Impossible And Possible Quotes & Sayings

The entire history of mankind is problem solving, or science fiction swallowing ideas, digesting them, and excreting formulas for survival. You can't have one without the other. No fantasy, no reality. No studies concerning loss, no gain. No imagination, no will. No impossible dreams: No possible solutions. — Ray Bradbury

You can believe in Fung Shui if you want, but ultimately people control their own fate. The most important thing is to improve yourself and give it your best. Then many things previously thought to be impossible will become possible. — Li Ka-shing

ALL KNOWLEDGE is possible for anyone - and the Cosmos gives it to him who asks, but all information is impossible. — Walter Russell

When I saw you in the hall with Darian," he says at last, "I felt more angry than I've felt in a long time. I was angry and . . . and afraid, that you wanted to be there, that you wanted him touching you. In that one look, I felt more than I've ever felt with Caspida. Zahra, I think you're right - love isn't a choice. If I could choose to love Caspida, maybe this would all be going differently, but I don't think that's possible. Not anymore."
All the smoke inside me sinks as I stare at him. "What are you saying?"
He turns and meets my gaze squarely. As much I want to, I find it impossible to look away. The intensity of his copper gaze holds me entranced.
"I think you know," he says softly. "Or am I the only one who feels it? — Jessica Khoury

We must allow ourselves to think, we must dare to think, even though we fail. It is in the nature of things that we always fail, because we suddenly find it impossible to order our thoughts, because the process of thinking requires us to consider every thought there is, every possible thought. Fundamentally we have always failed, like all the others, whoever they were, even the greatest minds. At some point, they suddenly failed and their system collapsed, as is proved by their writings, which we admire because they venture farthest into failure. To think is to fail, I thought. — Thomas Bernhard

Possible things aren't worth much, it's those crazy impossible things that keep us passionate and alive. — Bob Beaudine

I've gone to work, I've raised a child, and I've spent 30 years trying to better the lives of children and families. But I often return to one thing I said way back then - that politics is the art of making possible what appears to be impossible. — Hillary Clinton

It was a night of impossible things, and he fought to stay awake, to be conscious and alert for as long as possible, to enjoy and repeat to himself everything that had happened to him, a lifetime's worth of wishes coming true in a few brief hours. — Hanya Yanagihara

It is possible to lead several lives at once. In fact, it is impossible not to. Sometimes these lives overlap and interact. It is busy work living them and it requires stamina that a singular life doesn't need. Sometimes these lives live peaceably in the house of the body. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they grouse and bicker and storm upstairs and shout from windows and don't take out the trash. Some other times, these lives, these several lives, each indulge several lives of their own. And those lives, like rabbits or rodents, multiply, make children of themselves. And those child lives birth others. This is when a woman ceases leading her own life. This is when the lives start leading her. — Jill Alexander Essbaum

A conviction borne of God amply possesses the potency and power to brazenly reach beyond the possible in order to topple the impossible. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

People do it all the time
assume that they "know" what's going on in someone else's head. That's impossible. And to think it's possible is a mistake. A really big mistake. A life-ruining one if you're not careful. — Jennifer Brown

you can't help but feel uncomfortable," because it becomes clear that fear of failure "keeps us from attempting great things . . . and life gets dull. Amazing things stop happening." But if you can get past that fear, Dugan said, "Impossible things suddenly become possible. — Warren Berger

Scientists have, in fact, assembled long lists of scores of such "happy cosmic accidents." When faced with this imposing list, it's shocking to find how many of the familiar constants of the universe lie within a very narrow band that makes life possible. If a single one of these accidents were altered, stars would never form, the universe would fly apart, DNA would not exist, life as we know it would be impossible, Earth would flip over or freeze, and so on. — Michio Kaku

Claiming "the budget can't allow it" reminds me of when you walk into a restaurant at a civilized hour like ten o'clock and they say "the kitchen is closed." For years I would hear this, and think, "damn, just a little too late, oh well, thank you, I guess it's Denny's again."
And then one day it hit me: kitchens don't close. Just as at home, at a certain point in the night, I stop using the kitchen
but at three in the morning, if I want to, I still have the ability to go downstairs and "re-open" the kitchen by turning on the stove and opening the refrigerator! Restaurants are not banks; at the stroke of ten an enormous airlock doesn't seal off the kitchen and render the preparation of food an utter impossibility./ No, kitchens can open and budgets are what certain people say they are. — Bill Maher

