Quotes about Elude

Philosopher

If happiness always depends on something expected in the future, we are chasing a will-o'-the-wisp that ever eludes our grasp, until the future, and ourselves, vanish into the abyss of death.

Death - Dependence - Elude - Expectation - Future - Happiness

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Alain de Botton

Philosopher, Author

Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won't find in another what we know is in ourselves, all the cowardice, weakness, laziness, dishonesty, compromise, and stupidity. We throw a cordon of love around the chosen one and decide that everything within it will somehow be free of our faults. We locate inside another a perfection that eludes us within ourselves, and through our union with the beloved hope to maintain (against the evidence of all self-knowledge) a precarious faith in our species.

Compromise - Cowardice - Dishonesty - Elude - Fall - Fault - Laziness - Oneself - Perfection - Stupid - Triumph - Unions - Weakness

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Maya Angelou

Poet, Singer, Writer, Civil Rights Activist

There is a world of difference between facts and the truth. You can have so many facts that you don't deal with the truth. You never get to the truth. You have the places where, the people who, the times when, the reasons why, the methods how - blah blah. And never get to the human truth. The human truth is as elusive as the air. And as important as the air.

Deal - Elude - Human

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Edward Teller

Theoretical Physicist

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.

Belief - Elude - Talk

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John Dewey

Philosopher, Psychologist, Educational Reformer

Every one has experienced how learning an appropriate name for what was dim and vague cleared up and crystallized the whole matter. Some meaning seems distinct almost within reach, but is elusive; it refuses to condense into definite form; the attaching of a word somehow (just how, it is almost impossible to say) puts limits around the meaning, draws it out from the void, makes it stand out as an entity on its own account.

Accounting - Appropriation - Elude - Whole

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Anais Nin

Writer

At first she beckoned and lured one into her world; then, she blurred the passageways, confused all the images, as if to elude detection.

Confusion - Elude - World

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Earl Nightingale

Radio Speaker, Author

Ideas are elusive, slippery things. Best to keep a pad of paper and a pencil at your bedside, so you can stab them during the night before they get away.

Elude - Good

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Mahatma Gandhi

Lawyer, Politician, Civil Rights Activist

In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth.

Deceiving - Elude - Inspiration - Motivation - Quest - Silence

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Warren Buffett

Business Magnate, Investor, Speaker

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.

Capitalism - Elude - Favor - Growing - Proof - Significance

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Neale Donald Walsch

Writer, Author, Author

Personal happiness seems mysteriously and frustratingly elusive. Even when people achieve it, they can't hold onto it. That is the greatest clue, the biggest hint, the surest sign that something's amiss.

Achievement - Elude - People

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

Essayist, Lecturer, Philosopher, Poet

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?

Elude - Gardening - Man - Surrounding

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Alan Watts

Philosopher

We are seeing, then, that our experience is altogether momentary. From one point of view, each moment is so elusive and so brief that we cannot even think about it before it has gone. From another point of view, this moment is always here, since we know no other moment than the present moment. It is always dying, always becoming past more rapidly than imagination can conceive. Yet at the same time it is always being born, always new, emerging just as rapidly from that complete unknown we call the future. Thinking about it almost makes you breathless.

Becoming - Death - Elude - Emergency - Imagination - Past - Thinking - Time - Views

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Alan Watts

Philosopher

The harder we try to catch hold of the moment, to seize a pleasant sensation..., the more elusive it becomes... It is like trying to clutch water in one's hands - the harder one grips, the faster it slips through one's fingers.

Elude - Pleasure - Sensuality - Trial - Water

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Ovid

Psychologist, Poet, Poet

Many women long for what eludes them, and like not what is offered them.

Elude - Woman

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Vladimir Nabokov

Leader, Novelist, Novelist

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.

Dictatorship - Elude - Execution - Hate - Oddity - Poetry - Prosecution - Provocation - Reason - Shooting - Whole

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Albert Camus

Philosopher, Author, Journalist

Truth is mysterious, elusive, always to be conquered. Liberty is dangerous, as hard to live with as it is elating. We must march toward these two goals, painfully but resolutely, certain in advance of our failings on so long a road.

Certainty - Danger - Elude - Goals - Mystery

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Hippocrates

Writer, Scientist, Greek physician

Life is short, science is long; opportunity is elusive, experiment is dangerous, judgement is difficult.

Danger - Difficulty - Elude - Experimenting - Life - Opportunity

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Earl Nightingale

Radio Speaker, Author

Ideas are elusive, slippery things. Best to keep a pad of paper and a pencil at your bedside, so you can stab them during the night before they get away.

Elude

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Gautama Buddha

Monk, Sage, Philosopher, Teacher, Religious Leader

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.

Achievement - Buddhism - Control - Difficulty - Elude - Mindset - Perception - Wellness - Wisdom

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Albert Einstein

Theoretical Physicist

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.

Elude - Eternity - Feelings - Fixing - Human - Liberty - Planet

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