Best ordinary & impossible Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“My ability to persuade my wife to marry me was quite my most brilliant achievement ... Of course, it would have been impossible for any ordinary man to have got through what I had to go through in peace and war without the devoted aid of what we call, in England, one's better half.”

Source: The three pillars of Zen: teaching, practice, and enlightenment

“In the judgment of design engineers, the ordinary means of communicating with a computer are entirely inadequate. [...] Graphical communication in some form or other is of vital importance in engineering as that subject is now conducted; we must either provide the capability in our computer systems, or take on the impossible task of training up a future race of engineers conditioned to think in a different way.”

“All the controversialists who have become conscious of the real issue are already saying of our ideal exactly what used to be said of the Socialists' ideal. They are saying that private property is too ideal not to be impossible. They are saying that private enterprise is too good to be true. They are saying that the idea of ordinary men owning ordinary possessions is against the laws of political economy and requires an alteration in human nature.”

“For war to man, like childbirth to women, is simplifying in its emotions and activities. All the real problems of life can be put aside while the one thing is done and little thought is needed to do it. ... His hatreds can be expressed without censure, he can let his emotions run free, he can behave as dramatically, as heroically as he likes, and no one laughs at him. It is almost impossible for a man to behave heroically in the cool and ordinary times of peace. But in war anything is allowed him, he is praised and applauded and made much of, as women are excused and allowed for in pregnancy.”

Men Littles Made War Real Done Problem Running Emotion Laughing Impossible One Thing Needed Activity Ordinary Hatred Likes Behave Pregnancy Childbirth Real Problems Censure

Author:Pearl S. Buck

“While it is possible for intelligence to increase the range of benevolent impulse, and thus prompt a human being to consider the needs and rights of other than those to whom he is bound by organic and physical relationship, there are definite limits in the capacity of ordinary mortals which makes it impossible for them to grant to others what they claim for themselves.”

Needs Humans Human Beings Rights Impossible Limits Ordinary Capacity Claims Increase Bounds Mortals Impulse Range Grants Definite Benevolent Prompts

Book:Reinhold Niebuhr: Major Works on Religion and Politics: (Library of America #263)

Source: Reinhold Niebuhr: Major Works on Religion and Politics: (Library of America #263)

“It is impossible to look into the Bible with the most ordinary attention without feeling that we have got into a moral atmosphere quite different from that which we breathe in the world, and in the world's literature.”

World Looks Different Feelings Literature Attention Moral Impossible Ordinary Bible Breathe Atmosphere

Author:Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine

“I am excited by this collaboration: this is the first time H&M involves a Fashion Director in a special project. This is the sign of an important evolution in fashion, and I am both thrilled and humbled to be the one chosen to lead it. I wanted to create precious accessories that are impossible to find. As a stylist I know accessorization is essential: it is the personal touch to any outfit. With these pieces everybody can have fun, turning an ordinary day into a fantastic fashion day”

“We live today in a world where most of the really important developments in everything from math and physics and astronomy to public policy and psychology and classical music are so extremely abstract and technically complex and context-dependent that it's next to impossible for the ordinary citizen to feel that they (the developments) have much relevance to her actual life.”

“There should be a law that no ordinary newspaper should be allowed to write about art. The harm they do by their foolish and random writing it would be impossible to overestimate--not to the artist but to the public.... Without them we would judge a man simply by his work; but at present the newspapers are trying hard to induce the public to judge a sculptor, for instance, never by his statues but by the way he treats his wife; a painter by the amount of his income and a poet by the colour of his necktie.”

Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays

“Growth at an exceptional rate is a red flag in banking. It is hard enough to manage an ordinary bank; to control a sprouting weed is well-nigh impossible. If loans are expanding too quickly, the lending officers have probably been saying 'yes' too frequently.”

