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Unattainable Quotes

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Unattainable Quotes

“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.”

FirstsLooksHas BeensArtStillsI CanFeelingsMastersMusicianCapableAcquireBecause I CanNourishmentAfarUnattainable
Author:Jonathan Lethem
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“Set reasonable goals; not something vague and unrealistic like "I want to be super-model skinny." I always had visions of very thin actresses in my mind when I was at the gym and it seemed so unattainable that I would quit any health regimen before it even got off the ground. But when I changed my mindset to focusing on making the healthiest choices possible for myself, it was a lot more realistic, more attainable, and then the results were visible.”

WantMindChoicesGoalResultsVisionChangedModelsMindsetActressesQuittingVisibleReasonableGymRealisticVagueSkinnyUnattainable
Author:Alison Sweeney
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“It has cost me years of thought to arrive at certain results, by many believed to be unattainable, for which there are now numerous claimants, and the number of these is rapidly increasing, like that of the colonels in the South after the war.”

YearsWarCertainResultsNumbersCostSouthUnattainableColonels
Book:A New System of Alternating Current Motors and Transformers and Other Essays
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“My existence is such that "I" do not really exist. At the end of understanding so much I understand that I know nothing. I suffer for being surrounded by intense suffering and yet I'm deeply suspicious if first of all there is indeed any consciousness except me. I strive to find the artist who might have fathered this great universal art but feel myself to be too feeble to accomplish this seemingly unattainable mission. Yet I have every respect for life, and it is this sheer respect that makes me live.”

IfsKnowsFeelsFirstsArtEndsMightArtistSufferingUnderstandingExistenceConsciousnessUniversalStriveAccomplishMissionsIntenseSheerSuspiciousUnattainable
Author:Kedar Joshi
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“Beginning, perhaps, from the reasonable perspective that absolute objectivity is unattainable, Fox News and MSNBC no longer even attempt it. They show us the world not as it is, but as partisans (and loyal viewers) at either end of the political spectrum would like it to be. This is to journalism what Bernie Madoff was to investment: He told his customers what they wanted to hear, and by the time they learned the truth, their money was gone.”

WorldEndsShowsWantedPoliticalGonePerspectiveNewsAbsolutesInvestmentCustomersJournalismReasonableLoyalFoxesViewersSpectrumObjectivityPartisansUnattainableFox NewsPolitical SpectrumMadoff
Author:Ted Koppel
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“Wile E. Coyote is a coyote with nothing but good intentions. But Road Runner comes along and is unattainable, he wants it and can't get it, and thus he becomes a villain that is impossible to be around. Bill O'Reilly is a villain that is so in love with himself and the sound of his voice that he's literally become the personification of evil.”

WantEvilSoundVoiceImpossibleBillsIntentionVillainRunnersGood IntentionsUnattainableCoyotesPersonificationBill O ReillyRoad RunnerWile E Coyote
Author:Shawn Hatosy
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“Without the sense of fellowship with men of like mind, of preoccupation with the objective, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific research, life would have seemed to me empty.”

MenMindArtFieldsResearchEmptyObjectivesFellowshipPreoccupationUnattainableScientific Research
Book:The Albert Einstein Collection: Essays in Humanism, The Theory of Relativity, and The World As I See It
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“Stieglitz conceived, though he never carried out, a series of photographs of the heads of stallions and mares, of bulls and cows, in the act of mating, hoping to catch in the brute an essential quality that would symbolize the probably unattainable photograph of a passionate human mating.”

HumansQualityEssentialsSeriesPhotographPassionateCowsBullsBrutesUnattainableMatingStallionsMares
Book:Mumford on Modern Art in the 1930s
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“If a night-moth were to concentrate its will on flying to a star or some equally unattainable object, it wouldn't succeed. Only, it wouldn't even try in the first place. A moth confines its search to what has sense and value for it, what it needs, what is indispensable to its life... if I imagined that I wanted under all circumstances to get to the North Pole, then to achieve it I would have to desire it strongly enough that my whole being was ruled by it. But if I were to decide to will that the pastor should stop wearing his glasses, it would be useless. That would be making a game of it.”

IfsNeedsShouldTryingFirstsEnoughWholeWould BeWantedDesireNightValuesGamesStarsAchieveObjectsCircumstancesSucceedGlassesFlyingUselessPastorIndispensableUnattainableMothsNorth Pole
Author:Hermann Hesse
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“But this was that view of human destiny which she had most passionately hated and rejected: the view that man was ever to be drawn by some vision of the unattainable shining ahead, doomed ever to aspire, but not to achieve. Her life and her values could not bring her to that, she thought; she had never found beauty in longing for the impossible and had never found the possible to be beyond her reach.”

