Quotes & Sayings About Trying To Do The Impossible

Levin felt himself to blame, and could not set things right. He felt that if they had both not kept up appearances, but had spoken, as it is called, from the heart - that is to say, had said only just what they were thinking and feeling - they would simply have looked into each other's faces, and Konstantin could only have said, "You're dying, you're dying!" and Nikolay could only have answered, "I know I'm dying, but I'm afraid, I'm afraid, I'm afraid!" And they could have said nothing more, if they had said only what was in their hearts. But life like that was impossible, and so Konstantin tried to do what he had been trying to do all his life, and never could learn to do, though, as far as he could observe, many people knew so well how to do it, and without it there was no living at all. He tried to say what he was not thinking, but he felt continually that it had a ring of falsehood, that his brother detected him in it, and was exasperated at it. — Leo Tolstoy

The reason I stopped modeling was because I was not pleased with trying to portray something that is impossible to reach. Even when I do photo shoots now for films, I am just not interested in trying to look my best all the time anymore. That pursuit of an impossible perfection seems ridiculous to me now. I would rather show my vulnerabilities or my doubts than try to be something that no one is. — Diane Kruger

Even though you try to put people under control, it is impossible. You cannot do it. The best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous. Then they will be in control in a wider sense. To give your sheep or cow a large spacious meadow is the way to control him. So it is with people: first let them do what they want, and watch them. This is the best policy. To ignore them is not good. That is the worst policy. The second worst is trying to control them. The best one is to watch them, just to watch them, without trying to control them. — Shunryu Suzuki

So often we try to develop Christian character and conduct without taking the time to develop God-centered devotion. We try to please God without taking the time to walk with Him and develop a relationship with Him. This is impossible to do. — Jerry Bridges

Most people are just too self-absorbed, well-meaning, and lazy to bother orchestrating Machiavellian plans to slight or insult us. It's more often a boring, complicated story of wrong assumptions, miscommunication, bad administration, and cover-ups - people trying, and mostly failing, to do the right thing, hurting each other not because that's their intention but because it's impossible to avoid. — Tim Kreider

Now let me get something straight: you are not in my debt. You can't be. Impossible - because I never do anything I don't want to do. Nor does anyone, but in my case I am always aware of it. So please don't invent a debt that does not exist, or before you know it you will be trying to feel gratitude - and that is the treacherous first step downward to complete moral degradation. — Robert A. Heinlein

James hoped the newsletter would garner support from Bahana, or white people, to stop a town well that the Bureau of Indian Affairs wanted to dig and a tower it wanted to erect to store the water. The Hotevilla elders were willing to lay down their lives in this battle. They'd done it before, preventing the BIA from bringing electricity to the village by lying down in front of bulldozers. If that well went in, James explained, people would waste water. Their spring would dry out- an unthinkable tragedy, as it would make it impossible for them to live there any longer. Could two cultures be any different? I now wondered. We were taking federal money to mine water and would do so until the unlikely day that same government made us stop. The Hopi had been trying to prevent the government from giving them a well in the first place. — Julene Bair

Whatever happiness and peace that one knows in one's life is generally so fragile that it is always subservient to the external situation. So most of your lives go in trying to manage a perfect external situation which is just impossible to do. No human being is ever capable of creating a perfect external situation because the outside situation will never be hundred percent in your control, no matter how powerful a human being you are. So yoga focuses on the inner situation. If you can create a perfect inward situation, no matter what the external situation, you can be in perfect bliss and peace. — Jaggi Vasudev

I can't believe in the impossible," he whispered as though trying to convince himself against what he had just witnessed. "A man can't be big and small at once. He can't be a freak and a hero."
The cat glared. "Do you believe in justice?"
The Chronicler hesitated. Then, only once, he nodded.
"Do you believe in mercy?" pressed the cat.
"Yes."
"Ha!" Eanrin lashed his tail again. "What an impossible contradiction. Ha! — Anne Elisabeth Stengl