I wouldn't say anything is impossible. I think that everything is possible as long as you put your mind to it and put the work and time into it. — Michael Phelps

The knock would come at the door; I'd open, with relief, desire. He was so momentary, so condensed. And yet there seemed no end to him. We would lie in those afternoon beds, afterwards, hands on each other, talking it over. Possible, impossible. What could be done? We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy? But — Margaret Atwood

I like the immaterial world. I like to live among thoughts and images of the past and the possible, and even of the impossible, now and then. — Thomas Love Peacock

What's going on outside, Ravic?" "Nothing new, Kate. The world goes on eagerly preparing for suicide and at the same time deluding itself about what it's doing." "Will there be war?" "Everyone knows that there will be war. What one does not yet know is when. Everyone expects a miracle." Ravic smiled. "Never before have I seen so many politicians who believe in miracles as at present in France and England. And never so few as in Germany." She remained lying silent for a while. "To think that it should be possible - " she said then. "Yes - it seems so impossible that it will happen some day. Just because one considers it so impossible and doesn't protect oneself against it. — Erich Maria Remarque

Immortality: "It is impossible to be conscious of being unconscious."

It is not possible to be aware of being unconscious from your own perspective. You cannot be aware of not being aware. You can be less aware/conscious, such as when you are asleep, but not completely unconscious (dead), because time would stand still for you. A billion years could pass, and you would not know it.

How do you know you are dead? It is not possible to be aware of any gaps in life; it is continuous and never-ending from your own point of view.

Death and birth are a continuous event from your own perspective.

You will die physically, but you will be born into a new physical body. Being born happens, or you would not be here now. You were born into this life. It is what we know happens. There is no evidence anything else happens. True or false? — Michael Smith

But there's a world beyond what we can see and touch, and that world lives by its own laws. What may be impossible in this very ordinary world is very possible there, and sometimes the boundaries between the two worlds disappear, and then who can say what is possible and impossible? — David Eddings

A symptom of the revolution: When we state something is impossible in theory, but then change our minds when we discover that it is possible in practice. — Seth Godin

Knowledge and personality make doubt possible, but knowledge is also the cure of doubt; and when we get a full and adequate sense of personality we are lifted into a region where doubt is almost impossible, for no man can know himself as he is, and all fullness of his nature, without also knowing God. — Thornton T. Munger

Objectivity is impossible and it is also undesirable. That is, if it were possible it would be undesirable, because if you have any kind of a social aim, if you think history should serve society in some way; should serve the progress of the human race; should serve justice in some way, then it requires that you make your selection on the basis of what you think will advance causes of humanity. — Howard Zinn

True Love comes into being when you practice the highest possible love in the lowest possible place. There you deal with impossible people and try to raise them into the highest possible people by showing them the highest possible standard. There is where True Love can be found and can start. — Sun Myung Moon

There are only two possible explanations as to how life arose: Spontaneous generation arising to evolution or a supernatural creative act of God ... There is no other possibility. Spontaneous generation was scientifically disproved 120 years ago by Louis Pasteur and others, but that just leaves us with only one other possibility ... that life came as a supernatural act of creation by God, but I can't accept that philosophy because I do not want to believe in God. Therefore I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation leading to evolution. — George Wald

Over time I've learned, surprisingly, that it's tremendously hard to get teams to be super ambitious. It turns out most people haven't been educated in this kind of moonshot thinking. They tend to assume that things are impossible, rather than starting from real-world physics and figuring out what's actually possible. It's why we've put so much energy into hiring independent thinkers at Google, and setting big goals. Because if you hire the right people and have big enough dreams, you'll usually get there. And even if you fail, you'll probably learn something important. It's also true that many companies get comfortable doing what they have always done, with a few incremental changes. This kind of incrementalism leads to irrelevance over time, especially in technology, because change tends to be revolutionary not evolutionary. So you need to force yourself to place big bets on the future. — Eric Schmidt