MenHumansValuesFoundViewsVisionDestinyImpossibleAchieveLongingShiningHatedRejectedDoomedAspireUnattainable
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“He felt as though he were failing in practically every area of his life. Lately, happiness seemed as distant and unattainable to him as space travel. He hadn't always felt this way. There had been a long period of time during which he remembered being very happy. But things change. People change. Change was one of the inevitable laws of nature, exacting its toll on people's lives. Mistakes are made, regrets form, and all that was left were repercussions that made something as simple as rising from the bed seem almost laborious.”

PeopleWayLongMadeSeemsFormLawLeftFeltSimpleSpaceMistakeFailingRegretPeriodsBedAreasInevitableRememberedRisingVery HappyThings ChangeLaws Of NatureSpace TravelTollsRepercussionsUnattainableLong Periods Of TimeLife Mistakes
Author:Nicholas Sparks
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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.”

IfsShouldMeanMomentsLastsMotherLeftWalksTakenDemandIdealsI RealizedPassagesUnattainableSloppy
Author:Peter Høeg
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“Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable. The obstacles preventing the realization of both these extreme states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition which is opposed to everything infinite.”

HumansStatesJoyPerfectConditionsInfiniteObstaclesExtremesRealizationUnhappinessHuman ConditionSooner Or LaterPausesPreventingUnattainableAntithesisAuschwitzLater In LifePerfect Happiness
Book:Survival In Auschwitz
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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.”

MenDreamMemoriesQualityObjectsStrangeSourceMiracleSacredAcquireMiraculousUnattainableSacrednessStrange Man
Book:Spring Snow
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“Our human tragedy is that we are unable to comprehend our experience, it slips through our fingers, we can't hold on to it, and the more time passes, the harder it gets...My father said that the natural world gave us explanations to compensate for the meanings we could not grasp. The slant of the cold sunlight on a winter pine, the music of water, an oar cutting the lake and the flight of birds, the mountains' nobility , the silence of the silence. We are given life but must accept that it is unattainable and rejoice in what can be held in the eye, the memory, the mind.”

WorldMindHumansSaidEyeFatherGivenWaterNaturalMemoriesSilenceAcceptingCuttingColdMountainBirdHarderTragedyFingersWinterFlightExplanationLakesMore TimeSlipsRejoiceSunlightNobilityNatural WorldTime PassesUnattainableOarGiven Life
Author:Salman Rushdie
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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.”

ThinkingMeanEndsTodaySocialStepsAchieveTomorrowJustifyMeannessInhumanInhumanityUnattainableUpheavalEnds Justify The Means
Author:Wilhelm Reich
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“Distance... is like futurity. A dim vastness is spread before our souls; the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision... But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant 'there' becomes the present 'here,' all is changed; we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness.”

MindStillsSoulPoorVisionObjectsChangedPerceptionDistanceSpreadObscureAlasVastnessUnattainableLanguish
Book:The Sorrows of Young Werther (English German Edition, illustrated): Die Leiden des jungen Werther (Englisch Deutsch Ausgabe illustriert)
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“I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves - this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts - possessions, outward success, luxury - have always seemed to me contemptible.”

MenWorldWayMindHumansHas BeensArtEndsFacesGivenEffortKindnessFieldsObjectsIdealsEmptyBasesPossessionCriticalObjectivesLuxuryMy WayEaseOccupationEndeavorUnattainableKinship
Author:Albert Einstein
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“In mysticism that love of truth which we saw as the beginning of all philosophy leaves the merely intellectual sphere, and takes on the assured aspect of a personal passion. Where the philosopher guesses and argues, the mystic lives and looks; and speaks, consequently, the disconcerting language of first-hand experience, not the neat dialectic of the schools. Hence whilst the Absolute of the metaphysicians remains a diagram —impersonal and unattainable—the Absolute of the mystics is lovable, attainable, alive.”

FirstsLooksPhilosophyHandsSchoolPassionSpeakLanguageSawsAliveIntellectualAspectAbsolutesRemainsPhilosopherArguingMysticismSpheresAssuredNeatMysticLovableUnattainableDialecticsDiagramsFirst Hand Experience
Book:Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness
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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.”

PeopleLooksStillsSoundVoiceForgetBehindsTroubleAirStreetsSpeechClothesStuckSpotsSymbolsInnocenceThese DaysBotherFierceOld FashionedImageryRobesBalloonsUnattainableBroodingHalosSainthoodShorthand
Book:A Wizard Alone
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