Elude Us Quotes & Sayings

Indirectly, though, he was present in many of our conversations. Once, for instance, my father asked me a series of questions that suddenly made me wonder whether I understood even my father whom I felt closer to than any man I have ever known. "You like to tell true stories, don't you?" he asked, and I answered, "Yes, I like to tell stories that are true." Then he asked, "After you have finished your true stories sometime, why don't you make up a story and the people to go with it? "Only then will you understand what happened and why. "It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us." Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them. — Norman Maclean

Humans may crave absolute certainty; they may aspire to it; they may pretend, as partisans of certain religions do, to have attained it. But the history of science - by far the most successful claim to knowledge accessible to humans - teaches that the most we can hope for is successive improvement in our understanding, learning from our mistakes, an asymptotic approach to the Universe, but with the proviso that absolute certainty will always elude us. — Carl Sagan

Acutely aware of the poverty of my means, language became obstacle. At every page I thought, 'That's not it.' So I began again with other verbs and other images. No, that wasn't it either. But what exactly was that it I was searching for? It must have been all that eludes us, hidden behind a veil so as not to be stolen, usurped and trivialized. Words seemed weak and pale. — Elie Wiesel

Fragrance should never be worn like a thick scented choker, where the scent emanates from the neck in strong blasts like a foghorn! Rather, it should sparkle like twinkling stars, where small bursts disperse here and there, they elude us, pique our curiosity and make us want more. — Marian Bendeth

For a lack of attention a thousand forms of loveliness elude us everyday — Evelyn Underhill

Dogs get after big living. They seem illiterate of worry, yet able to read joys that elude us. They quietly shout to us: Wag your backside to music instead of your tongue to malice. — Michael Cogdill

The past has a future, something it becomes, and that transforms it. Like the facts themselves, the person, the "I", who experiences it and looks back on it discovers that it is not singular, but plural. Traveling through those places marked down in those epic chronicles of thirty years ago, one gets the impression of slicing through paper-thin, invisible barriers, different levels of reality, still present and with us even though not discernible to the naked eye, infrared or ultraviolet rays of history, images and instants that at this point cannot print an image on the celluloid, but which nonetheless are, and exist in the same way for tangible experience as electrons which elude our grasp. — Claudio Magris

General principles are not the less true or important because from their nature they elude immediate observation; they are like the air, which is not the less necessary because we neither see nor feel it. — William Hazlitt

Love is always changing and, unless we stay aware and change with it, it eludes us. — Leo Buscaglia

When we persue happiness for it's own sake, it's like chasing the end of a rainbow. It will always elude us. It is when we're committed to some higher purpose that happiness somehow breaks through and comes to dwell with us. — Lawana Blackwell

But the history of science - by far the most successful claim to knowledge accessible to humans - teaches that the most we can hope for is successive improvement in our understanding, learning from our mistakes, an asymptotic approach to the Universe, but with the proviso that absolute certainty will always elude us. We will always be mired in error. The most each generation can hope for is to reduce the error bars a little, and to add to the body of data to which error bars apply. The error bar is a pervasive, visible self-assessment of the reliability of our knowledge. — Carl Sagan

Dreams get shattered, hopes are belied, aspirations delude and opportunities elude us. Clouds have the power to conceal the sunshine and our radiance fails to ignite positive thoughts unless we embellish our thoughts and emotions, which can be trained to veer into a positive direction. — Balroop Singh

The more we try and understand enlightenment the more it will elude us. And that's because enlightenment does not come from the mind. It comes form 'no-mind.' It comes form just being. You are already enlightened. You just have to realize it to allow it into your experience. — Anita Moorjani

Absolute certainty will always elude us. We will always be mired in error. The most each generation can hope for is to reduce the error ... — Carl Sagan

Every other civilized country has determined when life begins and it's something that eludes us. We've got things that have to be done! "We didn't fix that bridge because you are all down at the meeting house discussing abortion again." — Lewis Black

There are those whose love awakens our own and those whose love undermines. As long as we are blind to this fact, true love will elude us. — B.G. Bowers

But whatever the form in which love appears, the lesson it teaches us is the same. We can never assimilate, never become, the beloved object. Possession is never complete, it will elude us in the end, and if we persist in our attempts to impose ourselves we will drown like Narcissus in the reflection of our own selves.

Yet if we can liberate ourselves from the desire to make the thing over in accordance with our own ideas, we open up a wonderful world of perception and understanding, and we can grasp dimly the majestic processes of human experience. Why should that come through the contemplation of lives so utterly unrelated to our own? Why love, if we can never possess?... — Molly Izzard

The stunted pines elude capture
in a thousand sidetracked increments.
The wind will never understand them.
Like us it is forced to go on. — Richard Meier

Each one of us here today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question: We are willing to help, Lord, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don't know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted. And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them - we can love completely without complete understanding. — Norman Maclean

While the splendors that elude us in youth are likely to receive our casual contempt in adolescence and our measured consideration in adulthood, they forever hold us in their thrall. — Amor Towles

The power of psychedelics ... is that they often reveal, in the span of a few hours, depths of awe and understanding that can otherwise elude us for a lifetime. — Sam Harris

Crime is a fact of the human species, a fact of that species alone, but it is above all the secret aspect, impenetrable and hidden. Crime hides, and by far the most terrifying things are those which elude us. — Georges Bataille

