Unattainable Quotes

There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people for a purpose which is unattainable. (Howard Zinn)
To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is too condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness. View quote
Émile Durkheim
Teachers are expected to reach unattainable goals with inadequate tools. The miracle is that at times they accomplish this impossible task. View quote
Haim Ginott
The dog and the rabbit are telling us not to chase unattainable material goals. View quote
Kit Williams
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. View quote
David Gemmell
One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be stricken blind. To live a visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable. I have only touched it, just touched it. View quote
Dorothea Lange
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. View quote
Edith Wharton
Complete honesty has nothing to do with 'purity' or naivety. The full truth is unattainable to naivety, and the completely honest artist is not pure in heart. View quote
Clement Greenberg
Equality before the law is probably forever unattainable. It is a noble ideal, but it can never be realized, for what men value in this world is not rights but privileges. View quote
H. L. Mencken
The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it. For ignorance is the first requisite of the historian – ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art. View quote
Lytton Strachey
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 Andreas Feuerbach)
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. View quote
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Music is a means capable of expressing dark dramatism and pure rapture, suffering and ecstasy, fiery and cold fury, melancholy and wild merriment – and the subtlest nuances and interplay of these feelings which words are powerless to express and which are unattainable in painting and sculpture. View quote
Dmitri Shostakovich
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) View quote
Charlaine Harris
I need to start honing in on projects that I want to devote my time to and not put my energies into the unattainable ones. View quote
Dan Deacon
I tell my students to try early in life to find an unattainable objective. View quote
George Wald
The knowledge that makes us cherish innocence makes innocence unattainable. View quote
Irving Howe
I have a tendency to run after people who are completely unattainable and uninterested and make a complete fool of myself. View quote
Martha Wainwright
What was it that made this human love so much more desirable to me than the love of my own kind? Was it because it was exclusive and capricious? The souls offered love and acceptance to all. Did I crave a greater challenge? This love was tricky; it had no hard-and-fast rules - it might be given for free, as with Jamie, or earned through time and hard work, as with Ian, or completely and heartbreakingly unattainable, as with Jared. Or was it simply better somehow? Because these humans could hate with so much fury, was the other end of the spectrum that they could love with more heart and zeal and fire? View quote
Stephenie Meyer
The power of God is the worship He inspires.... The worship of God is not a rule of safety - it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the unattainable. The death of religion comes with the repression of the high hope of adventure. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
I see myself forever and ever as the ridiculous [person], the lonely soul, the wanderer, the restless frustrated artist, the [person] in love with love, always in search of the absolute, always seeking the unattainable. (Henry Miller)
Do not be afraid of obstacles in your path, it does not matter how great the forces are that stand in your way.... Do not think that anything is impossible when miracles are being worked on every side. If you are true to yourself there is nothing to be afraid of. There is nothing unattainable by truth, love and faith. This is your whole gospel which will work out miracles. View quote
Sri Aurobindo
If this end is unattainable, so, it can be said, is perfection in any other ideal of painting or in any other of man's activities. View quote
Edward Hopper
love doesn't follow the rules... nothing is worth having so much as something unattainable. View quote
Jodi Picoult
He smiles at me, and I am suddenly seventeen again - the year I realize that love doesn't follow the rules, the year I understood that nothing is worth having so much as something unattainable. View quote
Jodi Picoult