Elan Quotes & Sayings

There was soot and orphans everywhere, and gaslit cobbled streets full of fog and sinister gentlemen out for a night of illicit murder. It was a strict and unforgiving society; looking at a piano, eating too much butter, dancing with elan
the sour-faced Queen Victoria forbade all these things. And, it was also raining in the London of themdays
dirty grey slabs of rain that left everywhere shining and slippery. — Gideon Defoe

I always loved acting - though what I did in my teens was probably more eclat than elan. But I wasn't sure about doing it professionally. — Rory Kinnear

Who are you? What do you want?" The black-clad man drew himself up arrogantly. "Once I was called Elan Morin Tedronai, but now - " "Betrayer of Hope. — Robert Jordan

I know - better than anyone - that once someone's made up her mind to leave you, there's nothing you can do to make her stay. — Terra Elan McVoy

For all the claims of his detractors that Stewart is the epitome of East Coast elitism, there is more self-deprecating New Jersey grit here than arrogant Manhattan elan. — Anonymous

Peter, of the three of us, was our prince. He seemed so timeless. He had such elan and style. — Tom Brokaw

People talk about grief as emptiness, but it's not empty. It's full. Heavy. Not an absence to fill. A weight to pull. Your skin caught on hooks chained to rough boulders made of all the futures you thought you'd have. — Elan Mastai

The brain is a soupy lightning storm swirling and crackling in three pounds of wet meat. Do — Elan Mastai

When you jump off a cliff, falling can look a whole lot like flying, for a while anyway. — Elan Mastai

...the most complex physics question was a breeze compared to the contradictions of the human heart. — Elan Mastai

My own chocolate center has filled up with poison,
the roses he gave me all twisted black — Terra Elan McVoy

Perform with elan, brilliance and dash - at concert pitch. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

She was your mother and she loved you in a way nobody ever has and nobody ever will and no she's gone. — Elan Mastai

I have not worked out my poems with a careful will, falling rather on haphazard and blind formulation of wordage, a more flowing concept, in a hope for a more new and lively path. I do personalize at times, but this only for the grace and elan of the dance. — Charles Bukowski

The patients on Tuke Ward were a pleasant and tractable bunch and practised insanity with a certain elan. — Bill Bryson

I'm now painting with all the elan of a Marseillais eating soup, which won't surprise you when I tell you I'm painting large sunflowers. The idea? To decorate the studio, now there's hope of Gauguin living here. I aim at a dozen panels of sunflowers in the room I've set aside for Gauguin ... — Vincent Van Gogh

People who were personally concerned about a better world, came to Washington, were drawn to it. Even though where we were going was still to be worked out. There was an elan, an optimism . . . an evangelism . . . it was an adventure. — Studs Terkel

It's all eggs and milk in here, and those have expiration dates, so. — Terra Elan McVoy

They have seen the likes of you before, they may be intrigued by the looks of you, but they know that you-like everyone else-will leave them in the end. — Terra Elan McVoy

We must suffer fools gladly, otherwise how can we help them stop being fools? — Elan Mastai

No doubt, the theory of evolution will continue to play the singular role in the life of our secular culture that it has always played. The theory is unique among scientific instruments in being cherished not for what it contains, but for what it lacks. There are in Darwin's scheme no biotic laws, no Bauplan as in German natural philosophy, no special creation, no elan vital, no divine guidance or transcendental forces. The theory functions simply as a description of matter in one of its modes, and living creatures are said to be something that the gods of law indifferently sanction and allow. — David Berlinski

Maturity colonizes your adolescent mind, like an ultraviolet photograph of a vast cosmic nebula that turns out, on closer examination, to be a pointillist self-portrait. — Elan Mastai

You're
swimming so hard in this ocean.
Don't you know
if you float,
it will always hold you up? — Terra Elan McVoy

When you're young, you think of your parents with the simplest adjectives. As you get older, you add more adjectives and notice some of them contradict each other. — Elan Mastai

You believe what you do. — Elan Mastai

They were married within a year and slotted themselves into their respective lifelong roles - my father was the lighthouse, my mother the keeper who wound the clockwork, polished the lenses, and swept all those rocky steps. My — Elan Mastai

My mom once told me that's the secret of life. We all think we're frauds. Everybody's winging it. — Elan Mastai

I'm tired of pretending, tired of acting like everything's okay, tired of not being with him ... — Terra Elan McVoy

This is how you discover who someone is. Not the success. Not the result. The struggle. The part between the beginning and the ending that is the truth of life. — Elan Mastai

It's so awful when you need something from someone else, even though you're not sure what it is, and then you don't get it. — Terra Elan McVoy

That's your problem, Char. You're friends with all these boys ... — Terra Elan McVoy

You can't sleep until noon with the proper elan unless you have some legitimate reason for staying up until three (parties don't count). — Jean Kerr

Don't try to be perfect. It's going to take all your energy to just not be awful. One miracle at a time. — Elan Gale

What if every creative idea that someone has is unconsciously borrowed from that person's experiences in another reality? Maybe all ideas are plagiarized without us knowing it, because they come to us through some cryptic and unprovable reality slippage? — Elan Mastai

The Latino military fare badly when they stumble into war with the gringos. But in the torture, murder, and massacre of their own people, they have always performed with brilliance and elan. — Edward Abbey

Unless you've touched a corpse before, you can't comprehend the visceral wrongness of inert flesh wrapped around an inanimate object that wears your mother's face. — Elan Mastai

