"Unattainable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... under several heads. The first, the great, the unattainable, the one-sided, and the worn-out. They are all real! What can be more real than the perhaps not very practical passion which first makes young hearts ache? What agony it is to her when he dances three times running with that horrid, stuck-up London girl, with her fashionable jargon, ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... 'He comes of a northern tribe; and in his life-time he never rhymed upon his unattainable lady, or if rhyme he did, the accents never carried her name to the ears of ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... thoroughly and continuously alive. Often when riding horseback with the dogs in my California home I have watched them in envy of the keen, alert interest they took in every stone, stick, and bush, in every sight, sound, and smell. With equal frequency I have expressed that envy, but as something unattainable to a human being's more phlegmatic make-up. In Africa one actually rises to continuous alertness. There are dozy moments-except you curl up in a safe place for the PURPOSE of dozing; again just like the dog! Every bush, every hollow, ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... it had been one of her childish superstitions always "to wish at the new moon." How often, her desire seeming perversely to lift itself towards things unattainable, had she framed one sole wish that she might ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... knocking her down. I have heard it said that this apparently brutal action has anything but the maddening effect tenderly nurtured persons might suppose, and that the patient is soothed and satisfied with a rapidity and completeness unattainable by other and more polite methods. Do you suppose," he went on, flicking a twig off a tree with his whip as we passed, "that the intellectual husband, wrestling intellectually with the chaotic yearnings ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... extinct, it supplies the want of patriotism. Let us therefore with gratitude avail ourselves of its help, and not relinquish the good which it freely offers, from we know not what vain dreams of impracticable purity and unattainable perfection." ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... bubbled out in the form of a deification of his Kaiser and the adoration of Lucille, both states being absolutely apart from all reason, indeed approached to a state of dissociation of consciousness. The desired unattainable is projected into the dream plane, the realm of myth. Such a case is the historical one of the man who, keenly intelligent upon every subject mentioned, startles the visitor by the demand for a piece of toast, gravely explaining that he is a poached egg and that he wishes to ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... distance so acute that often it ends by wearing itself out in a few days. Far or near was all one to me, as if one could never get any further but also never any nearer to her secret: the state like that of some strange wild faiths that get hold of mankind with the cruel mystic grip of unattainable perfection, robbing them of both liberty and felicity on earth. A faith presents one with some hope, though. But I had no hope, and not even desire as a thing outside myself, that would come and go, exhaust or excite. It was ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... of narrow-minded bigots, who paint the Deity from their own gloomy conceptions, the young are too often frighted from the paths of virtue; despairing of ideal perfections, they give up all virtue as unattainable, and start aside from the road which they falsely ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... well down, and the abdominal walls drawn in (retracted), which gives the singer, in all parts above and below, a bellows with tense walls in all parts, with the great advantage that such breathing permits of a firmness otherwise unattainable, and he is enabled to exert his breath force with great certainty and power, and, as some maintain, with all the control necessary for ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... comes to know, the wider will open before him the illimitable realm of what is yet to be known. In the lowest deep which research the most profound can reach, there is a lower deep still unattained—perhaps, even, unattainable. But the fact that he cannot by any possibility master all human knowledge should not deter the student from making ever advancing inroads upon that domain. The vast extent of the world of books only emphasizes the need of making a wise selection from the mass. We are brought ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... narrative of monetary history. A novel and excellent mode of illustration has been adopted, representing the coins in exact fac-simile in gold, silver, and copper, produced by casts from the originals, many of which would be quite unattainable, and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various
... great, as to put beyond our reach anything but a very moderate share of success in travelling to the northward. Still, however, we had been anxious to reach the highest latitude which our means would allow, and with this view, although our whole object had long become unattainable, had pushed on to the northward for thirty-five days, or until half our resources were expended, and the middle of our season arrived. For the last few days the eighty-third parallel was the limit to which we had ventured to extend ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... eternal Substance revealed by Attributes and their Modes is God, absolute in His perfections if He could be fully conceived and known in all His activities. And even to our ignorance He is entrancing in His gradual self-revelation, as with our inadequate ideas we pursue the unattainable from glory ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... let the human heart be set; To virtue nothing serves as check or let The moon, attaining unattainable, is led By virtue to her seat on Shiva's ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... without being visited by him. How he, in especial, had got his reputation it would have been hard to say, unless it were that he dressed a shade more perfectly than anyone, and with such inimitable carelessness in the perfection, too, and had an almost unattainable matchlessness in the sangfroid of his soft, languid insolence, and incredible, though ever gentle, effrontery. However gained, he had it; and his beautiful hack Sahara, his mail-phaeton with two blood ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... said that a final satisfactory solution of the railroad problem has been attained; indeed, in most human affairs such a thing is unattainable. But it can be said that there is no considerable sentiment anywhere in favor of reversing the railroad policy that has been developed, as here briefly outlined. Certainly the public has no such sentiment, and the railroads, which for many years opposed the progress of strong federal ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... sat there, his thoughts milling like a herd of restless cattle, turning aimlessly around and around in their tracks. He had foolishly neglected his opportunity to escape, and the mountains became each moment more beautiful as they swiftly receded into unattainable distance. He had expected to be riding back into the safe and splendid plains country, back to friends and familiar things, and had trusted to the joy of his return to soften the despair of his second failure to ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... enormously dear; which, operating with a real scarcity of many things, occasioned by the war, had excited universal murmurings and inquietude. The Convention, who know the real source of the evil (the discredit of assignats) to be unattainable, and who are more solicitous to divert the clamours of the people, than to supply their wants, have adopted a measure which, according to the present