"Unattainable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... could be predicted with so much accuracy. Urged by his desire to understand the matter thoroughly, Tycho sought to procure some book which might explain what he so greatly wanted to know. In those days books of any kind were but few and scarce, and scientific books were especially unattainable. It so happened, however, that a Latin version of Ptolemy's astronomical works had appeared a few years before the eclipse took place, and Tycho managed to buy a copy of this book, which was then the chief authority on celestial matters. Young as the boy astronomer was, he studied ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... Myry?" Marvin flared in sudden jealousy. Both women eyed him, as from a great and unattainable height. Then Nell's capable back disappeared beyond Myry's door; and his mother's little old grotesque and woolly figure was swallowed up by the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the great Republic. To have knit up all the nations of the earth in a common superstition is no mean achievement, and it is impossible to withhold a fervent admiration from the rhetoric which has thus attained what seemed, before its hour, the unattainable. ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... more warmth, rising.] And I will do more than that! I will help him to bring his desires into harmony with what lies attainable before him. That is just what at present they are not. All his longings are for things that must for ever remain unattainable to him. But I will create a conscious happiness in his mind. [He goes once or twice up and down the room. ASTA and RITA follow ...
— Little Eyolf • Henrik Ibsen
... devil flamed into his eyes, the devil of some ancestral savagery, which would destroy what is desired but unattainable. He swung round, his hand went to his pocket, something clacked, and his arm shot out like ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... the reference to the sense of human interest is equally so. I repeat that the principle here expressed, is incontrovertible; but there may be something even beyond it. There may be an object in full keeping with the principle suggested—an object unattainable by the means ordinarily in possession of mankind, yet which, if attained, would lend a charm to the landscape-garden immeasurably surpassing that which a merely human interest could bestow. The true poet possessed of very unusual pecuniary ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... actually attained are above the average of such structures in general effect. The Main Building strikes the eye, at an angle of vision proper to its extent, more pleasingly than either of the English or French structures; while for the massiveness and dignity unattainable by glass and iron Memorial Hall has no rival among them, and its facade is inferior chiefly in richness of detail to the main entrance at Vienna. Were it otherwise, some shortcoming in point of external beauty might be pardoned in erections which are meant to stand ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... so sympathetically attuned that the mere sound of her voice set his whole being into vibrant response, where all his life he had lain mute. She played havoc with his resolutions, too, awaking in him the wildest envy and desire. He no longer thought of her as unattainable; on the contrary, her husband's shortcomings seemed providential. Absurd, impossible ways of winning her suggested themselves. To risk a ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... did not discover the north-west passage, but, according to Lowell, he invented the forest primeval. Chateaubriand gave the first full utterance to that romantic note which sounds so loudly in Byron's verse; the restless dissatisfaction with life as it is, the longing for something undefined and unattainable, the love for solitude and the desert, the "passion incapable of being converted into action"—in short, the maladie du siecle—since become familiar in "Childe Harold" and in Senancour's "Obermann." In one of the chapters[31] of "Le Genie ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Etc.—An unattainable standard of accuracy is not imposed by the due process clause. If a defendant within the jurisdiction is served personally with process in which his name is misspelled, he cannot safely ignore it on account of the misnomer. If he fails to appear and plead the misnomer in ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... not very noble origin, is a sentiment beneficial both to the community and the individual, and is therefore worthy of encouragement. Happily, those cold heights of philosophy on which every man is loved as a brother and every nationality held in equal honour and esteem are unattainable by human nature; for without the stimulus of Patriotism National Life would be impracticable.[8] It's chief defect is that like most of the emotions it is sometimes hasty ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... that I saw before me the very spirit of Father Antoine. But as the man said nothing, and the next instant averted his gaze, I hardened my heart and pushed on behind him, and passing the usher, found myself as by magic in the presence which had seemed a while ago as unattainable by my wits as it was ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... come, your day will come. Do not desire the unattainable, but content yourself with the reachable," he said; "and yet ''Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,' as the ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... reach; and he did it, therefore, manfully, religiously. He did not waste his mind on too many things; for whatever too much expands the mind weakens it; nor on vague or multitudinous thoughts and speculations; nor on dreams or things distant or unattainable. However interesting, they did not absorb him, body and soul, like the safety and welfare ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... lower form of art, or "handicraft," but