Quotes About Elusive

#1. Love is such a thing. You have knowledge of what it is, but it defies careful explication."
"Love is a subtle concept," I admitted. "It's elusive, like justice, but it can be defined.

Patrick Rothfuss

#2. Memory as an article of faith often comes naturally to writers, who by temperament are likely to be diarists and record keepers, forever searching past events for elusive patterns - and forever believing that such patterns are to be found.

Dara Horn

#3. When you were the son of evil, there was little you couldn't do, own, or kill, and yet her mortal self was an elusive trophy he could touch, but not put on his shelf.
This made her rare. This made her precious.
This made him ... love her.

J.R. Ward

#4. 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

#5. 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

#6. But, if I dare say it, it wasn't until I had helped kill a man that I realized how elusive and complex an act a murder can actually be, and not necessarily attributable to one dramatic motive.

Donna Tartt

#7. The Marquis had known whom he had wanted not to be, when he was a boy. He had definitely not wanted to be like Peregrine. He had not wanted to be like anyone at all. He had, instead, wanted to be elegant, elusive, brilliant and, above all things, he had wanted to be unique.
Just like Peregrine.

Neil Gaiman

#8. I hope that I capture something in my work that is about the elusive, the magical and powerful and the transformative. The writing in itself is transformative for me.

H. Raven Rose

#9. I think comedy's something you can't learn. It's an instinct, which makes it rather elusive.

Julie Walters

#10. Timmy Horan was a childhood hero. He was a great distributor, elusive, good stepper, very physical, defensively very sound. What a rounded player.

Brian O'Driscoll

#11. The outfit soon took on color, dash and a unique flavor which is the essence of that elusive and deathless thing called soldiering.

Douglas MacArthur

#12. The most elusive element of all, however, appears to be francium28, which is so rare that it is thought that our entire planet may contain, at any given moment, fewer than twenty francium atoms.

Bill Bryson

#13. 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

#14. What really interests me about capturing and suspending movement is that I get to experience something invisible and inaudible, as elusive and fleeting as thought itself, and give it form ... Maybe my paintings are all just little fragments of the Cosmic Dance suspended in time.

James Nares

#15. The 'data' (given) of research are not so much given as taken out of a constantly elusive matrix of happenings. We should speak of capta rather than data.

R.D. Laing

#16. We have enforced a Darwinian process on wolves, turning them into the shy and elusive animals they've become. They didn't have that fear of us 30,000 years ago. We didn't have gunpowder; we had rocks. Wolves would have seen us as lunch, and we were weak and slow and tasty.

Bruce Cameron

#17. The act of focusing our mightiest intellectual resources on the elusive goal of goto-less programs has helped us get our minds off all those really tough and possibly unresolvable problems and issues with which today's professional programmer would otherwise have to grapple

John Brown

#18. We can sum up the surrealist distinction between 'literature' and 'poetry' by saying where the former is artificial, fictive and elusive, the latter is natural, real, direct and spontaneous.

Michael Richardson

#19. 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

#20. 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.

Earl Nightingale

#21. As with the pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of truth is itself gratifying whereas the consummation often turns out to be elusive.

Richard Hofstadter

#22. Learn to respect this sacred moment of birth, as fragile, as fleeting, as elusive as dawn.

Frederick Leboyer

#23. I dreamed of death the way previously I'd dreamed of the pain leaving me, and the way before that I'd dreamed of gardens and children and weekends away. Death was my elusive lover, treasured and longed for and jealously guarded, and always distant. Always out of reach.

Elizabeth Haynes

#24. 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.

Alan Watts

#25. Nothing that exists can be comic; it was like a floating analogy, almost entirely elusive, with certain aspects of vaudeville.

Jean-Paul Sartre

#26. That wish to enter into an elusive element which had urged Cosimo into the trees, was still working now inside him unsatisfied, making him long for a more intimate link, a relationship which would bind him to each leaf and twig and feather and flutter.

Italo Calvino

#27. ...the state of perfection is an elusive goal; demanding something so obscure as almost unattainable and can become a compulsive, crazy making squirrel-on-a-wheel way of living.

David W. Earle

#28. Hell of simulation, which is no longer one of torture, but of subtle, maleficent, elusive twisting of meaning ...

Jean Baudrillard

#29. I think it's a mistake to work on success in career. I've worked on my passions obsessively. How can I say what I want to say more precisely than the last time I said it? Success is such an elusive concept. When you work for it, I think you get it in a way you might regret it.

K'naan

#30. Everyone, some sooner than others, must endure his or her own personal 'hell on earth.' It is important to keep searching for the small joys, although they are often the most elusive. Trust that these joys will appear, sometimes unexpectedly, and often in life's darkest moments.