appearances, will ruin one half of the nation, and starve the other. A maximum, or highest price, beyond which nothing is to ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... and this solitude I sweeten by an imaginative sympathy which re-creates the past for me,—the past of the world, as well as the past which belongs to me as an individual,—and which makes me independent of the passing moment. I see every one struggling after the unattainable, but I struggle not, and so spare myself the pangs of disappointment and disgust. I have no ventures at sea, and, consequently, do not fear the arrival of evil tidings. I have no desire to act any prominent part in the world, but I am devoured by an unappeasable curiosity ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... Mahdism. A ferocious tyranny terrorised and reduced to desolation the whole of the upper basin of the Nile; and the population is said to have shrunk from 12,000,000 to 2,000,000, although exact figures are of course unattainable. One of the evil consequences of this regime was that it prevented a scientific treatment of the flow of the Nile, on which the very life of Egypt depended. Scientific irrigation had already worked wonders in increasing the productivity of Egypt, but to complete this work, and to secure ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... revolted at the sacrifice. The renunciation of my birth-right seemed a desertion of the post in which I was stationed: I forbore, therefore, even in my wishes, to solicit your favour, and vigorously determined to fly you as dangerous to my peace, because unattainable without dishonour. ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... point and more charged with old experience. He drank a bottle of wine gladly; above all, at sunset on the hill-top or quite late at night under the stars in the arbour. The sight of something attractive and unattainable seasoned his enjoyment, he would say; and he professed he had lived long enough to admire a candle all the more when he could compare ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... great attainable object such dreadful losses and sufferings as continuation of the war entails might perhaps be borne; but the last seven months have proved that the objects with which Austria-Hungary and Germany went to war are unattainable in the present state of Europe. Austria-Hungary, even with the active aid of Germany and Turkey, cannot prevail in Serbia against the active or passive resistance of Serbia, Russia, Rumania, Greece, Italy, France, and Great Britain. Germany cannot crush France supported by Great Britain and ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... prosperous nation? It is an incident in the life of government that the supreme head of it shall be subject to the vicissitudes of its maniacal, fanatical and criminal classes, those who live by their wits or those who dream of a condition of society unattainable, as human nature is constructed, such as Edward Bellamy has pictured in "Looking Backward." I wish it distinctly understood that I refer to this matter simply to draw attention to the fact that Czolgosz, the obscure assassin of the highest ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... stupefied immobility. His elbows upon the table, his eyes fixed upon the luminous patch made by the rays of the lamp falling upon the sheet of paper,—the battlefield on which his mind was vanquished daily, and on which his pen had become foundered in its attempts to pursue the unattainable idea—he saw slowly defile before him, like the figures of dissolving views with which the children are amused, fantastic pictures which unfolded before him the panorama of his past. It was at first the laborious days in which each hour marked the accomplishment of some task, the ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... acts according to the measure of their righteousness; He that holds the goddess of Prosperity on his bosom; He that bestows prosperity upon those that hear of, praise, and mediate on Him; He that is the embodiment of that condition which represents the attainment of unattainable happiness; He that is possessed of every kind of beauty; He that is the Refuge of the three worlds (DCV—DCXIV); He that is possessed of beautiful eye; He that is possessed of beautiful limbs; He that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Boer reply would die away altogether, only to break out with augmented violence, and with an accuracy which increased our respect for their training. Huge shells—the largest that ever burst upon a battlefield—hurled from distances which were unattainable by our fifteen-pounders, enveloped our batteries in smoke and flame. One enormous Creusot gun on Pepworth Hill threw a 96-pound shell a distance of four miles, and several 40-pound howitzers outweighted our field guns. And on the same day on which we were ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to his feet, seeming not to see the hand the old Judge had extended across the desktop toward him. On his face, of a sudden, was a queer, eager look. It was as though he foresaw the coming true of long-cherished and heretofore unattainable visions. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... involved. Physics (as the term was understood in his day) seemed to him the most mysterious and doubtful portion of the whole. A knowledge of the body and its properties is difficult enough; how much more unattainable is a knowledge of such entities as the Deity and the soul! Those who pronounce absolutely on points like these involve themselves in the most inextricable contradictions. While they declare as certainties things that obviously differ in the general credence they meet with, they forget ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... exalted nature, and who is driven to infidelity perhaps even less by pressure of circumstances, than by the sheer force of her love, which will go on loving — loving what it can have, when that which it would rather have is for the time unattainable. His Pandarus is a gentleman, though a gentleman with a flaw in him; a man who, in his courtier-like good-nature, places the claims of comradeship above those of honour, and plots away the virtue of his niece, that he may appease the love-sorrow of his ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... of five to fifty thousand souls—if the raw Silk were grown in the various countries wherein the fabrics are required, where the climate and soil do not forbid, and taken there to be manufactured where they do—the workers would have space, air, activity, liberty, development, which are unattainable while they are cooped within the walls of a single city. If those Silk-weavers, for instance, whose fabrics are consumed in the United States, were now located in Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri, &c. ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... troubling him. Suddenly the whole situation came back to him, tenfold clearer than before. He saw at once beyond all possibility of contradiction that he could not shoot Marian, no matter who ordered him to do it; that for him the ideal of a perfect soldier was altogether unattainable, and that he was obliged to admit to himself that his entire life was a failure. The public might praise and acclaim him, but he was essentially a fraud and could ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... a temper to abdicate any affair in which he had embarked, before success appeared absolutely unattainable. Like Caesar, it was enough for him that the thing appeared possible to be done, to engage him to persevere. He therefore begged leave to accompany his friend, and they set out together ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... to have, but has to prove its legitimacy in an indirect and "objective" way. The breach with tradition, the deviation from the original state of things is felt and recognised. Men, however, conceal from themselves their own defects, by placing the representatives of the past on an unattainable height, and forming such an estimate of their qualities as