But this book is about something else: what goes on in the lives of real people when the industrial economy goes south. It's about reacting to bad circumstances in the worst way possible. It's about a culture that increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it. The problems that I saw at the tile warehouse run far deeper than macroeconomic trends and policy. too many young men immune to hard work. Good jobs impossible to fill for any length of time. And a young man [one of Vance's co-workers] with every reason to work - a wife-to-be to support and a baby on the way - carelessly tossing aside a good job with excellent health insurance. More troublingly, when it was all over, he thought something had been done to him. There is a lack of agency here - a feeling that you have little control over your life and a willingness to blame everyone but yourself. This is distinct from the larger economic landscape of modern America. — J.D. Vance

Hence, (25) since every finite body is exhausted by the repeated abstraction of a finite body, it seems obviously to follow that everything cannot subsist in everything else. For let flesh be extracted from water and again more flesh be produced from the remainder by repeating the process of separation: then, even though the quantity separated out will continually decrease, still it will not fall below a certain magnitude. If, (30) therefore, the process comes to an end, everything will not be in everything else (for there will be no flesh in the remaining water); if on the other hand it does not, and further extraction is always possible, there will be an infinite multitude of finite equal particles in a finite quantity - which is impossible. — Aristotle.

The pursuit of what is right, honorable, and true is costly, but the sacrifice is worth it. None of this is even remotely possible without God's help. We don't have what it takes to live the kind of life that makes a difference in the here and now. But God does. In and through Him, we are able to do the impossible as well as the right thing when it's the right thing to do. Living this kind of life leaves a God-honoring legacy — Erin Kelly

It was a painful week, swung between doubt and hope. I knew that tension well. It is just the same before I begin to write a book or a poem. It is the tension of being on the brink of a major commitment, and not being quite sure whether one has it in one to carry it through - the stage where the impossible almost exactly balances the possible, and a thistledown may shift the scales one way or another. — May Sarton

The difference between possible and impossible is merely a man's determination — Anonymous

The use of violence is justified only under a tyranny which makes reforms without violence impossible, and should have only one aim, that is, to bring about a state of affairs which makes reforms without violence possible. — Karl Popper

Cultivate an optimistic mind, use your imagination, always consider alternatives, and dare to believe that you can make possible what others think is impossible. — Rodolfo Costa

We need an inclusive world not merely because of the fear of our survival. We need it because hope is feasible. We need it because dreaming is good and aspirations are essential. We need it because every citizen of the earth can become a participant. We need it because the tomorrow is ours. We need it because the impossible is often possible." (Sundeep Waslekar, Nelson Mandela Benefit Speech, Dubai, December 16, 2005) — Sundeep Waslekar

Struggle toward the capital-T Truth, but recognize that the task is impossible - or that if a correct answer is possible, verification certainly is impossible.
In the end, it cannot be doubted that each of us can see only a part of the picture. The doctor sees one, the patient another, the engineer a third, the economist a fourth, the pearl diver a fifth, the alcoholic a sixth, the cable guy a seventh, the sheep farmer an eighth, the Indian beggar a ninth, the pastor a tenth. Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete. And Truth comes somewhere above all of them, where, as at the end of that Sunday's reading;
the sower and reaper can rejoice together. For here the saying is verified that "One sows and another reaps." I sent you to reap what you have not worked for; others have done the work, and you are sharing the fruits of their work. — Paul Kalanithi

If non-linear leaps in intelligence and ability are possible, why haven't these effects been observed in our schools? I believe the answer lies in the profound inertia of human thought: when an entire society believes something is impossible, it suppresses, by its very way of life, the evidence that would contradict that belief. — John Mighton

That life isn't fair? Yeah, that, of course. But I also learned that it's possible to go on, no matter how impossible it seems, and that in time, the grief ... lessens. — Nicholas Sparks

But time does not disclose its secrets to humankind, and the possible turned impossible. — Radwa Ashour

So when somebody asks me to make a decision about a situation, I don't offer a solution, I ask a question: What are our options? Give me the good, give me the bad, give me the pretty, give me the ugly, give me the impossible, give me the possible, give me the convenient, give me the inconvenient. Give me the options. All I want are options. And once I have all the options before me, then I comfortably and confidently make my decision. — Jim Rohn

There is a thin line between the impossible and the possible - that is determination. — Ogwo David Emenike