there is as yet no Fine Art. House-building, on these terms, is no higher thing than ship-building. It indeed will generally be found that the edifice designed with this masculine reference to utility, will have a charm about it, otherwise unattainable, just as a ship, constructed with simple reference to its service against powers of wind and wave, turns out one of the loveliest things that human hands produce. Still, we do not, and properly do not, hold ship-building to ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... nature more under the control of high, ideal motives than was his own; he would not himself wash the feet of the poor; he would rather commit thirty mortal sins than be a leper; but a kingly saint may touch heights of piety which are unattainable by himself. And, at the same time, he makes us feel that Louis is not the less a man because he is a saint. Certain human infirmities of temper are his; yet his magnanimity, his sense of justice, his ardent devotion, his charity, his pure self-surrender are made so sensible ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... of gods; all, the sons of one, Zeus; derived from one source of tradition, Homer; formed by one artist, Phidias; on him measured and decided by Parrhasius. In the simplicity of this principle, adhered to by the succeeding periods, lies the uninterrupted progress and the unattainable superiority of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... young man thought not of these. His mind was occupied by one little, slender, fair-haired woman, and that one unattainable. Had he analyzed his new mental condition, he might have marvelled that the little winged god could have aimed so straight and let fly so unexpectedly. True love, however, does not come of reasoning, but rather in spite of it. And, to do Jean's ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... fairest maiden and the most renowned princess in Christendom. It was done most gracefully. She was but a trifle to his strong arms, and he lifted her to the sod as gently as if she were a child. The nobles envied Brandon his evident favor with this unattainable Mary and hated him accordingly, but they kept their thoughts to themselves for two reasons: First, they knew not to what degree the king's favor, already marked, with the help of the princess might carry him; and second, they did not care ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... move not according to their will but as they are moved by me. Regenerate Brahmanas that have thoroughly studied the Vedas, that have tranquillity in their souls, they that have subdued their wrath, obtain a high reward by means of their numerous sacrifices. That reward, however, is unattainable by men that are wicked in their deeds, overwhelmed by covetousness, mean and disreputable with souls unblessed and impure. Therefore, must thou know, O Brahmana that this reward which is obtained by persons having their souls under control ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... 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
... and enthusiasm to be recorded by the 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 ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... too much, Galltry," he said. "Lady Astrupp understands the value of the unattainable. Come along, sir!" he added to Loder, drawing him forward with an energetic pressure ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... insuperable, to me at least. For that which was meant to prove the Divine character of the Mission of Moses, would have rendered the matter itself doubtful, which God, it is true, did not intend then to reveal; but which on the other hand, He certainly would not render unattainable. ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... drove to the stakes the more unattainable those objects seemed. They projected high ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... 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 ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... far-fetched, the intangible, the obscure. Thus she thought to inflame his curiosity by hinting that Frida Tancred was incomprehensible, while she touched the very soul of desire by representing her as unattainable. All this was no doubt very clever of Mrs. Fazakerly; but it was not quite what ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... her. As the evening wore on, she leaned against the iron bars, looking at the hills that rose far off, through the thick sodden clouds, like a bright, unattainable calm. As she looked, a shadow of their solemn repose fell on her face; its fierce discontent faded into a pitiful, humble quiet. Slow, solemn tears gathered in her eyes: the poor weak eyes turned so hopelessly to the place ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... up, and sobs cut short his words. Vronsky too was getting up, and in a stooping, not yet erect posture, looked up at him from under his brows. He did not understand Alexey Alexandrovitch's feeling, but he felt that it was something higher and even unattainable for him with ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... frightened and puzzled, and then she remembered where she was, and began to think of breakfast. But there were no berries but the poisonous dog-wood, and nothing else to be seen but leaves and grass and bushes. Hungry snapped up a few grasshoppers, and looked longingly at an unattainable squirrel, who was flying from tree-top to tree-top; then they ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... authority on the construction of parks in the country; and he has been all over this neighborhood, viewing the localities, and they have taken every thing into consideration; and, gentlemen, what is the result? They do not propose to us one great park of a thousand acres, at an almost unattainable distance; they do not propose a great park that nobody can get to, unless he gives a day to it, and a good deal of money: but they have adopted a system based upon the natural characteristics of the ...