Normally, we allow enthusiasm to elude us when we are involved in such mundane activities, those that have no importance at all in the overall scale of our existence. We lose our enthusiasm because of the small and unavoidable defeats we suffer during the good fight. And since we don't realize that enthusiasm is a major strength, able to help us win the ultimate victory, we let it dribble through our fingers; we do this without recognizing that we are letting the true meaning of our lives escape us. We blame the world for our boredom and for our losses, and we forget that it was we ourselves who allowed this enchanting power, which justifies everything, to diminish
the manifestation of agape in the form of enthusiasm. — Paulo Coelho

Happiness eludes us if we run after it. — Mahatma Gandhi

We may know ourselves, and yet even with all the efforts we make, we do not know ourselves. We know our fellowman, and yet we do not know him, because we are not a thing, and our fellowman is not a thing. The further we reach into the depths of our being, on someone else's being, the more the goal of knowledge eludes us. — Erich Fromm

As long as one people sit on another and are deaf to their cry, so long will understanding and peace elude all of us. — Chinua Achebe

Even though the discples were not aware of it, the presence was with them while they were reviewing the scriptures together on the road. Henceforth, we will catch only a fleeting glimpse of it
in the study of sacred writings, in other human beings, in liturgy, and in communion with strangers. But these moments remain us that our fellow men and women are themselves sacred; there is something about them taht is worthy of absolute reverence, is in the last resort mysterious, and we will always elude us. — Karen Armstrong

In 50 years - or 20 years, or 200 years - our current epistemic horizon (the Big Bang, roughly) may look as parochial as the horizon Newton had to settle for in his day, but no doubt there will still be good questions whose answers elude us. — Daniel Dennett

Freedom, peace, and inner joy will continue to elude us until we become aware of our real truth, without hiding ourselves or being ashamed of what we are. — Lynn Grabhorn

My good friend, if, when we were once out of this fight, we could escape old age and death thenceforward and for ever, I should neither press forward myself nor bid you do so, but death in ten thousand shapes hangs ever over our heads, and no man can elude him; therefore let us go forward and either win glory for ourselves, or yield it to another. — Homer

Will it be here that we shall find a place which will not elude us, or which if it remains does not exert on us a culpable attraction? Or must we, leaning over the deck and watching the shores glide by, move forever onward? — Andre Gide

I believe profoundly in the possibilities of democracy, but democracy needs to be emancipated from capitalism. As long as we inhabit a capitalist democracy, a future of racial equality, gender equality, economic equality will elude us. — Angela Davis

We don't have to go in search of our mission or purpose. The more we search for it, the more it will elude us. We just have to be ourselves and find our joy in the present moment or do what calls us in the present moment and our mission will unfold. — Anita Moorjani

If he had but a little more brains, she thought to herself, I might make something of him; but she never let him perceive the opinion she had of him; listened with indefatigable complacency to his stories of the stable and the mess; laughed at all his jokes...When he came home, she was alert and happy; when he went out she pressed him to go; when he stayed at home, she played and sang for him, made him good drinks, superintended his dinner, warmed his slippers, and steeped his soul in comfort. The best of women {I have heard my grandmother say) are hypocrites. We don't know how much they hide from us: how watchful they are when they seem most artless and confidential: how often those frank smile which they wear so easily are traps to cajole or elude or disarm--I don't mean in your mere coquettes, but your domestic models and paragons of female virute. — William Makepeace Thackeray

All that is best for us comes of itself into our hands-but if we strive to overtake it, it perpetually eludes us. — Ananda Coomaraswamy

It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us. — Norman Maclean

If we try to hold on to our partial glimpses of the divine, we cut it down to our own size and close our minds. Like it or nor, our human experience of anything or anybody is always incomplete: there is usually something that eludes us, some portion of experience that evades our grasp. — Karen Armstrong

If wisdom in government eludes us, perhaps courage could substitute-the moral courage to terminate mistakes. — Barbara Tuchman

It is the familiar that usually eludes us in life. What is before our nose is what we see last. — William Barrett

What eludes logic is the most precious element in us, and one can draw nothing from a syllogism that the mind has not put there in advance. — Andre Gide

Meanwhile,
our loneliness,
upon which so many laws are based,
continues to consume everything.
Suddenly,
regardless of what the gods say,
the present remains uninhabitable,
the past unforgiving of the harm it's seen,
while
the future remains translucent
and unambiguous
in its desire to elude us. — Philip Schultz

Indeed, the direction of the future is only there in order to elude us. — Georges Bataille

And so when we talk about intangible values remember that they cannot be separated from the others. The conservation of waters, forests, soils, and wildlife are all involved with the conservation of the human spirit. The goal we all strive toward is happiness, contentment, the dignity of the individual, and the good life. This goal will elude us forever if we forget the importance of the intangibles. — Sigurd F. Olson

Although computer-generated artificial intelligence eludes us, artificial stupidity has been perfected. — P. J. O'Rourke

In the heat of the moment, rational thinking tends to elude us. — Carlos Wallace

The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer: as perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to discover larger portions of it. Thus the observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy, and meets us at every turn, in spite of our endeavours to elude or avoid it. — David Hume

Our history consists of the various ways we find to elude the traps that open endlessly before us. — Roberto Bolano