Everything seems impossible
And everything seems possible. — Dejan Stojanovic

We can see, now, that the social background of the Empire makes wars of conquest impossible for it. Under weak Emperors, it is torn apart by generals competing for a worthless and surely death-bringing throne. Under strong Emperors, the Empire is frozen into a paralytic rigor in which disintegration apparently ceases for the moment, but only at the sacrifice of all possible growth. — Isaac Asimov

This illness made it impossible for me to give my best effort to our audience, but now that it's been identified, I'm looking forward to a complete, quick recovery and to get back out there with John as soon as possible. — Daryl Hall

Yet the women's misery is socually invisible. Despite our education and accomplishments, we are expected to keep our mouths shut and accept our infertility treatments as consolation prize. Our jobs are supposed to be our highest priority. We are expected to overlook the connection between our disappointment, the impossible ideology of equality, and the contraception that makes that ideology appear to be possible. — Jennifer Morse

His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. There is no limit to His power.
If you choose to say, 'God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,' you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prifex to them the two other words, 'God can.'
It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God. — C.S. Lewis

A little-known fact: Next to nothing is impossible. Actually, nothing itself is impossible. Nothing is the absence of all things. But that absence is, itself, a thing, and - well, the logic's so screwy you could uncork a wine bottle with it.
The point is, most of the stuff people say is impossible is not at all impossible. Starting a car that's already started, that's im- possible. Traveling to where you are is impossible. Sleeping through Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" is impossible (and so is listening to it).
And that's the list. Taking a neon-blue dump? Well... You'd think, but really it's just improbable.
To sum up a wildly unmanageable concept: most things we call impossible are actually just things that require more effort than we're willing to give. And even when it comes to impossible, it's really only the Rick Astley that nobody will try if they're given a few slices of pizza. — Daniel Younger

Without the letters of condolence, telegrams of congratulations, and occasional postcards, the friendship of a separated friend is not a social reality. It has no existence without the rites of friendship. Social rituals create a reality which would be nothing without them. It is not too much to say that ritual is more to society than words are to thought. For it is very possible to know something and then find words for it. But it is impossible to have social relations without symbolic acts. — Mary Douglas

When Henry Ford decided to produce his famous V-8 motor, he chose to build an engine with the entire eight cylinders cast in one block, and instructed his engineers to produce a design for the engine. The design was placed on paper, but the engineers agreed, to a man, that it was simply impossible to cast an eight-cylinder engine-block in one piece.
Ford replied,'Produce it anyway. — Henry Ford

God is by definition the holder of all possible knowledge, it would be impossible for him to have faith in anything. Faith,
then, is built upon ignorance and hope. — Steve Allen

In April the true labor began. He rose before dawn and was at work in the trees as the sun rose. On a ladder, with his shears, maneuvering into the farthest reaches of the understories. At times whistling, at times muttering to himself. But mostly silent. Always working in that calm, deliberate way that made it impossible to imagine that he would ever complete the row, not to mention the entire orchard, in time. How could he afford to be so careful? It's that it was just possible, but barely. The design, the organization he achieved in the rows, in each tree, pleased him like nothing else. It was his passion, his whole life. — Amanda Coplin

It may be said of Socialism, therefore, that its friends recommended it as increasing equality, while its foes resisted it as decreasing liberty ... .The compromise eventually made was one of the most interesting and even curious cases in history. It was decided to do everything that had ever been denounced in Socialism, and nothing that had ever been desired in it ... we proceeded to prove that it was possible to sacrifice liberty without gaining equality ... .In short, people decided that it was impossible to achieve any of the good of Socialism, but they comforted themselves by achieving all the bad. — G.K. Chesterton

We serve a promise-keeping God, a God of miracles. My vigorous attempts to save myself, like Herod's, will never succeed. But what is impossible for man, is always possible with God. When it seems as though all is lost and God asks, "Can these bones live?" let my answer be, "Sovereign Lord, you know. — Lynn Austin

You know, my boy, he said, it's impossible to love men such as they are. And yet we must. So try to do good to men by doing violence to your feelings, holding your nose, and shutting your eyes, especially shutting your eyes. Endure their villainy without anger, as much as possible; try to remember that you're a man too. For, if you're even a little above average intelligence, you'll have the propensity to judge people severely. Men are vile by nature and they'd rather love out of fear. Don't give in to such love: despise it always. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The secret of tango is in this moment of improvisation that happens between step and step. It is to make the impossible thing possible: to dance silence. — Carlos Gavito