Katie Gill

#31. I'd once been told that if a man wanted something he did not have, no matter how elusive that thing was, if his feet do not restrain him from chasing it, he would eventually grab it. This was our case.

Chigozie Obioma

#32. If you can surrender your protection devices, in order to track the potentially raw and perhaps elusive emotions that are the song's DNA, then that is creative vulnerability, which is ultimately hugely empowering.

Tori Amos

#33. America's Declaration of Independence speaks of "the pursuit of happiness," but nowhere in the Bible are we told to pursue this. Happiness is elusive, and we don't find it by seeking it.

Billy Graham

#34. I think for a group that has a reputation for being shy and elusive, we're actually outspoken.

Stevie Jackson

#35. Perfect typography is certainly the most elusive of all arts. Sculpture in stone alone comes near it in obstinacy.

Jan Tschichold

#36. 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

#37. We had approached nearer to absolute Truth, which, like Beauty itself, floats elusive, obscure, half submerged, in the silent still waters of mystery.

Joseph Conrad

#38. Wetiko is elusive and mercurial, for whatever we say wetiko is, it isn't, in that it is always more, less, and other than what we are able to say it is in language.

Paul Levy

#39. I have heard nothing from my friends at The Family Guy. Yeah, I heard that they got picked up again and all that good stuff, but I haven't heard anything yet. But, you know, I'm very elusive and hard to contact.

Patrick Warburton

#40. Men like to pursue an elusive woman like a cake of wet soap - even men who hate baths.

Gelett Burgess

#41. To many people Michael Jackson seems an elusive personality, but to those who work with him, he is not. This talented artist is a sensitive man, warm, funny, and full of insight. Michael's book 'Moonwalk', provides a startling glimpse of the artist at work and the artist in reflection.

Jackie Kennedy

#42. Contentment is a state of mind and body when the two work in harmony, and there is no friction. The mind is at peace, and the body also. The two are sufficient to themselves. Happiness is elusive
coming perhaps once in a life-time
and approaching ectasy.

Daphne Du Maurier

#43. To me, dance is so ethereal and elusive, so much of an illusion. After a performance, that's it. With vocals and music, you have good recordings.

Jamie Wyeth

#44. 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

#45. We all have the same amount of time allotted to us each week: 10,080 minutes. No more, no less. We have the responsibility to choose how we spend those minutes. In reality, every passing minute is a moment we'll never get back. Without question, time is our most precious and elusive commodity.

Rodney Gage

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

Sara Humphreys

#47. I believe the night I've never met
hides one elusive star I need
to divide me between darkness and light

Munia Khan

#48. Another world, another life, proximate but inaccessible. The elusive . . . Sat-is-fac-tion.

Graeme Simsion

#49. Funny . . . humanity's great at the tiny patterns. We can find quarks in an atom and Jesus's face in a tortilla. But that big picture is so elusive, so overwhelming, people refuse to believe something as obvious as their life in Des Moines affects lives in Delhi.

P.J. Manney

#50. The first time you see your grown-up little miss looking back at you from a sea of white chiffon or beaded satin glory, indeed your heart will skip a beat. You'll find yourself blinking back tears. That elusive someday has suddenly become now. Your little girl - your jewel - is going to be a bride.

Cheryl Barker

#51. Romance, like the rabbit at the dog track, is the elusive, fake, and never attained reward which, for the benefit and amusement of our masters, keeps us running and thinking in safe circles.

Beverly Jones

#52. Whatever you want is as elusive as you make it.

Daniel Gillies

#53. 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

#54. The most elusive knowledge of all is self-knowledge.

Mirra Komarovsky

#55. Hope is a powerful thing. Some say it's a different breed of magic altogether. Elusive, difficult to hold on to. But not much is needed.

Stephanie Garber

#56. 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.

Albert Camus

#57. Vocabulary for aggravation is large. Vocabulary for transcendence is elusive.

Jennifer Senior

#58. I think love is one of the most elusive things in the world. I don't know that there's a perfect formula for it and that's what makes the stories interesting.

Ashton Kutcher

#59. 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

#60. The violence of language consists in its effort to capture the ineffable and, hence, to destroy it, to seize hold of that which must remain elusive for language to operate as a living thing.

Judith Butler

#61. 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

#62. Well, the manhunt continues for that elusive evil mastermind, but I'm telling you Enron CEO Kenneth Lay remains at large.

David Letterman

#63. Trust is a confusing thing. It seems so simple, but when you try to pin it down, it can be so elusive.

Ze Frank

#64. 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

#65. If a thinker throws off too many unsystematic and rich insights, there is no place to grab onto his thought. The thing he is trying to illuminate seems as elusive as before.

