Illusive Quotes & Sayings

Only later did he remember his pride-and the shattering cost of an illusive sense of freedom. — Francine Rivers

The world being illusive, one must be deluded in some way if one is to triumph in it. — William Butler Yeats

My cultural roots are something illusive. — Ang Lee

If challenges within this Global Economic sphere are not addressed, we risk having the same populace that celebrated the collapse of communism, or their future generations, rising up to demand that we go back to communistic approaches to the economy. Rising national debt of global powers, the growing gap between the rich and poor and the ripple effects of related threats, remain a challenge for the global economy. Will you be one of the leaders who have a unique mission with part of the illusive answers? Will you help more people rise to a better educational and economic status? — Archibald Marwizi

Marketing's illusive promise is that this one product will change your life, make you feel more sexy, satisfy all your heart's desires. — L.G. Durand

Light is my inspiration. My photographic images search for dimensions that words cannot touch- the result of intense responses to personal experiences. I do not wish to "record," but rather to touch upon the illusive meanings which I perceive and try to comprehend in this limitless universe. — Ruth Bernhard

Like an unfinished symphony, her story played on my mind for most of my life. It would rock to the tune of the passage of time, an adagio of high notes, low notes an illusive movements. Then when I least expected it, I happened upon the missing notes in the life of Charlotte Howe Taylor. — Sally Armstrong

How lovely it is that there are words and sounds. Are not words and sounds rainbows and illusive bridges between things which are eternally apart? — Friedrich Nietzsche

The seen, the known, dissolve in iridescence, become illusive flesh of light that was not, was, forever is. — Kasie West

IT SEEMS DIFFICULT TO IMAGINE, but there was once a time when human beings did not feel the need to share their every waking moment with hundreds of millions, even billions, of complete and utter strangers. If one went to a shopping mall to purchase an article of clothing, one did not post minute-by-minute details on a social networking site; and if one made a fool of oneself at a party, one did not leave a photographic record of the sorry episode in a digital scrapbook that would survive for all eternity. But now, in the era of lost inhibition, it seemed no detail of life was too mundane or humiliating to share. In the online age, it was more important to live out loud than to live with dignity. Internet followers were more treasured than flesh-and-blood friends, for they held the illusive promise of celebrity, even immortality. Were Descartes alive today, he might have written: I tweet, therefore I am. — Daniel Silva

There was something of the wildwood in the man who came and went illusive as moonlight moving through the branches. — Janet Lee Carey

all around an illusive reality promises dreams, just as it deviously robs us of moments to give us back only memories! — Marianthi Devaki

I find auditioning to be a very illusive process, where actors come in with this really big result with no process, so it's a lie already at work. — Adam Rapp

I keep some portion of my early gleam; Brokenly bright, like moonbeams on a river, It lights my life, a far illusive dream, Moves as I move, and leads me on forever. — John Townsend Trowbridge

All male friendships are essentially quixotic: they last only so long as each man is willing to polish the shaving-bowl helmet, climb on his donkey, and ride off after the other in pursuit of illusive glory and questionable adventure. — Michael Chabon

It is an inherent nature of life: Whenever success is in your reach, it tosses either an unexpected obstacle or an alluring offer, straight on your path. That unexpected manifestation, obstacle or offer, would either prompt you to press the panic button or distract your focus from your target. As you become busy dealing with the fresh situation, time, with its own flair, flies miles away from your reach, with the reward in offer. Those who endure, without getting disturbed by the obstacle or decoyed by the illusive offer, will reap the fruit. Others will flop, falling as victims to life's conspiracy. — Hari Parameshwar

Satan is the illusive manipulator. He prances and dances and drinks in the adulation of his worshippers as he glimmers and shimmers, displaying all that glitters and all that attracts the shallowness of man. — Billy Graham

Life, raw life, the kind we lead every day, whether it leads us into the past or the future, has the curious property of not seeming real enough. We have a need, however illusive, for a life that is more real than life. It lies in the imagination. Fiction would seem to be the way it is processed into reality. If this were not so we should have little excuse for art. Life, raw life, would be more than satisfactory in itself. But it seems to be the nature of man to transform - himself, if possible, and then the world around him - and the technique of this transformation is what we call art. — Wright Morris

David, I'll fly for you, if you'll love me!"
"Fly, then."
"I can't fly, but love me anyway."
"Poor wingless child!"
"Is it so hard to love me?"
"Do you think you are easy, my illusive possession? — Zelda Fitzgerald

How I preened at that, shamefully so in memory for, while I would have been put off by you calling me "hot" or a "babe" at my age, still having "it" - the illusive "it" factor that transcended looks or age was plausible.

