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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• Let the wise one control his thoughts, for they are difficult to perceive, often elusive, and they rush about frantically: a mind well controlled achieves peace and happiness.

  Gautama Buddha

  Wise, Buddhist, Mind

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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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• 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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• 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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• It is by thoughtful reflection that the elusive moments of the past draw near to us in present reality and gain a measure of permanence.

  Yi-Fu Tuan

  Reflection, Thoughtful, Past

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• I've taught both screenwriting and playwriting, and playwriting is both much harder and much more rewarding. One can teach people how to tell a story in cinematic ways, but theater is a much more elusive craft.

  David Ives

  People, Theatre, Stories

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• Thanks to music I have found a deeper connection to an otherwise elusive God. Thru music I get to commune directly, and daily. On a side note to readers, any service or craft you give your heart to will give you the same effect. Don't be afraid to work less and play more! We are human. We didn't come here to hold down a dayjob. We came here to live and learn!

  Jason Mraz

  Heart, Play, Giving

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• By letting go of dieting, I free up mental and emotional room. I have more space, I can move. The pursuit of another, elusive body, the body someone else says I should have, is a terrible distraction, a side-tracking that might have lasted my whole life long. By letting myself go, I go places.

  Sallie Tisdale

  Letting Go, Moving, Emotional

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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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• Interestingly, anger and lust are also elusive states once they have passed. Trying to recall why you were angry about something when you've calmed down is like trying to remember why you were in love with someone who no longer attracts you: the initial impulse triggering the emotion is impossible to recapture.

  Gina Barreca

  Anger, Feelings, Lust

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• For at the heart of the uniform, reasoning is shaky and elusive: a mind in search of ideas should first stock up on appearances.

  Francis Ponge

  Heart, Ideas, Mind

  Francis Ponge, Beth Archer Brombert (1972). “The voice of things”

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• Herschel Grynszpan's life was enigmatic, elusive and tragic. The traces he left on the historical record are just sufficient to tantalize and baffle historians. Harlan Greene has woven from these threads a riveting novel, erotic, haunting, and profoundly moving.

  Janette Turner Hospital

  Moving, Erotic, Historical

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• There are also dozens and dozens of success stories; many couples have emailed me with their original posts. I love reading these stories, but confess I am not as interested in drawing them as the unfinished, elusive ones.

  Sophie Blackall

  Couple, Reading, Drawing

  Source: therumpus.net

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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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• Depression...so mysteriously painful and elusive.

  William Styron

  Painful

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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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• Trying to describe the process of becoming an alcoholic is like trying to describe air. It's too big and mysterious and pervasive to be defined. Alcohol is everywhere in your life, omnipresent, and you're both aware and unaware of it almost all the time, all you know is you'd die without it, and there is no simple reason why this happens, no single moment, no physiological event that pushes a heavy drinker across a concrete line into alcoholism. It's a slow, gradual, insidious, elusive becoming.

  Caroline Knapp

  Single Mom, Simple, Air

  Caroline Knapp (1999). “Drinking: A Love Story”, p.8, Dial Press

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• Seeking those elusive individuals is like mining for rare gems. It will take hard work, patience, and a persistent attitude. To find that rich seam of colourful stones, you will have to chip through dirt and rock. You will have to learn how to hold rubble in your hands and see the fortune inside.

  Chris Murray

  Attitude, Hard Work, Rocks

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• The tales are quite hard to remember and I found that going back to it between bouts of writing fiction, I was having to retrace my steps quite a lot, because the stories are very intricate and the material is elusive, and possibly with age, my memory is not as malleable as it used to be.

  Marina Warner

  Memories, Writing, Age

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I've always been more than a little mystified by poets who seem to think talking to people as directly as possible is a bad thing. I mean, I don't want to set up a straw man here: I understand that for many poets - and for me, at times - writing truly means writing in a way that is difficult, simply because the poem is trying to grasp for something elusive. So the difficulty of the poem is just unavoidable, and not in any way artificially imposed. So "as possible" is the key part of the phrase above, I suppose.

  Matthew Zapruder

  Mean, Writing, Men

  Source: therumpus.net

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• A most important, but also most elusive, aspect of any tool is its influence on the habits of those who train themselves in its use. If the tool is a programming language this influence is, whether we like it or not, an influence on our thinking habits.... A programming language is a tool that has profound influence on our thinking habits.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Learning, Thinking, Profound

  Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (1976). “A Discipline of Programming”, Prentice Hall

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• The worst sort of business is one that grows rapidly, requires significant capital to engender the growth, and then earns little or no money. Think airlines. Here a durable competitive advantage has proven elusive ever since the days of the Wright Brothers. Indeed, if a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down.

  Warren Buffett

  Brother, Thinking, Growth

  Warren Buffett (2009). “Warren Buffett on Business: Principles from the Sage of Omaha”, p.110, John Wiley & Sons

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