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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• 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 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• What separates me from most so-called atheists is a feeling of utter humility toward the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the cosmos.

  Albert Einstein

  God, Religious, Atheist

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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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• 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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• What is appealing is the idea of attaining the unattainable and learning from it. Once you obtain a fantasy it becomes a reality, and that reality is not as exciting as your fantasy. Through the fantasies you learn to appreciate your own realities.

  Ricardo Montalban

  Reality, Ideas, Appreciate

  "'Fantasy Island's' Ricardo Montalban Dead at 88", www.foxnews.com. January 15, 2009.

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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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• 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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• I want to be first. I know that’s selfish, and maybe unattainable, and maybe shallow. But I just want to come first with someone. If that’s wrong of me, so be it. I’ll be wrong. But that’s the way I feel.” (Sookie Stackhouse)

  Charlaine Harris

  Selfish, Want, Way

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

  Robert Ardrey

  Impossible, Pursue

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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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• It's wrong for women to be constantly shy and embarrassed about their bodies. There are so many images of unattainable beauty that are so destructive. It's important to show how your body really is. As the cliche has it, beauty comes from within.

  Alex Kingston

  Important, Shy, Body

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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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• And a true God is not One with the most servants, but One who serves the most, thereby making Gods of all others. For this is both the goal and the glory of God: that His subjects shall be no more, and that all shall know God not as the unattainable, but as the unavoidable.

  Neale Donald Walsch

  Goal, Glory, Servant

  Neale Donald Walsch (1996). “Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue”, p.93, Penguin

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• Absolute certainty is a privilege of uneducated minds and fanatics. - It is, for scientific folk, an unattainable ideal.

  Cassius Jackson Keyser

  Ignorance, Mind, Statistics

  Cassius Jackson Keyser (1922). “Mathematical Philosophy: A Study of Fate and Freedom; Lectures for Educated Laymen”

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