Elusive Quotes - Page 4

• Popularity was fickle and elusive, like trying to catch fireflies in a jar. You were either born with it or relegated to wallflower status according to your mysterious and unknowable workings of the universe.

  Melissa de la Cruz

  Firefly, Trying, Fickle

  Melissa de la Cruz (2010). “Keys To The Repository: Blue Bloods”, p.35, Hachette UK

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• Depression...so mysteriously painful and elusive.

  William Styron

  Painful

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• Dear John, There's so much I want to say to you, but I'm not sure where I should begin. Should I start by telling you that I love you? Or that the days I've spent with you have been the happiest in my life? Or that in the short time I've known you, I've come to believe that we were meant to be together? I could say all those things and all would be true, but as I reread them, all I can think is that I wish I were with you now, holding your hand and watching your elusive smile.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Believe, Love You, Thinking

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• There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.

  Werner Herzog

  Imagination, Cinema, Mysterious

  Paolo Jedlowski, Roberto De Gaetano, Jacques Rancière, Roberto Esposito, Slavoj Žižek (2016). “CINEMA, THOUGHT, LIFE. Conversations with Fata Morgana”, p.128, Luigi Pellegrini Editore

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• Obviously a garden is not the wilderness but an assembly of shapes, most of them living, that owes some share of its composition, it’s appearance, to human design and effort, human conventions and convenience, and the human pursuit of that elusive, indefinable harmony that we call beauty. It has a life of its own, an intricate, willful, secret life, as any gardener knows. It is only the humans in it who think of it as a garden. But a garden is a relationship, which is one of the countless reasons why it is never finished.

  W. S. Merwin

  Garden, Thinking, Design

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• Oh yes, I have learned much from Tremorlor, and so assume a like strategy. Silence, a faint mocking smile suggesting I know more than I do, an air of mystery, yes, and fell knowledge. None could guess my confusion, my host of deluded illusions and elusive delusions!

  Steven Erikson

  Air, Confusion, Silence

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• For the world is an ever-elusive and ever-disappointing mirage only from the standpoint of someone standing aside from it—as if it were quite other than himself—and then trying to grasp it. But a third response is possible. Not withdrawal, not stewardship on the hypothesis of a future reward, but the fullest collaboration with the world as a harmonious system of contained conflicts—based on the realization that the only real "I" is the whole endless process.

  Alan Watts

  Real, Trying, Collaboration

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• My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.

  Carl Sandburg

  Names, Captives, Universe

  Carl Sandburg (2012). “Chicago Poems: Unabridged”, p.50, Courier Corporation

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• There are times when one feels liberated from one’s limits and human imperfections. At such moments, we see ourselves there, in a little corner of our little planet, our eyes fixed in wonder on the cold and yet deep beauty of that which is eternal, that which is elusive. Life and death are fused together and there is no evolution, nor destination, there is only BEING.

  Albert Einstein

  Eye, Life And Death, Imperfection

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• If the sun is shining, stand in it- yes, yes, yes. Happy times are great, but happy times pass- they have to- because time passes. The pursuit of happiness is more elusive; it is life-long, and it is not goal-centred. What you are pursuing is meaning- a meaningful life... There are times when it will go so wrong that you will be barely alive, and times when you realise that being barely alive, on your own terms, is better than living a bloated half-life on someone else's terms.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Meaningful, Pursuit Of Happiness, Happy Times

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• A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning. The city is like poetry: it compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines. The island of Manhattan is without any doubt the greatest human concentrate on earth, the poem whose magic is comprehensible to millions of permanent residents but whose full meaning will always remain elusive.

  E. B. White

  Islands, Race, Cities

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• Dependence, humility, simplicity, cooperation, and a sense of abandon are qualities greatly prized in the spiritual life, but extremely elusive for people who live in comfort.

  Philip Yancey

  Spiritual, Humility, People

  FaceBook post by Philip Yancey from Jun 16, 2014

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• Being smart can make happiness elusive. Being REALLY smart can help you find it in more places than most.