You can't try. Trying is a struggle and doing is an act. You can't witness the act of trying, but you can see the results of doing. Trying brings on stress because not only do you have the problem, but now you have all this frustration with it not going away just because you want it to. It's kind of like being told not to think of pink elephants - impossible.
What you have to do is stop. You say to yourself, this is over for now. I'm done for
now. Take your mind to another place and concentrate on that peaceful place. Deep
breaths. Go limp. Put your mind in another state. It takes practice, but it gets easier,
over time. — Robyn Carr

I don't understand, Your Majesty."
"Of course you don't; you academics!" Skarmak snarled. "All you do is sit in your towers, trying to think your way into a reality that exists only in your own minds, and then you judge the world as wrong because it does not conform to your impossible standards. I live in a real world, academic. And it's my real world that keeps pumping blood into your dead, idealistic one. — Tracy Hickman

Do you ever notice that if you are doing a task, and you hear voices or music or other sounds on audio only, you can tune it out? If, however, you are trying to do a task, and you are trying to watch something on video, it is almost impossible to tune out the video. That is what prayer does - it takes something you believe about God that is ignorable and detached from how you live your life and makes it vivid. — Timothy Keller

God doesn't ask the impossible. He sees our weakness and our struggles. He looks at our heart more than at our behavior. If he sees that we want to love him, want to believe in him, and want to follow his way - but are just unable right now to do it - he has patience with us. He encourages us to do whatever we can, and to keep trying. — David M. Knight

On a day like this, we women would be completely and utterly happy just to have a man hold our cold hands and massage our aching backs. We'd be so blissfully happy we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves.
Men are never happy unless they're trying to do the impossible. It's why they roam about the world trying to conquer it. — Kim Dong Hwa

Pages later- hearing and exposed- Whitman starts to write about all the travel he can do by imagining, and lists all the places he can visit while loafing on the grass. "My palms cover continents," he writes.
I kept thinking about maps, like the way sometimes when I was kid and I would look at atlases, and just the looking was kind of like being somewhere else. This is what I had to do.I had to hear and imagine my way into her map.
But hadn't I been trying to do that? I looked up at the maps above my computer. I had tried to plot her possible travels, but just as the grass stood for too much so Margo stood for too much. It seemed impossible to pin her down with maps. She was too small and the space covered by the maps too big. They were more than a waste of time- they were the physical representation of the total fruitlessness of all of it, my absolute inability to develop the kinds of palms that cover continents, to have the kind of mind that correctly imagines. — John Green

It is impossible to manage the health care requirements of tens of millions of American citizens at the federal level. It is impossible to manage all of the permutations of people's economic aspirations and lives through a complex tax code. It is impossible to try to second-guess the market. It is impossible, from a managerial standpoint, for the federal government to do the things it is trying to do today. — Frederick W. Smith

We think when Jesus said, "You have heard it said do not commit adultery, but if you even think about it you're guilty," that He was trying to get them to be more obedient to those Laws. He made those Laws impossible. He did so on purpose so they would stop trying to live up to them and put their faith in Him. He wasn't trying to rally them up for holiness when He said, "If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off!" He was telling them how severe the Law really is if they were going to continue trying to live by it, because they had cheapened it and made it doable, just like so many have today. Jesus was saying, "You want to gain holiness and purity that way? Cut off your hand and gouge out your eye if they cause you to sin. Because if you break even one of those Laws, you will be judged for breaking them all."[29] — D.R. Silva

No matter what the role, you're trying to do the impossible - make a living in show business. — Peter Gallagher

Trying to figure it all out is impossible. But what isn't impossible is to:
Have gratitude
Stay Positive
Have faith
Be friendly and kind
Listen first; speak second
Do your best, not try to be the best
Enjoy the ride! — Charles F. Glassman

There was once an abbot who had spent thirty-nine years alone in the temple with cats as his only companions. As someone who believed that faith and willpower could conquer any difficulty, the abbot began training newborn kittens, trying to turn the impossible into the possible. First he put the rattan hoop on the ground for the kittens to crawl through. Then he slowly raised the hoop little by little, day after day, month after month, and year after year. Years went by and the hoop was gradually raised until he finally succeeded in getting the cats to jump through the hoop. An unusual phenomenon occurred. When the kittens saw the older cats jump, they believed they could do it too and so, without much effort, they learned to jump easily through the hoop as well. — You Jin

People ask why my brother killed himself. "Why would such a gifted journalist, whose works have won all the prizes in the world, do such a thing?" "He had so many friends, why would he want to leave them?" "But what about all he had to live for?"
In a short space of time, I had a drawerful of articles wirtten by reporters pondering the death of one who, like them, made a living out of trying to sort out the truth, separating fact from conjecture. They were hell-bent on making sense out of this event.
When they phoned, I told them they were going to fail. I told them that the problem with suicide is that it is a senseless event. There is no why.
But of course that's wrong. There are numerous whys, though it's almost impossible, or unlikely that any single one of them is "the answer" that people want to hear. — Christopher Lukas

Letting go means we stop trying to force outcomes and make people behave. It means we give up resistance to the way things are, for the moment. It means we stop trying to do the impossible-controlling that which we cannot-and instead, focus on what is possible-which usually means taking care of ourselves. And we do this in gentleness, kindness, and love, as much as possible. — Melody Beattie

Chaos theory throws it right out the window. It says that you can never predict certain phenomena at all. You can never predict the weather more than a few days away. All the money that has been spent on long-range forecasting - about half a billion dollars in the last few decades - is money wasted. It's a fool's errand. It's as pointless as trying to turn lead into gold. We look back at the alchemists and laugh at what they were trying to do, but future generations will laugh at us the same way. We've tried the impossible - and spent a lot of money doing it. Because in fact there are great categories of phenomena that are inherently unpredictable. — Michael Crichton

I'm always trying to make something that is impossible to film. Why would somebody just read a novel when they can see it on TV or in the cinema? I really have to think of the things fiction can do that film can't and play to the strengths of the novel. With a novel, you can get right inside somebody's head. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Have you ever seen a stereogram?
The 'Truth' the Stereogram shows us is there in front of us. Training and work doesn't make us see it.
It's a point of view, a different way of looking at it.
When you see it you try to explain it to someone else and you
realize you can't.
It simple, super simple, yet almost impossible to explain.
There are 'techniques' to see them but some people may spend
years trying without results. Others can do it in seconds.
It doesn't change the fact that the image is there all the time in
front of us.
And it's Beautiful. — T.R. Cordon

And whether or not the educators who are trying to raise up America's students can actually set and meet higher academic standards, our cultural values make their job next to impossible. It's so much easier for pundits and politicians to point out figures and blame the people who are in the trenches every day than it is to get in there with them, or even to find out what actually goes on in those trenches. It's so much easier for parents to blame teachers when their kids get in trouble than to do the heavy lifting required at home to keep kids on track. And it's so much easier for us as a nation to cross our fingers and hope that we'll "get lucky" with the innovative "solutions" being tested on America's schools today than it is for us to roll up our sleeves and invest our own time, talent, and money in the schools that are even now
with or without us
shaping our nation's future. — Tony Danza

For many men, the fundamental assumption is that they can have both a successful professional life and a fulfilling personal life. For many women, the assumption is that trying to do both is difficult at best and impossible at worst. — Sheryl Sandberg

But I can't find anything beautiful here, not when the smoking, dark factories are only a few miles back. The contrast between the Silver city and the Red slum sets my teeth on edge. This is the world I'm trying to bring down, the world trying to kill me and everything I care about. Now I truly see what I'm fighting against and how difficult, how impossible, it will be to win. I've never felt smaller than I do now, with the great bridge looming above us. It looks ready to swallow me whole. But I have to try. If only for Gray Town, for the ones who have never seen the sun. — Victoria Aveyard

Right words are born in courage, which results from our struggle to make sense of our various predicaments. Cheer is what words are trying to tell us/ ... It's native to the words/and what they want us always to know/even when it seems quite impossible to do. — William Meredith

The rules themselves are clear enough, and within everyone's reach. But many forces, both within ourselves and in the environment, stand in the way. It is a little like trying to lose weight: everyone knows what it takes, everyone wants to do it, yet it is next to impossible for so many. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Adoption is outside. You act out what it feels like to be the one who doesn't belong. And you act it out by trying to do to others what has been done to you. It is impossible to believe anyone loves you for yourself.

