Elusive Quotes - Page 5

• 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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• 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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• 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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• We are all pilgrims on an elusive and endless road... Despite our attempts to build lives on stone foundations, our spirits continuously flow. Endless streams of consciousness ripple through our minds.

  Anthony Lawlor

  Journey, Mind, Flow

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• She was elusive. She was today. She was tomorrow.

  Jerry Spinelli

  Cactus, Today, Tomorrow

  Jerry Spinelli (2012). “The Stargirl Collection”, p.17, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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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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• There's no there. That elusive 'there' with the job, the beach house, the dream, it's not out there. There is here. It's in you... right now.

  Brian Kenny

  Graduation, Dream, Beach

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• I must start at the beginning, if I can find it. Beginnings are elusive things. Just when you think you have hold of one, you look back and see another, earlier beginning, and an earlier one before that. Even if you start with "Chapter One: I Am Born, " you still have the problem of antecedents, of cause and effect.

  Hillary Jordan

  Thinking, Looks, Causes

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• I think at times I read too much of my own press. I wish I was better at taking in how great my life is, but that's surprisingly elusive. I tend to be very hard on myself and insecure about failing no matter what happens.

  Seth MacFarlane

  Insecure, Thinking, Wish

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• Truth is, I'm a good Catholic girl. The faith has always been elusive, but the guilt is intractable.

  Janet Evanovich

  Girl, Catholic, Guilt

  Janet Evanovich (2009). “Plum Spooky”, p.18, Macmillan

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• Why is war such an easy option? Why does peace remain such an elusive goal? We know statesmen skilled at waging war, but where are those dedicated enough to humanity to find a way to avoid war

  Elie Wiesel

  War, Goal, Humanity

  Elie Wiesel (2011). “From the Kingdom of Memory: Reminiscences”, p.166, Schocken

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• It is precisely because education is the road to equality and citizenship, that it has been made more elusive for Negroes than many other rights. The walling off of Negroes from equal education is part of the historical design to submerge him in second class status. Therefore, as Negroes have struggled to be free they have had to fight for the opportunity for a decent education.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Fighting, Opportunity, Equality

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• I try to manage my day by my circadian rhythms because the creativity is such an elusive thing, and I could easily just stomp over it doing my administrative stuff.

  Scott Adams

  Creativity, Trying, Stuff

  "Scott Adams Keeps the Home Office Humming". Interview with Adam Bryant, www.nytimes.com. September 7, 1997.

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• There is nothing dictators hate so much as that unassailable, eternally elusive, eternally provoking gleam. One of the main reasons why the very gallant Russian poet Gumilev was put to death by Lenin's ruffians thirty odd years ago was that during the whole ordeal, in the prosecutor's dim office, in the torture house, in the winding corridors that led to the truck, in the truck that took him to the place of execution, and at that place itself, full of the shuffling feet of the clumsy and gloomy shooting squad, the poet kept smiling.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Hate, Years, Squad

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• Most dreams die a slow death. They're conceived in a moment of passion, with the prospect of endless possibility, but often languish and are not pursued with the same heartfelt intensity as when first born. Slowly, subtly, a dream becomes elusive and ephemeral. People who've lost their own dreams become pessimists and cynics. They feel like the time and devotion spent on chasing their dreams were wasted. The emotional scars last forever.

  Dean Karnazes

  Dream, Passion, Emotional

  Dean Karnazes (2017). “Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner”, p.78, Atlantic Books

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• I seek truth and beauty in the transparency of an autumn leaf, in the perfect form of a seashell on the beach, in the curve of a woman's back, in the texture of an ancient tree trunk, but also in the elusive forms of reality.

  Isabel Allende

  Beach, Autumn, Reality

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• But a sort of rupture-in anguish-leaves us at the limit of tears: in such a case we lose ourselves, we forget ourselves and communicate with an elusive beyond.

  Georges Bataille

  Tears, Rupture, Limits

  Georges Bataille (1988). “Inner Experience”, p.11, SUNY Press

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• The kiss was innocent--innocent enough--but it was also full of something not unlike what Virginia wants from London, from life; it was full of a love complex and ravenous, ancient, neither this nor that. It will serve as this afternoon's manifestation of the central mystery itself, the elusive brightness that shines from the edges of certain dreams; the brightness which, when we awaken, is already fading from our minds, and which we rise in the hope of finding, perhaps today, this new day in which anything might happen, anything at all.

  Michael Cunningham

  Dream, Kissing, Virginia

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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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