Ifs Wells Hard Enough Growth Impossible Ordinary Red Rate Manage Weed Officers Flags Banking Exceptional Expanding Loan Lending Saying Yes Red Flags

Author:James Grant

“Art keeps its newness because it's at once unforgettable and impossible to remember entirely. Art is too volatile, multiple and evaporative to hold on to. It's more chemical reaction, one you have to re-create each time, than a substance. Art's discoveries are also, almost always, counter to ordinary truths.”

Art Remember Impossible Ordinary Art Is Discovery Reactions Substance Chemicals Multiple Unforgettable Newness Chemical Reactions

Author:Jane Hirshfield

“For the ordinary man, whose mind is a checkerboard of crisscrossing reflections, opinions, and prejudices, bare attention is virtually impossible; his life is thus centered not in reality itself but in his ideas of it. By focusing the mind wholly on each objects and every action, zazen strips it of extraneous thoughts and allows us to enter into a full rapport with life.”

Men Mind Ideas Reality Action Life Is Attention Opinion Impossible Objects Ordinary Reflection Prejudice Ordinary Man Rapport Checkerboard

Book:The three pillars of Zen: teaching, practice, and enlightenment

Source: The three pillars of Zen: teaching, practice, and enlightenment

“I am gagged and imprisoned. I can't even speak. I want to kick a football in a park with my son. Ordinary, banal life: my impossible dream.”

Want I Can Dream Speak Impossible Football Son Ordinary Kicks Parks My Son Impossible Dream

Book:Joseph Anton

Source: Joseph Anton

“The Bible is full of ordinary people who went to impossible places and did wondrous things simply because they decided to obey God.”

People Impossible Ordinary Decided Ordinary People Wondrous

Author:Andrew van der Bijl

“The civil-rights movement was completely impossible to achieve. But look at what ordinary people were able to do because they were willing to sacrifice their lives to stay with it. They didn't expect a political process to respond to them. They made the political process respond to them. To say "It's so bad I won't bother" is to give up on your children and give up on your future.”

“The ordinary Nigerians have lived as neighbors down the millennia. I was talking about the British who came and merged a whole number of mini states and big states into one unit. But those people were always there, and they always managed to live side by side with their neighbours. So they were not owned or run by one kingdom. It was not practically impossible for these people when they have different languages and religions to be neighbors. So it is that habit of neighbourliness which is destroyed and put under great strain again and again when you have things like massacres.”

“Our spirits have their own private way of understanding each other, of becoming intimate, while our external persons are still trapped in the commerce of ordinary words, in the slavery of social rules. Souls have their own needs and their own ambitions, which the body ignores when it sees that it's impossible to satisfy them or achieve them.”

Way Needs Persons Stills Soul Body Spirit Social Understanding Impossible Achieve Becoming Ambition Ordinary Slavery Intimate Trapped Commerce Understanding Each Other

Book:The late Mattia Pascal

Source: The late Mattia Pascal

“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?”

World May Two Sometimes Law Impossible Ordinary Disappear Boundaries Live By Two Worlds Possible And Impossible World Life Ordinary World

Book:Pawn Of Prophecy: Book One Of The Belgariad

Source: Pawn Of Prophecy: Book One Of The Belgariad

“It is impossible to live the life of a disciple without definite times of secret prayer. You will find that the place to enter in is in your business, as you walk along the streets, in the ordinary ways of life, when no one dreams you are praying, and the reward comes openly, a revival here, a blessing there.”

Way Dream Prayer Walks Secret Impossible Streets Praying Blessing Ordinary Rewards Live Life Disciple Definite Revival

Book:Studies in the Sermon on the Mount: God's Character and the Believer's Conduct

Source: Studies in the Sermon on the Mount: God's Character and the Believer's Conduct

“All knowledge is good. It is impossible to say any fragment of knowledge, however insignificant or remote from one's ordinary pursuits, may not some day be turned to account.”

Knows May Science Knowledge Impossible Ordinary Accounts Pursuit Insignificant Fragments

Book:Collected essays

Source: Collected essays

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