Most of the crackpot papers which are submitted to The Physical Review are rejected, not because it is impossible to understand them, but because it is possible. Those which are impossible to understand are usually published. When the great innovation appears, it will almost certainly be in a muddled, incomplete and confusing form. To the discoverer himself it will be only half-understood; to everybody else it will be a mystery. For any speculation which does not at first glance look crazy, there is no hope. — Freeman Dyson

There are only two roles of destiny ; make an impossible thing to be possible and make something possible to be impossible — Andry Lavigne

I wanted to tell her everything, maybe if I'd been able to, we could have lived differently, maybe I'd be there with you now instead of here. Maybe... if I'd said, 'I'm so afraid of losing something I love that I refuse to love anything,' maybe that would have made the impossible possible. Maybe, but I couldn't do it, I had buried too much too deeply inside me. And here I am, instead of there. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Everything is possible and impossible at the same time; this is what we live with every time. — Surajit Sarkar

When you take action, particularly bold action, the boundaries of what you believe to be possible (your belief system) expand. Which, in turn, gives you the capacity to consider new ideas, new possibilities, and new concepts that you previously thought to be impossible. — Robert Ringer

Be strong and kill yourself with the sword of hate and love, then you will not hear the insults and abuse which the enemies of the Church throw at you. Your eyes will not see anything which seems impossible, or the sufferings which may follow, but only the light of faith, and in that light everything is possible; and remember God never lays greater burdens on us than we can bear. — Catherine Of Siena

The progress of history is to take the impossible and turn it into the possible. — Ralph Nader

But it is not at all certain that this superiority of the many over the sound few is possible in the case of every people and every large number. There are some whom it would be impossible: otherwise the theory would apply to wild animals- and yet some men are hardly any better than wild animals. — Aristotle.

If it were possible for any nation to fathom another people's bitter experience through a book, how much easier its future fate would become and how many calamities and mistakes it could avoid. But it is very difficult. There always is this fallacious belief: 'It would not be the same here; here such things are impossible.'

Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere on earth. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

A critic may reject some miracle stories as legendary, and not others, with no inconsistency at all for the simple reason that even if one holds miracles to be possible, one need not hold legends to be impossible! There are other factors, literary and historiographical ones, that might lead a critic to conclude that even though miracles can happen, it does not appear that in this or that case they did. — Robert M. Price

Authentic leaders inspire us to engage with each other in powerful dreams that make the impossible possible. We are called on to persevere despite failure and pursue a purpose beyond the paycheck. This is at the core of innovation. It requires aligning the dreams of each individual to the broader dream of the organization. — Henna Inam

Reasonably speaking, we can see the cross as entirely possible. But in considering Easter, we see an empty tomb as entirely impossible. And is it possible that God had to do the impossible to finally get our attention? — Craig D. Lounsbrough

The fear of failure, the fear of being imperfect (perfectionism), and the fear of impossible expectations (being overwhelmed) that prevent us from acting on and attaining humanly possible goals and relationships. — Neil A. Fiore

So my antagonist said, "Is it impossible that there are flying saucers? Can you prove that it's impossible?" "No", I said, "I can't prove it's impossible. It's just very unlikely". At that he said, "You are very unscientific. If you can't prove it impossible then how can you say that it's unlikely?" But that is the way that is scientific. It is scientific only to say what is more likely and what less likely, and not to be proving all the time the possible and impossible. — Richard Feynman

We create the world that we perceive, not because there is no reality outside our heads, but because we select and edit the reality we see to conform to our beliefs about what sort of world we live in. The man who believes that the resources of the world are infinite, for example, or that if something is good for you then the more of it the better, will not be able to see his errors, because he will not look for evidence of them. For a man to change the basic beliefs that determine his perception - his epistemological premises - he must first become aware that reality is not necessarily as he believes it to be. Sometimes the dissonance between reality and false beliefs reaches a point when it becomes impossible to avoid the awareness that the world no longer makes sense. Only then is it possible for the mind to consider radically different ideas and perceptions. — Gregory Bateson

