclined to drink too much.

  John D. Voelker

  Dream, Lying, Sleep

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• The outfit soon took on color, dash and a unique flavor which is the essence of that elusive and deathless thing called soldiering.

  Douglas MacArthur

  Unique, Color, Essence

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• Let me cradle myself back Into the darkness Of the half shapes ... Of the cauled beginnings ... Let me stir the attar of unused air, Elusive ... ironically fragrant As a dead queen's kerchief ... Let me blow the dust from off you ... Resurrect your breath Lying limp as a fan In a dead queen's hand.

  Lola Ridge

  Queens, Lying, Blow

  Lola Ridge (1920). “Sun-up, and Other Poems”

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• My reason for writing stories is to give myself the satisfaction of visualising more clearly and detailedly and stably the vague, elusive, fragmentary impressions of wonder, beauty, and adventurous expectancy which are conveyed to me by certain sights (scenic, architectural, atmospheric, etc.), ideas, occurrences, and images encountered in art and literature.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Art, Writing, Sight

  H.P. Lovecraft, Digital Papyrus (2014). “H.P. Lovecraft: The Ultimate Collection (160 Works Including Early Writings, Fiction, Collaborations, Poetry, Essays & Bonus Audiobook Links)”, p.1753, eBookIt.com

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• In Henry they had a forward so elusive that he was almost unplayable at his peak

  Gary Neville

  Gary Neville (2011). “Red: My Autobiography”, p.99, Random House

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• Everyone, some sooner than others, must endure his or her own personal 'hell on earth.' It is important to keep searching for the small joys, although they are often the most elusive. Trust that these joys will appear, sometimes unexpectedly, and often in life's darkest moments.

  Katie Gill

  Inspirational, Joy, Important

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• In certain strains of Judaism, there's a profound passion for the ineffable. Contemplation of God is meant to be forever elusive, because, you know, our tiny minds can't possibly comprehend Him. If we find ourselves comprehending Him, then we can be sure we're off track.

  Ben Marcus

  Passion, Track, Profound

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• Mastery is an elusive concept. You never know when you achieve it absolutely and it may not help you to feel you've attained it. We can recognize it more readily in others than we can in ourselves. We have to discover our own definition of it.

  Twyla Tharp

  May, Definitions, Mastery

  Twyla Tharp, Mark Reiter (2003). “The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life”, Simon and Schuster

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• The desert wears... a veil of mystery. Motionless and silent it evokes in us an elusive hint of something unknown, unknowable, about to be revealed. Since the desert does not act it seems to be waiting -- but waiting for what?

  Edward Abbey

  Waiting, Doe, Desert

  Edward Abbey (1968). “Desert Solitaire”, p.241, Simon and Schuster

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• They passed out of the shade beneath the eaves and flew into sunglare and silence and it was an action she only partly saw, elusive and mutely beautiful, the birds so sunstruck they were consumed by light, disembodied, turned into something sheer and fleet and scatter-bright.

  Don DeLillo

  Beautiful, Light, Silence

  Don DeLillo (2011). “The Body Artist”, p.7, Pan Macmillan

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• Seek instant gratification - or the elusive promise of it - and chances are you'll find a crowd there ahead of you.

  Jeff Bezos

  Promise, Crowds, Chance

  "The best business advice from Jeff Bezos" by Eugene Kim, www.businessinsider.com. April 21, 2016.

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• The object of life is not happiness, but to serve God or the Grail. All of the Grail quests are to serve God. If one understands this and drops his idiotic notion that the meaning of life is personal happiness, then one will find that elusive quality immediately at hand.

  Robert A. Johnson

  Hands, Quality, Meaning Of Life

  Robert A. Johnson (1989). “He: Understanding Masculine Psychology”, Harpercollins

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• Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable, and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks-drinks which they see others taking with impunity.

  William Duncan Silkworth

  Recovery, Men, Alcohol

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• Macroeconomic stability will be more elusive and that will affect all of our lives: from the risks many will face in childhood, to the security of employment at working age, to the challenge of accumulating for retirement. More financial instability will introduce more uncertainty all down the line, and that will be a very different world than the one we would have lived in only a couple of decades ago.

  Alan M. Taylor

  Retirement, Couple, Childhood

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• As with the pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of truth is itself gratifying whereas the consummation often turns out to be elusive.

  Richard Hofstadter

  Truth, Pursuit Of Happiness, Turns

  Richard Hofstadter (2012). “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life”, p.30, Vintage

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• Home is in my hair, my lips, my arms, my thighs, my feet and my hands. I am my own home. And when I wake up crying in the morning, thinking of how lonely I am, I pinch my skin, tug at my hair, remind myself that I am alive. Remind myself to step outside and greet the morning. Remind myself that it’s all about forward motion. It’s all about change. It’s all about that elusive state.
  Freedom.

  Diriye Osman

  Lonely, Morning, Home

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• Although the elusive 'cure' may be a distant dream, understanding the true nature of cancer will enable it to be better controlled and less menacing.

  Paul Davies

  Dream, Cancer, Understanding

  "Cancer: The beat of an ancient drum?" by Paul Davies, www.theguardian.com. April 25, 2011.

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• In the end, my pursuit of the elusive New York State driver's license became about much more than a divorced woman's learning to drive for the first time.

  Suzanne Vega

  New York, Firsts, Ends

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