I was hiding my heart and you were hiding yours too and we played hide and seek together and both of us lost. — Terra Elan McVoy

The goal is to keep yourself moving, remember? don't linger. don't hover. you are not going to stay. — Terra Elan McVoy

I want there to be nothing in me that isn't light and pure and good. But of course that's not real. That's what happens when you're a statue in a city square, stripped of any human adornment that can't be cast in bronze. — Elan Mastai

That's what love can do for you if you let it: build a person out of all your broken pieces. It doesn't matter if the stitches show. The stitches, the scars just prove you earned it. — Elan Mastai

I try to formulate a plan but my thoughts are a toxic fizz of regret, panic, and self-loathing, as if someone shook up a bottle of carbonated soda and uncapped it inside my brain. — Elan Mastai

We imagine all these postapocalyptic, class-stratified, new-world-order techno-futures. But actually the real world, the world we live in, this is the dystopia. — Elan Mastai

Is there a word for a thing you know you absolutely shouldn't do, that would be wrong in every way that matters to you, but that you're pretty sure you're going to do anyway? Or is that just - human? I — Elan Mastai

The problem with knowing people too well is that their words stop meaning anything and their silences start meaning everything. — Elan Mastai

And it is hard to let go, to imagine alternatives, but you are bold with unknowing, you are ready to explore. — Terra Elan McVoy

I remember, as a kid, when I first understood that only half of every tree is visible, that the roots in the soil are equal to the branches in the sky, that a whole other half is underground. It took me a lot longer, well into adulthood, to realize people are like that too. — Elan Mastai

There's no such thing as the life you're supposed to have. — Elan Mastai

It is impossible not to be moved by the verve, courage and elan with Churchill attacked his last and ultimately invincible enemy, old age and infirmity. As in all his campaigns, he assailed his adversary with endless high spirits, expert advice, ample helpings of brandy and champagne, and the loving and long-suffering support of his wife. — David Cannadine

From the days of biplanes and silk scarves, the aviator has been the archetype of masculine glamour. Aviators have personified national ideals, from French elan to Soviet party discipline. They've inspired lust and admiration. They've turned sunglasses and short, utilitarian leather jackets into fashion statements. — Virginia Postrel

Life is defined mostly by how you handle failure. — Elan Mastai

Greta abides by the reasonable philosophy that there is nothing in the universe more boring than someone else's dreams. — Elan Mastai

I Missed His Book, But I Read His Name"

Though authors are a dreadful clan
To be avoided if you can,
I'd like to meet the Indian,
M. Anantanarayanan.

I picture him as short and tan.
We'd meet, perhaps, in Hindustan.
I'd say, with admirable elan ,
"Ah, Anantanarayanan --

I've heard of you. The Times once ran
A notice on your novel, an
Unusual tale of God and Man."
And Anantanarayanan

Would seat me on a lush divan
And read his name -- that sumptuous span
Of 'a's and 'n's more lovely than
"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan" --

Aloud to me all day. I plan
Henceforth to be an ardent fan
of Anantanarayanan --
M. Anantanarayanan. — John Updike

That's all science is. A collection of the best answers we have right now. It's always open to revision. Yesterday's fact is today's question and tomorrow has an answer we don't know yet. — Elan Mastai

Every person you meet introduces the accident of that person to you. What can go right and what can go wrong. There is no intimacy without consequence. Which — Elan Mastai

"Morale is the state of mind. It is steadfastness and courage and hope. It is confidence and zeal and loyalty. It is elan, esprit de corps and determination." — George C. Marshall

I wasn't aware that was how I felt, either, until it was out. And now that I've said it like that, I'm not exactly sure it is how I feel. But this isn't a piece of paper I can crumple up and throw away. they aren't words I can cross out to start over. Now they're out, and I know they'll hang here, between us, maybe forever. — Terra Elan McVoy

Purcell is a composer who had a formative influence on British music - even The Who now cite him as an influence. There's an intense, dirty harmony, but there's a Louis XIV kind of elan and style, too. He had the melancholy DNA of our national folk heritage. — Charles Hazlewood

Writing, you are a girl on a trapeze, swinging high in the air. you know there is no one on the other side to catch you. but your costume is spangly and all eyes are on you and at some point you'll leap
at some point you'll flip. and there may be no net
though it may also be intact, you can't see
but at this point the jumping is everything
it's all that you've got. and as you write you understand this, you understand you won't hit send, but for now you are swinging, swinging, swinging wildly in the air. your eyes are open, your arms are outstretched. — Terra Elan McVoy

Jack hoped they weren't going back to Silver Hill, even in daylight. 'Are we going far?' Elan laughed. 'Only to the far end of the kitchen garden, the bushes there are laden with fruit but it will probably take us till lunchtime to pick enough.' 'They're for picking, not eating,' Nora reminded Camelin. 'It's not my fault. It's not easy picking blackberries with a beak without squashing them. You wouldn't want me to put squashed fruit in the bowl would you? — Catherine Cooper

Bland friendliness is easier than spending even one joule of energy formulating an opinion on someone fundamentally irrelevant to you. — Elan Mastai

Because there will never be any boy's wrist to tie the balloon of your helium heart to (it has floated high far away from the heavy stone of that unnameable boy in chicago), you would never be with someone and then someone else, and you would definitely never be someone to someone else's else. — Terra Elan McVoy

Bye-bye, Elan. P.S., Next time you implicate someone falsely, try to pick a pacifist. — J.R. Ward