Anything you think of doing, however insignificant, should be done immediately. Spur yourself on and carry it through without becoming discouraged. If this becomes an ingrained habit, things you thought were impossible will become possible, and closed doors will open, as you will discover in many ways. — Shinichi Suzuki

Let me also remind you that zero, like all of mathematics, is fictional and an idealization. It is impossible to reach absolute zero temperature or to get perfect vacuum. Luckily, mathematics is a fairyland where ideal and fictional objects are possible. — Doron Zeilberger

If something is difficult for you to accomplish, do not then think it impossible for any human being; rather, if it is humanly possible and corresponds to human nature, know that it is attainable by you as well. — Marcus Aurelius

Ants are a terrific analogy for the route to success. They will go over, under, around, or through whatever gets in their way. They never stop moving, and neither should you. Take the word impossible and turn it into I'm Possible. — Honoree Corder

Always be prepared if someone asks you what you want for Christmas. Give brand names, the store that sells the merchandise, and, if possible, exact model numbers so they can't go wrong. Be the type who's impossible to buy for, so they have to get what you want. — John Waters

It would be indeed unusual if it turned out that the set of orders that our mind is able to construct and accept, having as it does a deep sense of "understanding the essence of things," matches precisely the set of all possible orders to be detected in the Universe as a whole. We should admit that this is not impossible, yet it does seem highly improbable. This way of thinking, so modest in its assessment of our abilities, is probably the only way recommended, given our lack of knowledge, because we are not aware of our limitations. — Stanislaw Lem

There is nothing small about our God, and when we understand God we will find out that there ought not to be anything small about us. We must have an enlargement of our conception of God, then we will know that we have come to a place where all things are possible, for our God is an omnipotent God for impossible positions. — Smith Wigglesworth

Like stones rolling down hills, fair ideas reach their objectives despite all obstacles and barriers. It may be possible to speed or hinder them, but impossible to stop them. — Jose Marti

Saturn takes twenty-nine years to return to the point in the sky where it was at the moment we were born. Until that happens, everything seems possible, our dreams can come true, and any walls hemming us in can still be broken down. When Saturn completes this cycle, it puts an end to any romanticism. Choices become definitive and it's nearly impossible to change direction. — Paulo Coelho

The fundamental thing is to drop the split, to become one. Be one, and then all else is possible; even the impossible is possible. — Rajneesh

What's impossible to all humanity may be possible to the metaphysics and physiology of angels. — Joseph Glanvill

Do not think that what is hard for you to master is humanly impossible; and if it is humanly possible, consider it to be within your reach. — Marcus Aurelius

It had been impossible to decide how they were going to do it, because the goblin rarely left Harry, Ron, and Hermione alone together for more than five minutes at a time: "He could give my mother lessons," growled Ron, as the goblin's long fingers kept appearing around the edges of doors. With Bill's warning in mind, Harry could not help suspecting that Griphook was on the watch for possible skullduggery. Hermione disapproved so heartily of the planned double-cross that Harry had given up attempting to pick her brains on how best to do it; Ron, on the rare occasion that they had been able to snatch a few Griphook-free moments, had come up with nothing better than "We'll just have to wing it, mate. — J.K. Rowling

It should not be physically possible to get from the banks of the Pepani River to Wyoming in less than two days, because mentally and emotionally it is impossible. — Alexandra Fuller

All that the State need do, and can do, in order to preserve the monetary system undisturbed, is to refrain from such intervention. That is the essence of the monetary theory of the classical economists and their immediate successors, the Currency School. It is possible to refine and amplify this doctrine with the aid of the modern subjective theory; but it is impossible to overthrow it, and impossible to put anything else in its place. Those who are able to forget it only show that they are unable to think as economists. — Ludwig Von Mises

For me, the present agony of departure, the silent terror of leaving a place known to me if hated, the well-nigh impossible task of conquering the fear that possessed me. Not the fear of that hasty look round, the sudden plunge headlong and the giddy shock of hard, cold water, the river itself entering my lungs, rising in my throat, tossing me upon my back with my arms outflung - I could hear the sob strangled in my chest and the blood leave me - but fear of the certain knowledge that there was no returning, no possible means of escape, and no other thing beyond. — Daphne Du Maurier

