Unattainable Quotes - Page 4

• The universalists, the idealists, the Utopians all aim too high. They give promises of an unattainable paradise, and by doing so they deceive mankind. Whatever label they wear, whether they call themselves Christians, Communists, humanitarians, whether they are merely sincere but stupid or wire-pullers and cynics, they are all makers of slaves. I myself have always kept my eye fixed on a paradise which, in the nature of things, lies well within our reach. I mean an improvement in the lot of the German people. (21st February 1945)

  Adolf Hitler

  Christian, Lying, Stupid

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• These phantoms speak with human voices — friendly, vapor- like shapes, without substance, able to vanish or appear at will, to pass in and out through the walls of the fuselage as though no walls were there. At times, voices come out of the air itself, clear yet far away, traveling through distances that can't be measured by the scale of human miles; familiar voices, conversing and advising on my flight, discussing problems of my navigation, reassuring me, giving me messages of importance unattainable in ordinary life.

  Charles Lindbergh

  Wall, Airplane, Voice

  "The Spirit of St. Louis".

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• Something he knew he had missed: the flower of life. But he thought of it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined would have been like despairing because one had not drawn the first prize in a lottery.

  Edith Wharton

  Flower, Firsts, Prize

  Edith Wharton (2013). “Delphi Works of Edith Wharton (Illustrated)”, p.2108, Delphi Classics

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• Yet what happened in fact? In the middle of the night John woke up and saw me sleeping beside him with no doubt a look of peace on my face, even of bliss, bliss is not unattainable in this world. He saw me—saw me as I was at that moment—took fright, hurriedly strapped the armour back over his heart, this time with chains and a double padlock, and stole out into the darkness.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Heart, Sleep, Night

  J. M. Coetzee (2009). “Summertime: Fiction”, Viking Press

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• Perfectionism is self destructive simply because there's no such thing as perfect. Perfection is an unattainable goal.

  Brené Brown

  Self, Perfect, Goal

  Brené Brown (2010). “The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are”, p.71, Simon and Schuster

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• When my mother didn't come back I realized that any moment could be the last. Nothing in life should simply be a passage from one place to another. Each walk should be taken as if it is the only thing you have left. You can demand something like this of yourself as an unattainable ideal. After that, you have to remind yourself about it every time you're sloppy about something. For me that means 250 times a day.

  Peter Høeg

  Mother, Taken, Mean

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• You think the end justifies the means, however vile. I tell you: the end is the means by which you achieve it. Today's step is tomorrow's life. Great ends cannot be attained by base means. You've proved that in all your social upheavals. The meanness and inhumanity of the means make you mean and inhuman and make the end unattainable.

  Wilhelm Reich

  Mean, Thinking, Upheaval

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• Dynamic ecstasy is absolute romanticism , absolute heroism . And here I return to my point. From my point of view, after the catastrophe which we feel and think is universal, a catastrophe resulting from an excess of useless dynamism of useless progress, of useless realism, of useless technology, after this an unattainable democracy is to be reached through the conception and realization of a new romanticism.

  Juan Ramon Jimenez

  Technology, Thinking, Views

  "Heroic Reason" by Juan Ramon Jimenez (p. 231), 1957.

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• Unattainable wishes are often "pious." This seems to indicate that only profane wishes are fulfilled.

  Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

  Wish, Fulfilled, Seems

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• Don't shoot for something unattainable - completely outside of your nature or opportunity.

  Michael Johnson

  Inspirational, Motivational, Opportunity

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• I never have been a musician; I'm not actually capable. Because I can't even pretend to acquire the gift, all of my first feelings about art are still attached to music. I look at it yearningly, I look at it wonderingly. I behold it from afar, as something unattainable, something outside of myself, from which I can take nourishment, but I can't domesticate and master.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Art, Feelings, Musician

  "Music, Influence, and 'Deeply Unnecessary' Art". Interview with Ben Arthur, logger.believermag.com. March 17, 2015.

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• But the trouble with sainthood these days is the robe-and-halo imagery that gets stuck onto it." Carl got that brooding look again. "People forget that robes were street clothes once... and still are, in a lot of places. And halos are to that fierce air of innocence what speech balloons in comics are to the sound of the voice itself. Shorthand. But most people just see an old symbol and don't bother looking behind it for the meaning. Sainthood starts to look old-fashioned, unattainable... even repellent. Actually, you can see it all around, once you learn to spot it.

  Diane Duane

  Voice, Clothes, Air

  Diane Duane (2003). “A Wizard Alone”, p.234, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• What a subtle, treacherous thing it was to let yourself go that way! Because once you've started it was terribly difficult to stop; soon you were saying "I'm sorry, of course you're right", and "Whatever you think is best", and "you're the most wonderful and valuable thing int he world", and the next thing you knew all honesty, all truth, was as far away and glimmering, as hopelessly unattainable as the world of the golden people.

