elusive QUOTES

1 " While it was well within their powers to toy around with mortals like hapless puppets, deeper human workings remained elusive to them. The heart, the soul, the very foundation of man’s nature—those were mysteries to the gods, for all their manipulations. "

― Hayden Thorne , Arabesque

2 " She laughed. 'It won't last. Nothing lasts. But I'm happy now.'

'Happy,' I muttered, trying to pin the word down. But it is one of those words, like Love, that I have never quite understood. Most people who deal in words don't have much faith in them and I am no exception--especially the big ones like Happy and Love and Honest and Strong. They are too elusive and far too relative when you compare them to sharp, mean little words like Punk and Cheap and Phony. I feel at home with these, because they're scrawny and easy to pin, but the big ones are tough and it takes either a priest or a fool to use them with any confidence. "

― Hunter S. Thompson , The Rum Diary

3 " As we drove off into the moonless night, raindrops danced through our headlights like the fireflies of my childhood. I silently cursed the frailty of happiness and doubted whether it ever existed for me. I could remember happier times, though, and those memories fluttered about my mind like fireflies, beckoning with their elusive splendor. But chasing memories held no more promise than catching fireflies. The pursued feelings either vanished or lost their magic upon examination, hardly the green-glowing beauty seen at a distance. So I looked ahead of me and dreamed on into the darkness, hoping to one day find someone who would love me. "

4 " Happiness can be as elusive as a small fish darting away in a mountain stream. "

― Ruskin Bond , Funny Side Up

5 " Pursuit of contentment is not the pursuit of an elusive tomorrow; it is the celebration of today. In that, it is the pursuit to end all pursuits. "

― Majid Kazmi , The First Dancer: How to be the first among equals and attract unlimited opportunities

6 " Health and happiness are the two most precious and elusive of human conditions. At their core, they are one and the same. Both are a function of balance. "

― Victor Shamas , The Way of Play: Reclaiming Divine Fun & Celebration

7 " You are the beautiful and elusive pinpoint of radiance that lit up the darkness and called me home. "

― Sara Humphreys

8 " .....listening means learning to hear someone's inner world and deepest feelings with far greater attention in order that we don't let our own assumptions get in the way. The dying may speak in images far more akin to dreamland than the world of everyday reality. In order to understand them we have to make adjustments to comprehend a poetic form of expression that is sometimes elusive but actually far more expressive than the world of facts. "

― , Crossing the Threshold of Eternity: What the Dying Can Teach the Living

9 " ...much of poetry in the making is the fiddle with a few items. You lay a word against another and wait. You try another word. And another. Yet another. You wait. You begin again. Listening. Looking. For the elusive inevitable thing which has to arrive before it is recognised. And, like Odysseus, may not be recognised at first. "

― Craig Raine , Heartbreak

10 " I'm not a Wiccan. I'm not big on churches of any kind, despite the fact that I've spoken, face-to-face, with an archangel of the Almighty.

But there were some things I believed in. Some things I had faith in. And faith isn't about perfect attendance to services, or how much money you put on the little plate. It isn't about going skyclad to the Holy Rites, or meditating each day upon the divine.

Faith is about what you do. It's about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are. It's about making sacrifices for the good of others--even when there's not going to be anyone telling you what a hero you are.

Faith is a power of its own, and one even more elusive and difficult to define than magic. "

― Jim Butcher , Changes (The Dresden Files, #12)

11 " Left to our own devices, we are apt to backslide to our instinctive conceptual ways. This underscores the place of education in a scientifically literate democracy, and even suggests a statement of purpose for it (a surprisingly elusive principle in higher education today). The goal of education is to make up for the shortcomings in our instinctive ways of thinking about the physical and social world. And education is likely to succeed not by trying to implant abstract statements in empty minds but by taking the mental models that are our standard equipment, applying them to new subjects in selective analogies, and assembling them into new and more sophisticated combinations. "

― Steven Pinker , The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature

12 " I've decided that it's possible to love someone for entirely selfless reasons, for all of their flaws and weaknesses, and still not succeed in having them love you back. It's sad, perhaps, but not tragic, unless you dwell forever in the pursuit of their elusive affections. "

― Cammie McGovern , Say What You Will

13 " Love Is Elusive When We Never Live The Word We Speak "

14 " Phyllis and I pray these chaplets together; at three o'clock, every first Saturday. We are never in the same town. For months, we do not speak on the phone or email. We pray these chaplets for just a few minutes, maybe as many as sixty minutes, once a month on a Saturday afternoon. Intimacy with the elusive God is that kind of intimacy. It is the closeness of praying together, apart. "

― Lauren F. Winner , Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis

15 " People afraid of outsiders are easily manipulated. The warrior caste, supposedly society's protectors, often become protection racketeers. In times of war or crisis, power is easily stolen from the many by the few on a promise of security. The more elusive or imaginary the foe, the better for manufacturing consent. The Inquisition did a roaring trade against the Devil. "

― Ronald Wright , A Short History of Progress

16 " Srinagar is a medieval city dying in a modern war. It is empty streets, locked shops, angry soldiers and boys with stones. It is several thousand military bunkers, four golf courses, and three book-shops. It is wily politicians repeating their lies about war and peace to television cameras and small crowds gathered by the promise of an elusive job or a daily fee of a few hundred rupees. It is stopping at sidewalks and traffic lights when the convoys of rulers and their patrons in armored cars, secured by machine guns, rumble on broken roads. It is staring back or looking away, resigned. Srinagar is never winning and never being defeated. "

― Basharat Peer , Curfewed Night

17 " Sometimes when she woke from a flabbergasting dream Liz would lie very still to see if she could net it before it fled; perfectly still, eyes closed, not moving her head, as if the slightest shift would tip the story-bearing liquid, break its fragile meniscus and spill the night’s elusive catch. "

― Helen Simpson , Cockfosters

18 " The mountain of despair has dwindled, and the stone of hope has size and shape, and can be fondled by the eyes and by the hand. But freedom has always been an elusive tease, and in the very act of grabbing for it one can become shackled. "

― Alice Walker

19 " The dilemma for women who love to write may not have so much to do with finding the elusive literary voice, as with being reluctant to use the one that's already lurking inside, just waiting for the chance to speak up. Many of us, especiall,y those from the generations taught to be good, accommodating girls, are afraid of sounding too strong, too loud, too unconventional, or simply too much like the self we're afraid to reveal to the world. Most of us have at least an inkling of what form our writing voice should take, if only we might find the courage to reveal it. "

― Nava Atlas , The Literary Ladies' Guide to the Writing Life

20 " What was any art but a mold to imprison for a moment the shining elusive element which is life itself- life hurrying past us and running away, to strong to stop, too sweet to lose. "

― Willa Cather

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