Ernest Becker

#66. If we believe that the universe is unfriendly and that our very souls are in danger, peace will be elusive at best.

Joan Z. Borysenko

#67. If peace seems elusive in your life today, commit yourself to God, commit your concerns to Him in prayer, and then rest peacefully as you trust in Him.

David Jeremiah

#68. What an uncertain thing, marriage - what an elusive thing, happiness!

Elizabeth Bibesco

#69. For it is only by forgetting that we ever really drop the thread of time and approach the experience of living in the present moment, so elusive in ordinary hours.

Michael Pollan

#70. Good and evil keep happening in this world. It just takes a little longer for us to take the bad in our stride. And just when we think we've come to terms with bad, we're shocked to be haunted by that one query whose answer is ever as elusive - why on earth did it have to happen to me ?

Tuhin A. Sinha

#71. Besides, I've been feeling a little blue - just a pale, elusive azure. It isn't serious enough for anything darker.

L.M. Montgomery

#72. She will speculate that she didn't fully know her husband - this will give her leverage to seek him, to come to know him. It will keep her husband "alive" in her memory - elusive, teasing.

Joyce Carol Oates

#73. 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.

Mahatma Gandhi

#74. 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

#75. It's easy to slip into darkness when light seems elusive..."
His Pleasures and Pain

Chevelle Allen

#76. If you can play guitar and sing, you can probably get a gig down the road playing at a restaurant, but don't throw your life away chasing something that is so elusive it will only lead you to regret and may turn you bitter.

Cliff Richard

#77. She had no doubt in her mind what he was going to do. And while her ever-elusive shred of common sense squealed, "no," every thing else in her shouted, "Bring it on.

Marissa Clarke

#78. 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

#79. Romantic comedies seem to take over where the fairytales of childhood left off, feeding our dreams of a soulmate; though, sadly, the Hollywood endings prove quite elusive in the real world.

Mariella Frostrup

#80. 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

#81. Respect can be as elusive as the unicorn. I know something of this because I write books that are set in the Middle Ages, and the historical novel is often seen as the unwanted stepchild in the fictional family. I know even more about respect - or the lack thereof - because I live in New Jersey.

Sharon Kay Penman

#82. Life is a giant canvas and an elusive art.

Debasish Mridha

#83. 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

#84. Nonviolence being the mightiest force in the world and also the most elusive in its working, demands the greatest exercise of faith.

Mahatma Gandhi

#85. The good writer and the good actor are always searching for what is essential. It is a never-ending task because what is essential is always elusive and, therefore, fascinating.

Glenda Jackson

#86. Editing is a kind of creative activity where, in a perfect world, an author and an editor find that elusive oneness to understand each other intuitively.

Sahara Sanders

#87. In looking for my mind, I discovered that it seems to be in many different places. Sometimes it is drinking a glass of water, remembering swimming in the summer, feeling the breeze. In this contemplation I observed that the self is more elusive than I thought.

Sakyong Mipham

#88. 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

#89. Joy, that elusive, priceless commodity, was once again his.

Karen Marie Moning

#90. 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

#91. 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

#92. That time of day when the sun hasn't come up yet, but you can already feel it coming. It's an elusive warmth, like a subtle promise whispered in your ear and you can go on with your day knowing you've been given another chance to get it right.

Cassia Leo

#93. Haydon was more than his model, he was his inspiration, the torch-bearer of a certain kind of English calling which - for the very reason that it was vague and understated and elusive - had made sense of Guillam's life till now.

John Le Carre

#94. When I finally lie down, I find sleep elusive. The same thoughts that trouble me during the day are only compounded by the stillness of night.

Brandon Sanderson

#95. Sleep was like wealth, elusive and for other people.

Cristina Henriquez

#96. Nate grins, that elusive, sexy, melt my panties grin and I find myself returning it.

Kristen Proby

#97. Happiness is an elusive state of mind not to be gained by clumsy pursuit.It is given to those who do not sue for it:to be unconcerned about a desired good is probably the only way to possess it.

Ruskin Bond

#98. The elusive nature of love ... it can be such a fleeting thing. You see it there and it's just fluttering and it's gone.

Mick Jagger

#99. The culture of drink endures because it offers so many rewards: confidence for the shy, clarity for the uncertain, solace to the wounded and lonely, and above all, the elusive promises of friendship and love.

Pete Hamill

#100. Average intelligence loves blinders, which facilitate an even trot; but a brisker and livelier intelligence desires uncertainty, risk, a play of more deceptive and elusive forces ... where one can preserve flight, pride, joke, confession, rapture, play, struggle.

Witold Gombrowicz