makes it unlawful and impossible for those of the present generation, in the interests of their own comfort, to compare themselves with them. When matters reach this point, ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... transient riot of the heart. With her departs the amorous illusion that had shed a temporary charm over the scene of his captivity, and he relapses into loneliness, now rendered tenfold more intolerable by this passing beam of unattainable beauty. Through the long and weary day he repines at his unhappy lot, and when evening approaches, and Phoebus, as he beautifully expresses it, had "bade farewell to every leaf and flower," he still lingers at the window, and, laying his head upon the cold stone, gives vent to a mingled flow ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... be concluded that the happiest state of society is that in which supreme power resides in the whole body of a well-informed people. This is an imaginary, perhaps an unattainable, state of things. Yet, in some measure, we may approximate to it; and he alone deserves the name of a great statesman, whose principle it is to extend the power of the people in proportion to the extent of their knowledge, and to ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... patriotic as it was, was defeated by the obstinate enthusiasm of some, who trembled for this New Jerusalem of their hopes, and by the scandalous desertion of others, and especially yourself. The ends of opposition being thus rendered unattainable, but at the hazard of convulsions, that might endanger the great American cause, the same virtue that began it, ended it, and it has long since ceased ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... Mr. Phillips and Mr. Brandon thought the colony had made rapid strides towards civilization and comfort since the great influx of wealth consequent on the gold discoveries had attracted to Victoria much that was unattainable before. Even during their absence in England there had been a great deal of building going on in Melbourne, and many other improvements had been introduced. The houses were better, and better furnished; the shops seemed to contain everything that enterprise could import ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... first time in all my life, I had taken pain to be the companion of my soul. All my efforts to find Lola were fruitless. I became acquainted with the heartache, the longing for the unattainable, the agony of spirit. The only anodyne was a forgetfulness of self, the only compensation a glimmer of a hope and the shadow of a smile in the grey and leaden lives ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... treat to hear a working-man who has the power of utterance deliver a speech in a straightforward and unrhetorical way. There is always a pith and vigour about such deliverances quite unattainable in a formal harangue. The magnates of the little Fife villages are specially notorious for their gift of the gab: when Bailie M'Scales or Provost Cleaver gets up to speak, no one has any ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... favor me. She knew that her brother Richard would have given his hand to marry me, and she resents it. Not such a great catch, I'm sure, that Dick Hare, even if he had gone on right," continued Afy, somewhat after the example of the fox, looking at the unattainable grapes. "He had no brains to speak of; and what he had were the color ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... great strength—it does not resist the sea-worm; it is applied to all purposes in Manila where more than ordinary strength is required when Molave cannot be procured in sufficiently great lengths and Ipil is unattainable. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... mental self-abuse is longing for the unattainable. Sometimes a person sets her mind on a certain thing. If that goal is an honorable one, she should make every effort to attain it but if circumstances over which she has no control make that goal impossible of attainment she should turn her thoughts in another direction. But ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... from the pen of this remarkable man leaves us with the conviction that he is one of the most powerful spiritual forces in our generation. It is the more to be regretted that in certain points he seems to be hampered by false presuppositions and misled by unattainable ideals. His loyalty to 'Catholic truth,' as understood by the party in the Church to which he consents to belong, prevents him from understanding where the shoe really pinches among those of the younger generation who are both thoughtful and devout. He makes ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... to which he is adapted by nature. This life has become such a mockery that people talk of heaven as a state in which every person will be free to do the things he likes best—as if that blissful condition were utterly unattainable here. ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... highest circles of England and France. Countries which have not reached the utmost pitch of refinement have their peculiar attractions, as well as the most highly polished nations; but, to the casual resident, the former offers many advantages unattainable in Europe. The virtue of hospitality, exiled by luxury and refinement, exhibits itself in the New World under such noble and endearing forms as would almost tempt the philosopher, as well as the weary traveller, to dread ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... of January to the middle of May. It is imprudent to remain in the cities of Cuba later than the latter period, as the fever season then commences. The invalid will find that very many physical comforts, and some things deemed imperative at home, must be sacrificed here as quite unattainable: such, for instance, as good beds, strict cleanliness, good milk, and sweet butter. The climatic advantages must suffice for such deprivations. During the greater portion of the year it is dry and hot, the rainy season commencing in June and ending in September. ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... bosses on the belt have managed to find a grip on the slime—and presently you come to the brink of what appears, to your exaggerated sense of perception, a bottomless chasm, with distant steep banks on the farther side that look unattainable and insurmountable. It is an old German trench which the rains have worn and widened. You brace yourself, you grip desperately a pair of brass handles in front of you, while leviathan hesitates, seems to sit up on his haunches, and then ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... although, for the most part, he delights in a close, earnest, confidential, suppressed tone. There is nothing a better prides himself on more than being in the possession of some, to the common herd, unattainable secret—something only to be obtained once in a lifetime, and then only after severe losses—a secret brought out by some train of fortuitous and most intricately-woven events. It comes through a line of ingenious, quickwitted, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... who combine two things which seldom go together, scientific and parochial knowledge. But a body of evidence already waits to be used, and though its discussion may lead—as it has led me—into topographical minutiae, where completeness and certainty are too often unattainable and errors are fatally easy, my results may nevertheless contain some new suggestions and ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield
... Christ nor the head of Mona Lisa, and after years of labor he left them unfinished. The problem of human life, the spirit, the world engrossed him, and all his creations seem impregnated with the psychological, the mystical, the unattainable, the hidden. ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... between capital and labour is not yet. Each is striving for the sole possession and control of things which belong to neither alone. Each looks upon the other not as a co-labourer but as a rival, instead of making intelligent and united effort for an object unattainable by either alone. If capital would smoke this in his cigar and labour the same in his pipe, the soothing effects might tend to more amicable and effective use of what is now ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... in love with "an angelically pure and inhumanly cold woman, who requires in him an unattainable union of immaculate purity and complete experience ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... do thou speedily adopt this line of conduct. If thou dost not act so, the Kurus will surely meet with destruction, for neither Bhimasena nor Arjuna, if angry, will leave any of their foes unslain. What is there in the world which is unattainable to those who cannot among their warriors Savyasachin skilled in arms; who have the Gandiva, the most powerful of all weapons in the world, for their bow; and who have amongst them the mighty Bhima also as a warrior? Formerly, as soon as thy son was ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... had an ambition. At present beyond her grasp, yet so sure was she of its ultimate attainment, that she shaped her entire cosmic consciousness toward that end. Her ambition was not unique, perhaps not unattainable. It had been achieved by others with seemingly little effort and less skill; and though as yet, merely a radiant hope, Warble was determined that some day ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... and to strike the note of the selected sentiment; nothing would be allowed in such a story that did not, at the same time, expedite the progress of the fable, build up the characters, and strike home the moral or the philosophical design. But this is unattainable. As a rule, so far from building the fabric of our works exclusively with these, we are thrown into a rapture if we think we can muster a dozen or a score of them, to be the plums of our confection. And hence, in order that the canvas may be filled or the story ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... use, not only for fortifying the speculative reason, but also with respect to religion. In default of this, either the moral law is degraded from its holiness, being represented as indulging our convenience, or else men strain after an unattainable aim, hoping to gain absolute holiness of will, thus losing themselves in fanatical theosophic dreams utterly ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... content with their present achievements. They regard themselves always as students who must everlastingly keep trying more difficult tasks to insure a steady progress toward an unattainable goal. "Most of the studyin'," Abe Martin once observed, "is done after a feller gets out of college," and these gray-haired exemplars are—as all of us ought to be—still learning to write, and forever ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... not understand that in the world There grows between the sunlight and the grass Anything save themselves desirable. It seems to them that the swift eyes of men Are made but to be mirrors, not to see Far-off, disastrous, unattainable things. 'For are not we,' they say, 'the end of all? Why should you look beyond us? If you look Into the night, you will find nothing there: We also have gazed often ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... brain was working like mad in the new-found desire to perform miracles for the sake of this lovely, unattainable creature. Was there no way to foil these triumphant conspirators? He was forgetting the Prince, the horrors of the 26th; he was thinking only of saving this girl from the fate that Marlanx had in store for her. Vos Engo may have had the promise, but what could it profit him ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... containing small quantities that might be thrown out with the ashes of the brine-houses on the high-roads; when the price of this necessary was so increased by the tax upon it as to make it an expensive, sometimes an unattainable, luxury to the working man, Government did more to demoralise the popular sense of rectitude and uprightness than heaps of sermons could undo. And the same, though in smaller measure, was the consequence of many other taxes. It may ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... word was thought-provoking. A glimmer of understanding began to dawn in Lane. Already an immense pity had flooded his soul, and a profound sense of the mystery and tragedy of Mel Iden. She had always been unusual, aloof, proud, unattainable, a girl with a heart of golden fire. And now she had a nameless child and was an outcast from her father's house. The fact, the fatality ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... we shall try to show gradually, in detail, and as clearly as possible, we shall call attention particularly to a contradiction in which the moderns are often involved. They call the ancients their teachers, they acknowledge in their works an unattainable excellence, yet they depart both in theory and practice far from the maxims which the ancients continually observed. In starting from this important point and in returning to it often, we shall find others about which something falls to ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... minimum rates of wages which will ensure that their subsistence will not be liable to be impaired by the fluctuations of the markets. What the workers of the present day look to as a desirable, but almost unattainable, ideal, was the universal practice in the ages when economic relations were controlled by ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... historian and to be celebrated by the poet; but such perfection is not an object of reasonable pursuit, because it is not one of possible attainment; and never yet did a passionate struggle after an absolutely unattainable object fail to be productive of misery to an individual, of madness and confusion to a people. As the inhabitants of those burning climates which lie beneath a tropical sun sigh for the coolness of the mountain and the grove, ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... was to be his, however, he found a deep satisfaction in considering himself hopelessly in love with her. He was profoundly sorry for himself. He saw himself a tragic figure, hopeless and wretched. He longed for the unattainable; he held up empty hands to the stars, and by so mimicking the gesture of youth, he ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... society—success looked easy enough. The memory of her undoubted belief in him came upon him often with a glow reflected from those magnificently hopeful moments. But then at times of depression it grew to look no more than a foolish unattainable dream. All young artists have times when they are going to be great—when the glory proper to white hairs makes a halo round un-wrinkled fronts and curls, brown or golden. They have times when the smartest turn of verse, the most ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... co-operation of different writers in carrying out this plan it was hoped that a thoroughness and completeness of treatment, otherwise unattainable, might be secured. It was believed also that from writers mainly British and American fuller consideration of English Philosophy than it had hitherto received might be looked for. In the earlier series of books containing, among others, Bosanquet's "History of Aesthetic," Pfleiderer's ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... deeds of the women themselves may carry them different ways. I think a reasonable husband ought to be satisfied with passing his allotted time with any particular wife in this world, and not to go about moping for things unattainable. I'm infinitely obliged to you, Major Duncan, for this and all your other acts of friendship; and if you could but add another, I should think you had not altogether forgotten ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... substructure had crumbled at the test. She loved another; had suddenly become as unattainable as the stars—and ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... opinions would in most cases be dissimilar, if they did not openly conflict. Those who cannot come to a final decision as to their own text would not be likely to agree as to the merits of particular readings in the poems of their predecessors. Unanimity of opinion on this point is indeed quite unattainable. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... her days that poverty kept from her to the end, and the cloak was merely a luxury. She would soon have let it slip by as something unattainable had not Hendry encouraged it to rankle in her mind. I cannot say when he first determined that Jess should have a cloak, come the money as it liked, for he was too ashamed of his weakness to admit his project to me. I remember, however, his ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... and they gave out no odor even while burning. I burned them all, cleaned off all the blood-spots, ventilated the room, opened the windows, and will turn it to a workshop. No more sighing for the unattainable, no more grasping at the intangible, no more clutching at the impalpable. I am no poet, and we don't want poetry. Our civilization isn't old enough. Poets, like other maggots, will be produced when fermentation comes. I am going about the humdrum and the useful. I am ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... interested in her, son. That family is like a secret sanctuary; and she is the holy thing behind the altar. She's unattainable." ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... and even uninteresting, had an effect upon their character not altogether unwholesome, and prevented any public crying for the moon, or any public charge of injustice against its Maker because it is unattainable. ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... for the evils which he felt or imagined here. And if, in their bewildered conjectures as to the purpose of earthly existence, the banqueters should throw aside the veil, and cast an inquiring glance at this figure of death, as seeking thence the solution otherwise unattainable, the only reply would be a stare of the vacant eye-caverns and a grin of the skeleton jaws. Such was the response that the dead man had fancied himself to receive when he asked of Death to solve the riddle of his ...
— The Christmas Banquet (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... be no doubt," say they, "that a well-constructed engine, a steam-carriage conveyance between London and Birmingham, at a velocity unattainable by horses, and limited only by safety, may be maintained; and it is our conviction that such a project might be undertaken with great advantage to the public, more particularly if, as might obviously be the case, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... and which expands the period proper for the reproductory process from the vernal season into the whole twelvemonth, leaves to the many, whose lot is celibacy, no bodily want save one and that in a host of cases either unattainable or procurable only by difficulty and danger. Hence the prodigious amount of mental excitement and material impurity which is found wherever civilization extends, in maid, matron, and widow, save and except those solely ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... a few moments of stillness. Then gradually, the tension, the withholding relaxed in him, and he began to flow towards her. She was beyond him, the unattainable. But he let go his hold on himself, he relinquished himself, and knew the subterranean force of his desire to come to her, to be with her, to mingle with her, losing himself to find her, to find himself in her. He began to approach her, to ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... Jane might be dead by now, or more probably married to Mr. Cohen. And yet once they had loved each other, and to this hour he still loved her, or thought that he did. At least, through all the weary years of exile, labour, and unceasing search after the unattainable, her image and memory had been with him, a distant dream of sweetness, peace, and beauty, and they were with him yet, though nothing of her remained to him except the parting gift of her prayer-book and the lock of hair within ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... of strong, fresh wants—the imperative need to live life in all its fulness, this of itself makes the heart to sing. And, above the full complement of wants, to have been dowered by Heaven with a stanch disbelief in the unattainable,—this is a fortune rather to be chosen than a good name or great riches; since the name and riches and all things desired must come to ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... Greeley's Niagara efforts left any doubt that peace was at present unattainable, the fact was demonstrated beyond question by the published report of another unofficial and volunteer negotiation which was proceeding at the same time. In May, 1863, James F. Jaquess, D.D., a Methodist clergyman of piety and religious enthusiasm, who ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... During all this time, nearly a quarter of a century, our journal has endeavored to represent the actual condition of our scientific and mechanical progress and to record the discoveries and improvements in these departments wherever made. The result is a compendium of valuable information unattainable through any ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... is not unattainable, some members in this academy give a sufficient proof. And, be assured, that if this power is not acquired whilst you are young, there will be no time for it afterwards: at least, the attempt will be attended with as much difficulty as those experience who learn ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... am able to propagate bees by natural swarming, with a rapidity and certainty unattainable except by the complete control of all the combs in the hive, still there are difficulties in this mode of increase, inherent to the system itself, and therefore entirely incapable of being removed by any kind of hive. Before describing the various methods ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... for almost the first in my life, I seem come to a stand in the objects of my darling pursuits, which I may say have been almost entirely the pursuit of pleasure, through the medium of the understanding. This I feel must be a useless search, for the further I go, the more unattainable is the contentment which I hoped a degree of excellence might have produced;—the further I go, the further does my idea of perfection extend; therefore this way of attaining happiness I find is impossible. Never in my life was I so sensible of the real weakness of ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous
... sympathy or artistic appreciation. Not least in the pathos of his situation was the simplicity and humility with which he accepted himself, with his whole nature yearning towards an ideal which he knew to be as unattainable as the stars, without impatience or bitterness towards men or fate. If he was not content with what was given him, no one could see it, and he was so filled with the happiness that nature and his limited art gave him that he had no room ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... the fete of St. Jean is about to begin,' said the Sire de Lescun; 'for these are the poor people who are on the watch for the unattainable moment, when, it is thought, the water changes into wine, and has the power of healing all their infirmities: the dew of this night, received on the body in the fields, is also said to be endowed with ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... to tell me that you love me because you cannot bear to be resisted, and want to master me. You liked me at first because I treated you and all men with indifference. You resolved to have me because I seemed unattainable. This is all ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... not my strongest ambition was to do something worth doing, and not utterly unworthy of a young countryman of Marlowe the teacher and Webster the pupil of Shakespeare, in the line of work which those three poets had left as a possibly unattainable example for ambitious Englishmen. And my first book, written while yet under academic or tutoral authority, bore evidence of that ambition in every line.' And indeed we need not turn four pages to come upon a mimicry of the style of Shakespeare ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... a fund of amusing anecdote, as well as of instructive detail, presents itself. We may travel in a carriage and four—from morn 'till night—and sweep county after county, in pursuit of all that is exquisite, and rare, and precious, and unattainable in other quarters: but I doubt if our horses' heads can be turned in a direction better calculated to answer all the ends in view ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... be found in any decent tenement; his impression was that there had been a public house on top of the mountain, but that it had recently been destroyed by fire. Certainties were evidently still unattainable. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... and in place of them may be seen flashy silks or equally flashy chintzes or delaines, all the product of foreign looms. Every dollar they may have thus far earned has been spent in personal adornment. At home, extremely low wages and scanty employment made money comparatively unattainable. Here, high wages and an active competition for their services have put money into their hands so plenteously as to open to them a new life. They see that American women generally dress extravagantly; that even their own countrywomen whom they meet on their arrival here are expensively attired; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... all will be to match—the reflectors scratched, the spare lamp unready, the storm-panes in the storehouse. If a light is not rather more than middling good, it will be radically bad. Mediocrity (except in literature) appears to be unattainable by man. But of course the unfortunate of St. Andrews was only an amateur, he was not in the Service, he had no uniform coat, he was, I believe, a plumber by his trade, and stood (in the mediaeval phrase) quite out of the danger of my father; but he had a painful interview ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... attachment. This is proved by the episode of Sofronia and Olindo in the Gerusalemme, which points in carefully constructed innuendoes to his affection. It can even be conceded that Tasso, who was wont to indulge fantastic visions of unattainable greatness, may have raised his hopes so high as sometimes to entertain the possibility of winning her hand. But if he did dally with such dreams, the realities of his position must in sober moments have convinced him of their folly. Had not a Duchess of Amalfi been ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... other husbandman before or since. France has ever been rich, and is as rich as ever, in men who have known how to sacrifice the shadow to the substance; in fanatics who have pursued without pause or divagation dreams of impossible Utopias and unattainable good; in idealists who have joyfully given all to love, to art, to religion, and to logic. It is not inappropriate, therefore, that France should have produced in an age of turmoil and terrible madness the man who exalted ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... potentialities), there is every reason why it should be continued as long as he lives. In other words, the path of salvation is the path of self-realisation, the most important part of which is traversed in childhood; and to attain to salvation (which is in a sense unattainable) is to remain faithful to that path till it ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... blank dejection. Kirk's first disappointment, when the girl had failed to keep her tryst, was as nothing compared to this, for now he felt that she was unattainable. He did not quite give up hope; so many strange experiences had befallen him since his involuntary departure from New York that it all seemed like a dream in which anything is possible. But he was deep in the doldrums ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... intention, if the steed proved to be disengaged, and superior to his own, of appropriating him to his own use. He soon gained a view of the object he sought; but the animal rendered a closer acquaintance unattainable, by immediately taking to his heels. Fanshawe had, however, made a most interesting discovery; for the horse was accoutred with a side-saddle; and who but Ellen Langton could have been his rider? At this conclusion, ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... negociations finally failed. About that time Fox died, and the French government attributed publicly the failure of these negociations to his death. But the truth was, Fox had long ago expressed his convictions that peace would be unattainable; and after he had commenced the negociations, he had said in the house of commons:—"My wish, the first wish of my heart, is peace; but such a peace as shall preserve our connexions and influence on the continent, as shall not abate one jot of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... questions. Geology at present provides us with most valuable topographical records, but she has not the means of working them into a universal history. Is such a universal history, then, to be regarded as unattainable? Are all the grandest and most interesting problems which offer themselves to the geological student essentially insoluble? Is he in the position of a scientific Tantalus—doomed always to thirst for a knowledge which he cannot obtain? The reverse is ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... long way. Felix had lately become conscious of a luxurious preference for the society—if possible unshared with others—of Gertrude Wentworth; but he had relegated this young lady, for the moment, to the coldly brilliant category of unattainable possessions. She was not the first woman for whom he had entertained an unpractical admiration. He had been in love with duchesses and countesses, and he had made, once or twice, a perilously near approach to cynicism in declaring that the disinterestedness of women had been ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... say, that she should be among the favoured individuals who had secured a position there. Undoubtedly, she would have preferred a seat amongst the court dames in the galleries of the tilt-yard, but as this was unattainable, she was obliged to be content; and, indeed, she had no reason to complain, for she saw quite as much as those inside, and was more at ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... is in resignation a further good element: even real goods, when they are unattainable, ought not to be fretfully desired. To every man comes, sooner or later, the great renunciation. For the young, there is nothing unattainable; a good thing desired with the whole force of a passionate will, and yet impossible, is to them not credible. Yet, by death, by illness, ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... smooth-shaven face. His eyes were what arrested Douglas' attention. They were honest eyes, which looked clear and straight into his. There the old man's soul seemed to be shining forth, so expressive were they. Douglas thought he could read in those clear depths an unattainable longing, mingled with an appealing pathos. When he smiled, his whole face was lighted with a remarkable glory, and he appeared no longer a humble shoe-maker, but an uncrowned king. His rude bench was his throne, and the humble shop his royal palace. ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... woman of to-day in the most advanced part of the world as regards her opportunities, has hardly reached the height of Arete. Unquestionably a glorious ideal is set up before the Sisterhood of all time for emulation; or is it unattainable? At any rate the woman in Homer stands far in advance of her later ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... agreement, for we shall see that he stated over and over again, in correspondence with members of the junta and others, that a protectorate would be considered only if absolute independence finally proved unattainable, but there is no reason to believe that ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... them. They were so other—that was what I felt; and to be other, other almost anyhow, seemed as good as the probable taste of the bright compound wistfully watched in the confectioner's window; unattainable, impossible, of course, but as to which just this impossibility and just that privation kept those active proceedings in which jealousy seeks relief quite out of the question. A platitude of acceptance of the poor actual, the ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... will then, I think, be satisfied that the doctrine in question rests upon a very unsafe foundation; that the facts adduced in its support are capable of many other interpretations; and, indeed, that from the very nature of the case, demonstrative evidence one way or the other is almost unattainable. A priori, I should be disposed to expect a certain amount of infertility between some of the extreme modifications of mankind; and still more between the offsprings of their intermixture. A posteriori, I cannot discover any satisfactory proof ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... anticipating criticism, putting his character, as it were, in pledge for the sincerity of his doctrine, we had best waive the question of delicacy, and make our acknowledgments for a lesson of courage, not unnecessary in these days of anonymous criticism, and much light, otherwise unattainable, on the spirit in which great movements were initiated and carried forward. Knox's personal revelations are always interesting; and, in the case of the "First Blast," as I have said, there is no exception to the rule. He begins by stating the solemn responsibility of all who are watchmen ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... condescend without wounding. A woman who is not outwardly attractive must do a different kind of work. The first brings a poetic element into a dreary life, and may even in this way arouse the aspiration for an unattainable ideal. But a plain and awkward woman may be the inspiration of a still higher ideal by the radiance of ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... to a nobler kind of praise, I should be happier far; but to be tormented with the sentiment of an honourable ambition and with aspirations after better things, and at the same time so sunk in sloth and bad habits as to be incapable of those exertions without which their objects are unattainable, is of all conditions the worst. I sometimes think that it would be better for me, as I am not what I might have been (if my education had been less neglected, and my mind had undergone a better system of moral discipline), if I was still lower ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... unheeded, caring naught for social converse, intellectual pleasures, or intelligence of church or state. Women might elope, men embezzle, dynasties fall, ministries change, or public faith be broken, and they viewed the result, if indeed they noted it, with absolute composure. But let eggs be unattainable, jellies become murky, the fruit in cake or pudding sink hopelessly to the bottom, and Rachel weeping for her children could not ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... do know of such a place! The good doctor who attended my husband in his last illness told me of it. A friend of his receives a certain number of poor people into his house, and charges no more than the cost of maintaining them. An unattainable sum to me! There is the temptation that I spoke of. The help of a few pounds I might accept, if I fell ill, because I might afterward pay it ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... bay is usually but a coloured thought in the mind, a phantom and an unattainable refuge by day, and a star by night, the real coast which stretches seaward to it, marching on either hand into the blue, confident and tall, is hardly more material, except by the stones of my outlook. The near ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... concessions so ungraciously made, only prove the rigor of the rule. Practically, to all but members of noble families, and men distinguished for military, naval, or political services, or eminent lawyers or clergymen, the House of Lords is unattainable. Brown may reach the highest range of artistic excellence, he may achieve world-wide fame as an architect, his canvas may glow with the marvellous coloring of Titian or repeat the rare and delicate grace ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... hope of a more complete revenge only restrained him then from some desperate act of violence. As he walked to and fro, chafing with inward passion, he might have been compared to a caged wild beast, hungry and with food in sight, yet unattainable. ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... of the body with a minimum disturbance of its superficial appearance; and (b) to preserve a likeness of the deceased as he was in life. At first it was naturally attempted to make this simulacrum of the body itself if it were possible, or alternatively, when this ideal was found to be unattainable, from its wrappings or by means of a portrait statue. It was soon recognized that it was beyond the powers of the early embalmer to succeed in mummifying the body itself so as to retain a recognizable likeness to the man when ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... them, and swept on, and in a moment was far away, and lost to sight. So in our lives does happiness come so near us as almost to brush our cheeks with its wings, and then pass on, and become as unattainable as the stars. As Mary Leithe was about to speak, a shadow cast from above fell across her face and figure. She seemed to feel a sort of chill from it, warm though the day was; and without moving her eyes from Drayton's ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... character of our countrymen, must acknowledge that their zeal for book learning, not only is strong and ardent, when opportunities of scholastic education occur, but that it increases in proportion as these opportunities are rare and unattainable. The very name and nature of Hedge Schools are proof of this; for what stronger point could be made out, in illustration of my position, than the fact, that, despite of obstacles, the very idea of ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... waiting to hear that it had been negotiated; after a small advance, the Spanish Government declined the loan unless the sole right of navigating the Mississippi were granted. Having thus failed to accomplish the great object, which indeed was unattainable except at a sacrifice which subsequent events have proved would have essentially interfered with the prosperous development of the Southwest—Jay, sensitively vigilant of his country's credit, despite his habitual prudence, accepted the bill ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... otherwise. And—always admitting the harshness of the limitations he had imposed on himself—the martyrdom of those he held dearest, did, in fact, work to secure him a measure of content that had otherwise been unattainable. The twelve years following the birth of Lady Calmady's child were the most fruitful of his life. He filled a post no other person could have filled; one which, while satisfying his religious sense and priestly ideal of detachment, appeased the cravings of his heart and developed the practical ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... solemnly protest, as the most sacred of truths, that I never, one instant, lost sight of your reputation and favorable standing with your country, and never omitted to justify your failure to attain our wish, as one which was probably unattainable. Reviewing, therefore, this whole subject, I cannot doubt you will become sensible, that your impressions have been without just ground. I cannot, indeed, judge what falsehoods may have been written or told you; and that, under such forms as to command belief. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... said the last words she felt deeply conscious of her feminine intelligence, of that delicate ingenuity peculiar to women, unattainable by man. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... was charmed beyond words with any move which was to bring Boris on the scene. The moment Boris seemed at all unattainable, he became wonderfully precious in Kitty's eyes. She would, of course, snub him in five minutes after he did arrive, but that really did not matter. The fascination of Annie's secret mission also delighted her much, and ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... to New York; and another told of a beautiful mastiff living somewhere in the State of New Jersey that had the honor of bringing him into the world. It would be very interesting to know something of the parentage of our hero, but since the facts surrounding his birth are unattainable, we must content ourselves with telling a portion of a simple story of a good and noble life. It may be safe to assert that he was not a native American; if he had been, he would have provided himself with the regulation genealogical ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... Heaven, Janet!" said the Countess, "the false traitor lies in his throat! He must needs lie, for he speaks to the dishonour of my noble lord; he must needs lie doubly, for he speaks to gain ends of his own, equally execrable and unattainable." ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... up with the stake and endeavoured to extract it from his body. But not succeeding therein, he cut it off at the point just outside the body. The Muni, with a portion of the stake within his body, walked about, and in that state practised the austerest of penances and conquered numberless regions unattainable by others. And for the circumstances of a part of the stake being within his body, he came to be known in the three worlds by the name of Ani-Mandavya (Mandavya with the stake within). And one day that Brahamana acquainted with the highest truth of religion ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... equal quality are so great that only the most important reasons could justify any such attempts. Hence the side which is weaker in Cavalry will meet the circumstances best by keeping back its horsemen, and not sacrificing its officers for infinitesimal, and probably unattainable, advantages. It will be better merely to work up to the enemy as close as may be possible without serious losses, allow the enemy's mounted forces to wreck themselves against the opposing infantry and armed population, and only then to put in its Cavalry for decisive action when the ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... of the Bible—the Land of Promise to the Israelites, the land of Miracle and Sacrifice to the Apostles and their followers—still slept in the unattainable distance, under a sky of bluer and more tranquil loveliness than that to whose cloudless vault I looked up. It lay as far and beautiful as it once seemed to the eye of childhood, and the swords of Seraphim kept profane feet from its sacred hills. But these rough rocks around me, these ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... untruth of what is hypothetically expressed in the conditional clause of (7) and in the concessive clause of (8). There is an indirect question in (9), a wish in (10) for something not at once attainable and in (11) for something forever unattainable, and in (12) the subjunctive mode is used in place of ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... influenced a vast number of adventurers who led expeditions to seek the land of golden treasure; but notwithstanding the fact that their searched most carefully and for long periods, they all failed to find it. The idea of the unattainable gave the suggestion to Mrs. Whitney for her fountain. The gold of El Dorado was used as a symbol of all material advantages which we so strongly desire - ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... wanted was comprised moreover in a single boon—the common unattainable art of taking things as they came. He appeared to himself to have given his best years to an active appreciation of the way they didn't come; but perhaps—as they would seemingly here be things quite other—this ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... detail there may be novelty, but variety is unattainable. One day must be very like another in the life of a savage. Summoned by the calls of hunger and the returning light, he starts from his beloved indolence, and snatching up the remaining brand of his fire, hastens with his wife to the strand to commence their daily task. In general the canoe is ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... concerned in the outer world, transcendent, a thing in itself; all else is our doing; and if you wish to call it matter or the material world, well and good, but at least it is not the prius of mind, but the posterius, that which is demanded by the mind, but is always unattainable. Even the professional materialist ascribes inertia to matter. The atoms, if he assumes atoms, are motionless, unless disturbed. From whence comes this disturbance? It must proceed from something outside the atoms, or the matter, ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... without evolving names and forms. The mantra, 'There was darkness, hidden in darkness,' &c. (Ri. Samh. X, 129, 3), sets forth the same view; and so does Manu (I, 5), 'This universe existed in the shape of Darkness, unperceived, destitute of distinctive marks, unattainable by reasoning, unknowable, wholly immersed as it were in deep sleep.' And, as to the text, 'from that the Lord of Mya creates everything,' we shall prove later on the unchangeableness of Brahman, and explain the scriptural texts ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... faces, once lovely as theirs, it may be, that gazed meagre and pinched and hungry on the young maidens in rose-colour and blue, tripping lightly through the avenue of their eager eyes—not yet too envious of unattainable felicity to gaze with admiring sympathy on those who seemed to them the angels, the goddesses of their kind. 'O God!' I thought, but dared not speak, 'and thou couldst make all these girls so lovely! Thou couldst give them all the gracious garments of rose and blue and white if thou wouldst! ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... know that! I knew this man was daring to the point of being foolhardy. But to overcome all the obstacles around the South Pole—even more unattainable than the North Pole, which still hadn't been reached by the boldest navigators— wasn't this an absolutely insane undertaking, one that could occur only in the ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... day in a sort of deep study. This was the enchanted castle that had stood to her for so long as the unattainable height of dreams; these were the envied inhabitants of that castle. Everything was the same, except herself, yet how incredibly the change in her affected everything about her! She was at home here now, could answer ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... label, but the borough authorities evidently believed that night endowed the stranger with powers of divination. George turned hesitant down the mysterious gorge, which had two dim lamps of its own, and which ended in a high wall, whereat could be descried unattainable trees—possibly the grove of Alexandra. Silence and a charmed stillness held the gorge, while in Fulham Road not a hundred yards away omnibuses and an occasional hansom rattled along in an ordinary world. George soon decided that he was not in Alexandra Grove, on account of ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... larger time. As a consequence of its motion the clock goes more slowly than when at rest. Here also the velocity c plays the part of an unattainable limiting velocity. ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein |
