Unattainable Quotes - Page 2

• Four things I am wiser to know: Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.

  Dorothy Parker

  Friendship, Sorrow, Four

  "Inventory" l. 1 (1926)

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• Dreams, memories, the sacred--they are all alike in that they are beyond our grasp. Once we are even marginally separated from what we can touch, the object is sanctified; it acquires the beauty of the unattainable, the quality of the miraculous. Everything, really, has this quality of sacredness, but we can desecrate it at a touch. How strange man is! His touch defiles and yet he contains the source of miracles.

  Yukio Mishima

  Dream, Memories, Men

  Yukio Mishima (1990). “Spring Snow”, Vintage

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• I'd always wanted to be on Broadway one day, but it seemed like a dream that might be unattainable. This business has a lot of ups and downs and I learned that pretty quickly.

  Kara Lindsay

  Dream, One Day, Broadway

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• The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it.

  Lytton Strachey

  History, Age, Too Much

  Eminent Victorians preface (1918)

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• True perfection is unattainable, but if you chase perfection you will catch excellence!

  Vince Lombardi

  Perfection, Excellence, Ifs

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• Long ago man formed an ideal conception of omnipotence and omniscience which he embodied in his gods. Whatever seemed unattainable to his desires - or forbidden to him - he attributed to these gods... Now he has himself approached very near to realizing this ideal, he has nearly become a god himself.

  Sigmund Freud

  Men, Long Ago, Omnipotence

  Sigmund Freud (1930). “Civilization and Its Discontents”, p.23, Courier Dover Publications

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• The combination of creative energies and the need to perform at the highest level to keep up with peers leads to an otherwise unattainable commitment to excellence.

  Ken Robinson

  Commitment, Creative, Excellence

  Ken Robinson Ph.D., Lou Aronica (2009). “The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything”, p.84, Penguin

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• An act of meditation is actually an act of faith--of faith in your spirit, in your own potential. Faith is the basis of meditation. Not of faith in something outside you--a metaphysical buddha, an unattainable ideal, or someone else's words. The faith is in yourself, in your own 'buddha nature.' You too can be a buddha, an awakened being that lives and responds in a wise, creative, and compassionate way.

  Martine Batchelor

  Faith, Wise, Creative

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• The deluding passions are inexhaustible. I vow to extinguish them all.
  The number of beings is endless. I vow to save them all.
  The Truth cannot be told. I vow to explain it.
  The Way which cannot be followed is unattainable. I vow to attain it.

  Gautama Buddha

  Passion, Numbers, Way

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• Recent presidents have gone off on ad hoc adventures. They have set unattainable goal because they have framed the issue incorrectly, as they believed their own rhetoric.

  George Friedman

  Adventure, Issues, Goal

  George Friedman (2011). “The Next Decade: Where We've Been . . . and Where We're Going”, p.3, Anchor

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• We do not see faith, hope, and charity as unattainable ideals, but we use them as stout supports of a nation fighting the fight for freedom in a modern civilization.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Dream, Fighting, Civilization

  Franklin D. Roosevelt (1995). “The Essential Franklin Delano Roosevelt”, Gramercy

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• The well-being of mankind, its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established.

  Bahá'u'lláh

  Peace, Unity, Baha

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• Christianity set itself the goal of fulfilling man’s unattainable desires, but for that very reason ignored his attainable desires. By promising man eternal life, it deprived him of temporal life, by teaching him to trust in God’s help it took away his trust in his own powers; by giving him faith in a better life in heaven, it destroyed his faith in a better life on earth and his striving to attain such a life. Christianity gave man what his imagination desires, but for that very reason failed to give him what he really and truly desires.

  Ludwig Feuerbach

  Teaching, Men, Imagination

  "Lectures on the Essence of Religion". "Atheism alone a Positive View", en.wikiquote.org. 1851.

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• In the desert I had found a freedom unattainable in civilization; a life unhampered by possessions, since everything that was not a necessity was an encumbrance. I had found too, a comradeship inherent in the circumstances, and the belief that tranquility was to be found there.

  Wilfred Thesiger

  Civilization, Desert, Belief

  Wilfred Thesiger (2008). “Arabian Sands”, p.38, Penguin

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• Don't aim for perfect. Aim for complete. Perfection is an unattainable illusion.

  Lisa Genova

  Perfect, Illusion, Aim

  Lisa Genova (2013). “Love Anthony”, p.237, Simon and Schuster

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• I decided a long time ago I would feed on the vultures until a dove came along. A pigeon. The kind of soul that didn't impede on anyone; just walked around worrying about its own business, trying to get through life without pulling everyone else down. With its own needs and selfish habits. Brave. A communicator. Intelligent. Beautiful. Soft-spoken. A creature that mates for life. Unattainable until she has a reason to trust you.

  Jamie McGuire

  Beautiful, Selfish, Intelligent

  Jamie McGuire (2013). “Walking Disaster Signed Limited Edition: A Novel”, p.8, Simon and Schuster

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• While we pursue the unattainable, we make impossible the realizable.

  Robert Ardrey

  Impossible, Pursue

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• The vision that God gives is not some unattainable castle in the sky, but a vision of what God wants you to be down here.

  Oswald Chambers

  Sky, Giving, Vision

  Oswald Chambers (2010). “My Utmost for His Highest”, p.395, Discovery House

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• Girls my age dress so much raunchier than I'd ever imagine myself dressing. I understand that I'm a role model, though, and I have to look out for that. I have a 10-year-old sister, too. But you also want to be appealing to guys and stuff, that's just something girls feel. It's hard. You want to be that girl that's unattainable to all the guys because there are so many other girls out there that are like that.

  Lindsay Lohan

  Girl, Years, Role Models

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• The religion of Big Data sets itself the goal of fulfilling man's unattainable desires, but for that very reason ignores her attainable needs.

  Ludwig Feuerbach

  Men, Data, Goal

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• A photograph is both a pseudo-presence and a token of absence. Like a wood fire in a room, photographs-especially those of people, of distant landscapes and faraway cities, of the vanished past-are incitements to reverie. The sense of the unattainable that can be evoked by photographs feeds directly into the erotic
  feelings of those for whom desirability is enhanced by distance.

  Susan Sontag

  Distance, Past, Fire

  Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.17, Macmillan

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• It means a lot that fans feel connected to us and care about us, and that means the world, because that's what we want. We don't want them to feel like we're unattainable because we're just like them. We're all normal kids but somehow we got lucky when we picked up a guitar.

  Taylor York

  Mean, Kids, Guitar

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• The beauty of reality-based art - art underwritten by reality hunger - is that it's perfectly situated between life itself and (unattainable) "life as art".

  David Shields

  Art, Reality, Poetry

  David Shields (2010). “Reality Hunger”, p.166, Vintage

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• And of poetry, the success is not attained when it lulls and satisfies, but when it astonishes and fires us with new endeavours after the unattainable.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Fire, Poetry, Endeavour

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.83

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• Attain the unattainable.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Success

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