From Prey. Middle-Aged Boys&Girls — Diane Bracuk

It's important to be true to the events, but the most important thing is to get to the essence of the experience. Not to be bogged down in an academic way by a notion of the truth. First of all, the truth is an illusive and spurious concept. — Mike Leigh

On the illusive "Monsieur Hortalez." When my friend Steven and I went looking for the building one afternoon, we came to the address at 47 rue Vieille-du-Temple and realized we had been there before. — Sarah Vowell

If you will observe, it doesn't take A man of giant mould to make A giant shadow on the wall; And he who in our daily sight Seems but a figure mean and small, Outlined in Fame's illusive light, May stalk, a silhouette sublime, Across the canvas of his time. — John Townsend Trowbridge

Enlightenment is illusive and can only be received by those who ask for it and by those who are worthy to receive it. Only then will you be shown the path. — Robert Palasciano

I could isolate, consciously, little. Everything seemed blurred, yellow-clouded, yielding nothing tangible. Her inept acrostics, maudlin evasions, theopathies - every recollection formed ripples of mysterious meaning. Everything seemed yellowly blurred, illusive, lost. — Vladimir Nabokov

Contrary to what most people believe, trust is not some soft, illusive quality that you either have or you don't; rather, trust is a pragmatic, tangible, actionable asset that you can create. — Stephen Covey

Studies demonstrate that as gaps are being closed between men and women - in access to education, in health, even in economic participation - the most difficult gap to close is in political participation. Somehow that sharing of raw power, political power, remains very illusive. — Melanne Verveer

This is our one and only chance at mortal life-here and now. The longer we live, the greater is our realization that it is brief. Opportunities come, and then they are gone. I believe that among the greatest lessons we are to learn in this short sojourn upon the earth are lessons that help us distinguish between what is important and what is not. I plead with you not to let those most important things pass you by. As you plan for that illusive, nonexistent future when you will have time to do all that you want to do. Instead, find you in the journey now. — Thomas S. Monson

Every artist who evolves a style does so from illusive elements that inhabit his or her visual storehouse. — Mary Carroll Nelson

Writing about memories is an elusive process. It often begins with a good intention: to convey the truth. What happens in reality is that we only write down what passes through the censors' eyes. The censors here are the ambient time and space, social and political conditions, and the psychological changers the writer herself. What one writes now is certainly not what actually happened. It is but a vague indicator of what might have happened, a mixture of illusive and contracted images, a dream, or an act conditioned by either a denial or a desire to see past events shaped by what is yearned for in the present. p. 153 — Haifa Zangana

There are not anywhere else so many ways of trickery, so many false lights, so many veils, so many guises, so many illusive deceits, as are practiced in every man's conscience in respect to his motives, thoughts, feelings, conduct, and character. — Henry Ward Beecher

Fame is an illusive thing - here today, gone tomorrow. The fickle, shallow mob raises its heroes to the pinnacle of approval today and hurls them into oblivion tomorrow at the slightest whim; cheers today, hisses tomorrow; utter forgetfulness in a few months. — Henry Miller

You can only carry the illusive personality in your mind until you realize the truth behind it, but the time you realize the truth, you just cannot hold the illusive self of yours, in the mind. — Roshan Sharma

Or maybe, and I like to hope it was this one, because the truth is more intricate and less attainable than I used to understand, a bright illusive place reached by twisting back roads as often as by straight avenues, and this was the closest I could come. — Tana French

The phonograph and kinetoscope may some day seize and perpetuate all save the magnetic touch, but that weird, illusive, indefinable yet wonderfully real power by which the orator subdues may never be caught by science or preserved for the cruel dissecting knife of the critic. — David Josiah Brewer

That pit of blackness that lies beneath us, everywhere ... the firmest substance of human happiness is but a thin crust spread over it, with just reality enough to bear up the illusive stage-scenery amid which we tread. It needs no earthquake to open the chasm. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Who are you? What is your distinct contribution? That is so valuable whether it gets you anything or not. Trophies? Doesn't matter. If you know you did it, that's what keeps you going, you know? Success is illusive. — Rodney Mullen

Modern society has never been about finding contentment in the basics; modern society is founded on the principle that happiness lies in having more. We are bred to keep up with the Jones' because he who dies with the most toys wins. If I only work a little bit harder, a little bit longer, I'll be able to afford that boat and then I'll finally be happy. The illusive concept of finding happiness in things is the gerbil wheel that perpetually powers capitalism. I had hiked 2,283 miles and now my eyes were too wide opened to want to get on the wheel. But what was the alternative? Being homeless? — Erin Miller

The use of drugs is not an effective means of facilitating real escape. It merely gives that erroneous and illusive impression. Well, illusive with an I and elusive with an E. At best, narcotics do no more than promote bonhomie and give you a temporary taste of what freedom might be like; and drugs take you into another sub-level of, or sub-culture in, the same old game. The same old game, but with additional consequences. And at worst, well ... suffice it to say that you really, really do not want to go there. — H.M. Forester

A novelist's chief desire is to be as unconscious as possible. He has to induce in himself a state of perpetual lethargy. He wants life to proceed with the utmost quiet and regularity. He wants to see the same faces, to read the same books, to do the same things day after day, month after month, while he is writing, so that nothing may break the illusion in which he is living - so that nothing may disturb or disquiet the mysterious nosings about, feelings around, darts, dashes, and sudden discoveries of that very shy and illusive spirit, the imagination. — Virginia Woolf

Deciding she couldn't really be bothered searching for the illusive closures, she was sitting quietly in bed when he returned.
He halted for a second. "I'm surprised to find that you obeyed an order."
"I'm not unreasonable ... so long as the order is reasonable. — Nalini Singh

I may plan to make Christ the center of Christmas, but when I wait until December to focus on celebrating His birthday, I become entangled in Christmas lights, holiday baking, and festive engagements, often wondering if I've experienced the illusive "true meaning" of Christmas. — Ann Marie Stewart