Never promise to do the possible. Anyone could do the possible. You should promise to do the impossible, because sometimes the impossible was possible, if you could find the right way, and at least you could often extend the limits of the possible. And if you failed, well, it had been impossible. — Terry Pratchett

Successions are explained by historical narratives that indicate the significance of the events and the forces-human and otherwise-which influenced them. While some causal forces operate continuously, others influence the sequence of events only at particular points in time. For example, it makes no sense to say that Peter the Great caused the cold war; he had been dead for centuries before it started, and any direct causal influence would be impossible. However, Peter the Great took actions that set into motion historical events that promoted the unification and modernization of Russia. Without Peter, it is possible that Russia would have developed differently and that the cold war would not have occurred. Peter's actions exerted an influence in this case, but it is not the type of direct, continuous causal influence that most variable-based social science theories rely on. — Marshall Scott Poole

Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible. - Saint Francis of Assisi — Joyce Meyer

For a few seconds they looked silently into each other's eyes, and the distant and impossible suddenly became near, possible, and inevitable. — Leo Tolstoy

Is it possible that evil is never total, that its victory, no matter how overwhelming, is never absolute?
Consider this fallen man. He sought without remorse to shatter the mind of a fellow human being; and exploited, to do so, an entirely blameless woman, at least partly owing to his own impossible and voyeuristic desire for her. Yet this same man has risked death, with scarcely any hesitation, in a foolhardy rescue attempt. — Salman Rushdie

For you it is possible to do anything; the only thing impossible for you to do is to do wrong, inasmuch as you are knowledge and justice and love. — Harold Percival

At that point in their lives, everything is clear an everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives. But , as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their destiny. — Paulo Coelho

It always has been and always will be the same. The old folk of our grandfathers' young days sang a song bearing exactly the same burden; and the young folk of to-day will drone out precisely similar nonsense for the aggravation of the next generation. "Oh, give me back the good old days of fifty years ago," has been the cry ever since Adam's fifty-first birthday. Take up the literature of 1835, and you will find the poets and novelists asking for the same impossible gift as did the German Minnesingers long before them and the old Norse Saga writers long before that. And for the same thing sighed the early prophets and the philosophers of ancient Greece. From all accounts, the world has been getting worse and worse ever since it was created. All I can say is that it must have been a remarkably delightful place when it was first opened to the public, for it is very pleasant even now if you only keep as much as possible in the sunshine and take the rain good-temperedly. — Jerome K. Jerome

Anytime new insight replaces an old assumption or a fossilized perception is the spring. New understandings sprout, new tolerances appear, and new curiosity draws you to previously dark places. Just as the sun shines earlier and longer in the spring, changes that seemed impossible appear to be possible with each new insight into your own health. — Gary Zukav

It is obvious that he has set himself an impossible task; slow and gradual transformations are possible, they even happen quite frequently, but they do not lead us to a new life; they only take us from one old life to another old life. The new life always makes itself known abruptly, without any approach or preparation, and it keeps its strange enigmatical character in the midst of events whose course has been determined by the old laws. — Lev Shestov

Novel-writing has in one respect an affinity to the drama - that time and distance are required to soften for use the harsher features that may be exhibited from real life; that it was almost impossible to bring forward events without touching on their causes; and that any tendency to political discussion, however liberal or applicable, was not to be tolerated in a sort of work which people took up with no other design than to be amused at the least possible expence of thought. — Charlotte Turner Smith

Now, I do say, "It's possible. You might be the first. I'm not saying it's impossible, but the odds are very much against you." All great poets have been great readers and the way to learn your craft in poetry is by reading other poetry and by letting it guide you. — Edward Hirsch

We need to know that our limits do not define our limitations. And an empty tomb does exactly that. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

A proper record shop reminds us why we got into this in the first place - a place to be reminded of old friends, still in their spots on the shelves, a source of unexpected magic and lucid memories - a place that reminds us that music is more than dumb file sharing and the management of dead data by faceless sociopathic corporations, but a storehouse of dreams, both possible and impossible. — Max Richter

The healing power of charity, bestowed by our Father and made possible by the Atonement of Jesus Christ, can make it virtually impossible for us even to feel emotions common to the natural man. — Sheri Dew