  Richard Yates

  Honesty, Sorry, Thinking

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• After a week, it's better. I miss her. I mourn her. But some peace has returned. She had been so unattainable - so young, so much a citizen of a different era - that it is hard to feel fully deprived.

  Scott Turow

  Missing, Different, Citizens

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• Spirituality is best manifested on the ground, not in the air. Rapturous day-dreams, flights of heavenly fancy, longings to see the Invisible, are less expensive and less expressive than the plain doing of duty. To have bread excite thankfulness and a drink of water send the heart to God is better than sighs for the unattainable. To plow a straight furrow on Monday or dust a room well on Tuesday or kiss a bumped forehead on Wednesday is worth more than the most ecstatic thrill under Sunday eloquence. Spirituality is seeing God in common things, and showing God in common tasks.

  Maltbie Davenport Babcock

  Dream, Monday, Heart

  Maltbie Davenport Babcock (1901). “Thoughts for Every-day Living from the Spoken and Written Words of Maltbie Davenport Babcock”

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• The maxims tell you to aim at perfection, which is well; but it's unattainable, all the same.

  Bayard Taylor

  Perfection, Aim, Wells

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• But I want you to know that you're a beautiful girl, far more beautiful than I ever was at your age, and that starving yourself to compete with all of those skinny celebrities who spend half their lives checking in and out of rehab is not only a completely unreasonable and unattainable goal, but will only end up making you sick.

  Alyson Noel

  Beautiful, Girl, Sick

  Alyson Noel (2013). “The Immortals Bundle 1-3: The Immortals: Evermore, The Immortals: Blue Moon and The Immortals: Shadowland”, p.219, Pan Macmillan

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• Books are surviving in this intense, fragmented, hyper-accelerated present, and my sense and hope is that things will slow down again and people will want more time for a contemplative life. There is no way people can keep up this pace. No one is happy. Two or three hours to read should not be an unattainable thing, although I hope we get to that stage without needing a corporate sponsored app to hold our hand. The utopian in me has my fingers crossed that we haven't quite figured out the digital future just yet. After all, the one thing we know about people: they always surprise.

  Junot Diaz

  Book, Contemplative Life, Hands

  "Junot Díaz: a life in books" by Nicholas Wroe, www.theguardian.com. August 31, 2012.

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• If you want to know what true art is: Go outside on a clear night, wait until it gets very, very dark, then look up! You will see no rules of composition, no evidence of superior technique. Yet, you will be staring into the very face of pure, unadulterated beauty and wonder. That is the unattainable Ideal for which I must constantly strive.

  Derek R. Audette

  Art, Dark, Night

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• Absolute peace in our world is an unattainable goal. But it is one towards which we must continue to journey, our eyes fixed on it as a traveller in a desert fixes his eyes on the one guiding star that will lead him to salvation.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  Peace, Stars, Eye

  Aung San Suu Kyi's Nobel Lecture in Oslo, Norway, www.nobelprize.org. June 16, 2012.

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• Omnicompetence,' the ability to obtain whatever one wants or needs, is an unattainable but continuously approachable ideal for all mankind - past, present, and future.

  Russell L. Ackoff

  Past, Needs, Want

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• The foaminess of the Falls, together with the tinge of tawny yellow in the troubled waters, only reminded me of so much unattainable soda and sherry, and made me feel thirstier than ever.

  George Augustus Henry Sala

  Fall, Yellow, Water

  1865 On seeing Niagara Falls for the first time. My Diary in America in theMidst ofWar.

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• You yourself create all your misery, hour after hour, day after day. You think the goal justifies the means, even the vile means. You are wrong: The goal is in the path on which you arrive at it. Every step of today is your life of tomorrow. No great goal can be reached by vile means. That you have proven in every social revolution. The vileness or inhumanity of the path to the goal makes you vile or inhuman, and the goal unattainable.

  Wilhelm Reich

  Mean, Thinking, Goal

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• The crude commercialism of America, its materialising spirit, its indifference to the poetical side of things, and its lack of imagination and of high unattainable ideals, are entirely due to that country having adopted for its national hero a man who, according to his own confession, was incapable of telling a lie, and it is not too much to say that the story of George Washington and the cherry-tree has done more harm, and in a shorter space of time, than any other moral tale in the whole of literature.

  Oscar Wilde

  Country, Lying, Hero

  Oscar Wilde (1969). “The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde”, p.304, University of Chicago Press

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• We are full of dreams [...] We long for the unattainable. We believe in the nonsense of fables. There is no pure love; there is lust and there is need.

  David Gemmell

  Dream, Believe, Long

  "Quest for Lost Heroes". Book by David Gemmell, Ch. 12, 1990.

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