Elusive Quotes - Page 8

• No one has ever seen the self. It has no visible shape, nor does it occupy measurable space. It is an abstraction, like other abstractions equally elusive: the individual, the mind, the society

  Irving Howe

  Self, Space, Mind

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the frantic search for an elusive 'cure,' few researchers stand back and ask a very basic question: why does cancer exist? What is its place in the grand story of life?

  Paul Davies

  Cancer, Doe, Stories

  "Cancer can teach us about our own evolution" by Paul Davies, www.theguardian.com. November 18, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• Perhaps the critics are right: this generation may not produce literature equal to that of any past generation-who cares? The writer will be dead before anyone can judge him-but he must go on writing, reflecting disorder, defeat, despair, should that be all he sees at the moment, but ever searching for the elusive love, joy, and hope-qualities which, as in the act of life itself, are best when they have to be struggled for, and are not commonly come by with much ease, either by a critic's formula or by a critic's yearning.

  William Styron

  Writing, Past, Judging

  William Styron (2015). “My Generation: Collected Nonfiction”, p.417, Random House

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I guess I'm attracted to more archaic words because they can be imbued with more meaning, because their definition is elusive.

  Andrew Bird

  Definitions

  9 Copy quote

• Elusive dreams and vague desires fanned to fiery needs by deadly deeds of falling empires.

  Joni Mitchell

  Dream, Fall, Reality

  Song: Fiction, Album: Dog Eat Dog

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Delayed energy projects and regulatory hurdles to domestic oil production not only cost the United States economy billions of dollars and millions of jobs, but they also stand in the way of an elusive goal: true American energy security.

  John Hoeven

  Jobs, Oil, Goal

  6 Copy quote

• Dance has helped me with everything. It was a great foundation for discipline, hard work and, unfortunately, the ever-elusive idea of perfection. It lends itself easily to fight choreography, because that's what it really is. Choreography. And knowing how to move with someone.

  Keri Russell

  Moving, Hard Work, Fighting

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

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Happiness is the most elusive thing for human beings to find.

  Frederick Lenz

  Happiness, Buddhism, Humans

  4 Copy quote

• A stable Iraq at peace with its neighbors will remain elusive until we improve both the security and the economic environment in Iraq.

  Tom Lantos

  Iraq, Environment, Neighbor

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• Our advanced art approaches a fragile but marvelous life, one that maintains itself by a mere thread, melting into an elusive, changeable configuration, the surroundings, the artist, his work and everyone who comes to it.

  Allan Kaprow

  Art, Melting, Surroundings

  13 Copy quote

• I don't write songs about a specific, elusive thing. I write about love, and everyone knows what it is like to have your heart broken.

  Adele

  Song, Writing, Heart

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  93 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• The images selected by memory are as arbitrary, as narrow, as elusive as those which the imagination had formed and reality has destroyed. There is no reason why, existing outside ourselves, a real place should conform to the pictures in our memory rather than those in our dreams.

  Marcel Proust

  Dream, Memories, Real

  Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV: Sodom and Gomorrah (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.191, Modern Library

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• I believe in good. It is an ephemeral and elusive quality. It is the center of my beliefs, but it cannot be strengthened by talking about it.

  Edward Teller

  Believe, Talking, Quality

  Edward Teller (1987). “Better a shield than a sword: perspectives on defense and technology”, Free Pr

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Amid the welter of vague political abstractions ... where meanings shift so quickly and so subtly, not only following changes of thought, but often manipulated artificially by political practitioners so as to obscure, expand, or distort ... a certain broad consistency in its relations to other kindred terms is the nearest approach to definition which such a term as Imperialism admits. Nationalism, internationalism, colonialism, its three closest congeners, are equally elusive, equally shifty, and the changeful overlapping of all four demands the closest vigilance.

  J. Allan Hobson

  Political, Consistency, Definitions

  6 Copy quote

• As for the subject matter in my painting.. ..it is very often an incidental thing in the background, elusive and unclear, that really stirred me.

  William Baziotes

  Matter, Painting, Backgrounds

  William Baziotes (1978). “William Baziotes: A Retrospective Exhibition : an Exhibition”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  18 Copy quote

• In America, religious dissent is as vital as it is elusive. Like the secretions of the pituitary, the juices of dissent are essential to ongoing life even if we do not always know precisely how, when or where they perform their tasks, and the not knowing - the flimsy, filmy elusiveness - is supremely characteristic of America's expressions of religious dissent. For in the United States no stalwart orthodoxy stands ever ready to parry the sharp thrust or clever feints of dissent.

  Edwin Gaustad

  Religious, Clever, Expression

  6 Copy quote

• Nature has put itself the problem how to catch in flight light streaming to the earth and to store the most elusive of all powers in rigid form. To achieve this aim, it has covered the crust of earth with organisms which in their life processes absorb the light of the sun and use this power to produce a continuously accumulating chemical difference. ... The plants take in one form of power, light; and produce another power, chemical difference.

  Robert Mayer

  Differences, Light, Use

  22 Copy quote

• A child is nothing like a racing car. . . . Souping up babies doesn't work that way. The child is what she is. There is a certainirreducible if elusive core. Pushing, pulling, stretching, and shrinking will not really change it. There may be spectacular interim results. The baby may say the alphabet before she walks, master two-times or even ten-times table at three. In the long run, however, this forced precocity tends to be irrelevant. . . . Whatever gains there are become unimportant. The losses can be irrevocable.

  Stella Chess

  Running, Baby, Children

  4 Copy quote