I never believed that my parents loved me. I tried to love them but it didn't work. It has taken me a long time to learn how to love - both the giving and the receiving. I have written about love obsessively, forensically, and I know/knew it as the highest value.

I loved God of course, in the early days, and God loved me. That was something. And I loved animals and nature. And poetry. People were the problem. How do you love another person? How do you trust another person to love you?

I had no idea.
I thought that love was loss.
Why is the measure of love loss? — Jeanette Winterson

All of us have failed to match our dream of perfection. I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible. If I could write all my work again, I'm convinced I could do it better. This is the healthiest condition for an artist. That's why he keeps working, trying again: he believes each time that this time he will do it, bring it off. Of course he won't. — William Faulkner

If you tried to make a show for every person's particular interest, it'd be impossible because everyone is going to consume it the way they want to. All you can do is try to do an hour that makes sense for all. — Scott Van Pelt

Trying to please everybody is impossible - if you did that, you'd end up in the middle with nobody liking you. You've just got to make the decision about what you think is your best, and do it. — John Lennon

None of our men are 'experts.' We have most unfortunately found it necessary to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert because no one ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job. A man who knows a job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient he is. Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the 'expert' state of mind a great number of things become impossible. — Henry Ford

Everything mattered and nothing did, and I was tired of trying to find out how both of those things were true. I was an itch that I'd scratched so hard I was bleeding. I had set out to do the impossible, whatever the impossible might be, only to find out that it was living with myself. Suicide became an expiration date, the day after which I no longer had to try. — Maggie Stiefvater

Environmental cues associated with drug use - paraphernalia, people, places, and situations - are all powerful triggers for repeated use and for relapse, because they themselves trigger dopamine release. People trying to quit smoking, for example, are advised to avoid poker if they are used to having a cigarette while playing cards. Unless they move to a different area of town or to a recovery home, my Downtown Eastside patients find it virtually impossible to stop drug use, even when they form a strong intention to do so. Not only are drugs readily available, but everything and everyone in the environment reminds them of their habit. — Gabor Mate

It became clear to him that all the dreadful evil he had been witnessing in prisons and jails and the quiet self-satisfaction of the perpetrators of this evil were the consequences of men trying to do what was impossible; trying to correct evil while being evil themselves ... Now he saw clearly what all the terrors he had seen came from, and what ought to be done to put a stop to them. The answer he could not find was the same that Christ gave to Peter. It was that we should forgive always an infinite number of times because there are no men who have not sinned themselves, and therefore none can punish or correct others. — Leo Tolstoy

I stepped toward the car, trying to plan what to do, which was impossible because I did not know what they wanted, or even who they were. It was no longer believable that it was merely a random crazy - not if he knew where I lived. But who was it? Who had any reason to act like this? Among the living, I mean, because there were plenty of former victims who might have loved to come after me, but they were all far beyond any sort of action at all, other than decomposition. I — Jeff Lindsay

Hell is our creation, and we create hell by trying to do the impossible. Heaven is our nature, it is our spontaneity. It is where we always are. — Rajneesh

I'm always trying to do the impossible to please people. It comes from not being secure in myself and not looking at the things within I have to fix. Sometimes you keep going because you don't want to face the truth. — Naomi Campbell

The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self
all your wishes and precautions
to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call "ourselves," to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be "good. — C.S. Lewis

All great power has to do to destroy itself is persist in trying to do the impossible. — Stephen Vizinczey