  Brandon Mull

  Smart, Helping, Being Smart

  FaceBook post by Brandon Mull from May 24, 2013

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• One of the capabilities, which seems to be the most difficult for aspiring leaders to maste is realistic optimism. It requires one to recognize that our experience of life is largely up to us, that our situations, good or bad, are largely due to our ability on a moment-to-moment basis to capitalize on opportunity. Those that approach life as if it is largely outside of their own control, or that others are largely to blame for their circumstances, generally find growth elusive.

  Justin Menkes

  Opportunity, Optimism, Leader

  Source: bobmorris.biz

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• It is a rare man who can prevail in the face of comfort. Freedom is fragile and elusive, for rarely does the appreciation of it exceed the pleasure of being able to tell others what to do. There is but one tick on the accuracy scale between 'optimism' and 'denial.'

  Terry Rossio

  Appreciation, Men, Optimism

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• It is like a dream. I didn't sleep for two nights because I was under so much pressure. That elusive medal is probably what has kept me going. I had none of the self-doubts which have bothered me in the past. I was totally positive.

  Michaela Dorfmeister

  Dream, Sleep, Past

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• The key to solving the social problems of our age is to abolish the white race. Until that task is accomplished, even partial reform will prove elusive, because white influence permeates every issue in U.S. society, whether domestic or foreign.

  Noel Ignatiev

  Keys, Race, White

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• It doesn't matter if you're good. If you're just good, you won't succeed. If you have patience and persistence and talent and that's it, you will not have a successful career as an actor. The elusive thing you need is luck.

  Bryan Cranston

  Successful, Persistence, Careers

  "The Last Stand of Walter White". Interview with Brett Martin, www.gq.com. July 15, 2013.

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• Freedom is an elusive concept. Some men hold themselves prisoner even when they have the power to do as they please and go where they choose, while others are free in their hearts, even as shackles restrain them.

  Brian Herbert

  Heart, Men, Shackles

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• On the elusive gift of blending austerity of craft with elasticity of allure.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Writing, Crafts, Austerity

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• With a profound first-hand knowledge of participants, encompassing linguistic competence, and engaging prose, Padraic Kenney recreates the simultaneously serious and playful currents of East Europe's overthrow of repressive state socialism. What an invaluable guide to the elusive exhilaration that motivated the actors and captivated all of us who followed the transformation with such hope! We can appreciate neither the ebullience of 1989 nor the disappointment with the quotidian reality that followed without understanding Kenney's 'carnival.'

  Charles S. Maier

  Disappointment, Reality, Hands

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• Basketball is a great mystery. You can do everything right. You can have the perfect mix of talent and the best system of offense in the game. You can devise a foolproof defensive strategy and prepare your players for every possible eventuality. But if the players don’t have a sense of oneness as a group, your efforts won’t pay off. And the bond that unites a team can be so fragile, so elusive.

  Phil Jackson

  Basketball, Team, Player

  Phil Jackson, Hugh Delehanty (2013). “Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success”, p.84, Penguin

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• The more elusive and ambiguous a symbol is, the more it gains significance and power.

  Umberto Eco

  Gains, Ambiguous, Significance

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• An empathic way of being can be learned from empathic persons. Perhaps the most important statement of all is that the ability to be accurately empathic is something which can be developed by training. Therapists, parents and teachers can be helped to become empathic. This is especially likely to occur if their teachers and supervisors are themselves individuals of sensitive understanding. It is most encouraging to know that this subtle, elusive quality, of utmost importance in therapy, is not something one is "born with", but can be learned, and learned most rapidly in an empathic climate.

  Carl Rogers

  Teacher, Parent, Empathy

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• Howard Altmann has found a way to make language transform itself. If the elusive moment between I and Thou could speak, it might be one of his quietly amazing lines-'you ask the silence to invert itself / like a gymnast in the dark . . . ' Without a trace of rhetoric, In This House reminds us of the power of poetry: to show us how to live in a world in which we are strangers. It's a thrill to come close to such an original and deeply realized art.

  Dennis Nurkse

  Art, Dark, Silence

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