— Parks for the People - Proceedings of a Public Meeting held at Faneuil Hall, June 7, 1876 • Various
... of this age, instead of aiming at an abstract, unattainable ideal, studied nature in its choicest forms, and attained the beautiful by selecting and concentrating in one those charms which are found diffused over all. They avoided the representation of all violent ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... us during our stay. Cettinje had not changed much. The hotel-keeper showed an intense and violent anxiety to leave Montenegro. Never had his native Switzerland seemed so alluring and never was it so unattainable. The chemist, who owned a little one-windowed shop, was engaged to the king's niece, quite a lift in the world for her, as she was marrying a man ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... underlying harmony of those two demands. There is, however, here more than this. In this most modern of their embodiments, Socialism and Individualism are not merely harmonious, each is the key to the other, which remains unattainable without it. However carefully we improve our breed, however anxiously we guard the entrance to life, our labour will be in vain if we neglect to adapt the environment to the fine race we are breeding. The best individuals are not the toughest, ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... that was open to criticism. 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 ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... Appledore Cook Book, nine years ago, she had seen so many failures and so much consequent mortification and dissatisfaction as to determine her to give those minute directions which were so often wanting in cook-books, and without which success in preparing dishes was for many a person unattainable. It seemed then unwise to leave much to the cook's judgment; and experience in lecturing and in teaching in her school since that time has satisfied the author that what was given in her first literary work was what was ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... the school, the press, the library, the Sabbath, have nest yet perfectly accomplished. As these agencies partially failed, so will this; but, as the law of progress exists for all, because perfection with us is unattainable, we may reasonably have faith in human improvement, and trust that the life of each succeeding generation shall unite, in ever-increasing proportions, the innocence of childhood with the ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... old age filled with the small expedients of genteel poverty, there had opened up to her, suddenly and unexpectedly, a great avenue for happiness and usefulness. It was foolish, with so much to be grateful for, to sigh for the unattainable. His love must be all the stronger since it took no thought of things which others would have found of controlling importance. In choosing her to share his intellectual life he had paid her a higher compliment than had he praised the glow of her cheek ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... it be to start with motion approximately patent, and motion approximately latent (absolute patency and absolute latency being unattainable), and lay down that motion latent as motion becomes patent as substance, or matter of chair-and-table order; and that when patent as motion it is latent ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... they engage in the offensive and hopeless undertaking of reforming the domestic institutions of other States, wholly beyond their control and authority. In the vain pursuit of ends by them entirely unattainable, and which they may not legally attempt to compass, they peril the very existence of the Constitution and all the countless benefits which it has conferred. While the people of the Southern States confine their attention to their own affairs, not presuming officiously to ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... was unattainable. This morning, after having seen the Park, the fashionable boulevard, the pictures, the cafes—having sipped, I say, the sweets of every flower that grows in this paradise of Brussels, quite weary of the place, we mounted on ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... broiling coast of Papua? That region of sun- strokes, typhoons, and bitter pulls after whales unattainable. Far worse. We were going, it seemed, to illustrate the Whistonian theory concerning the damned and the comets;—hurried from equinoctial heats to arctic frosts. To be short, with the true fickleness of his tribe, our skipper had abandoned all thought ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... effect the ruin of poor, fallen man, by stirring up this fierce desire of equality with discontented thoughts and vain hopes of unattainable good! It is this dark desire, and not liberty, which, in its rage, becomes the "poisonous snake;" and, though decked in fine, allegoric, glowing garb, it is still the loathsome thing, the "false worm," that turned God's Paradise itself ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... melancholy wretchedness when I remembered that it was Sunday and that there was no hope of buying either collar or comb for twenty-four hours—if, indeed, I dared to spend any of my few remaining dimes and nickels for these necessities, which had suddenly soared to the heights of unattainable luxuries. ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... something different that was needed; something that would bring him up with dead abruptness against a blank wall, and leave him with a taste of life that was dust and ashes unless he found a way through. Either that or some sweet, wild, unattainable desire, that might drive him to work and ambition by way ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... reign of the good Stuyvesant show the effects of vigor and decision, even when destitute of cool judgment, and surrounded by perplexities. Let it show how frankness, probity, and high-souled courage will command respect and secure honor, even where success is unattainable. But, at the same time, let it caution against a too ready reliance on the good faith of others, and a too honest confidence in the loving professions of powerful neighbors, who are most friendly when they most mean to betray. Let it teach a judicious attention to ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... not 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 ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... strictly to correct the language whilst the thought is incorrigible. Much of the effect of poetry and eloquence depends upon the elasticity and indirect suggestiveness of common terms. Even in reasoning upon some subjects, it is a mistake to aim at an unattainable precision. It is better to be vaguely right than exactly wrong. In the criticism of manners, of fine art, or of literature, in politics, religion and moral philosophy, what we are anxious to say is often far from clear to ourselves; ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... you puzzle your liege-lord. For you loathe me and you still worship my sister-in-law, an unattainable princess. In these two particulars you display such wisdom as would inevitably prompt you to make an end of me. Yet, what the devil! you, the time-battered vagabond, decline happiness and a kingdom to boot because of yesterday's mummery in the cathedral! because ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... in this aspiration for the unattainable, in this reverence for absolute purity, wisdom and love, that the ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... as far as it symbolizes the moral fact of the Unattainable, the flying Perfect, around which the hands of man can never meet, at once the inspirer and the condemner of every success, may conveniently serve us to connect many illustrations of human ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... words, and even thoughts; forbear to look at, or speak to, or think of Clara, except when it is unavoidable—or if you do, regard her as she is—one so far beyond your sphere as to be forever unattainable!" ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... language as exquisitely fitted for the passion as that which the real passion itself suggests, it is proper that he should consider himself as in the situation of a translator, who deems himself justified when he substitutes excellences of another kind for those which are unattainable by him; and endeavors occasionally to surpass his original, in order to make some amends for the general inferiority to which he feels that he must submit. But this would be to encourage idleness and unmanly despair. Further, it is the language of men who speak of what they do not understand; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... eagerly and so often from a distance that when it stood here modestly at his very elbow he did not recognize its presence. His mind had been fashioned, as it were, to connect love with something stunning and sensational, with Easter hats and harem skirts and the luxurious consciousness of the unattainable. ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... working classes is for the compulsory fixing of 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
... inflexible maxim of Roman discipline, that a good soldier should dread his officers far more than the enemy. From such laudable arts did the valor of the Imperial troops receive a degree of firmness and docility unattainable by the impetuous and irregular passions ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... responsibility? Do you dare to implant in the minds of these people an education—a culture—that will render them for ever dissatisfied with their lot, and send many of them to the land of the white man to engage in a feeble and hopeless struggle after that which is, for them, unattainable?" ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... into the field for work, to take with him written-out paragraphs from the book that he had at the moment in mind and to repeat these paragraphs between the various chores or between the wood-chopping until every page was committed by heart. Paper was scarce and dear and for the boy unattainable. He used for his copying bits of board shaved smooth with his jack-knife. This material had the advantage that when the task of one day had been mastered, a little labour with the jack-knife prepared the surface of the board for the work of the next day. As I ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... have the same passions and desires, weaknesses and vices. This assumption was compatible with the widely prevailing view that man had degenerated in the course of the last fifteen hundred years. From the exaltation of Greek and Roman antiquity to a position of unattainable superiority, especially in the field of knowledge, the degeneration of humanity was an easy and natural inference. If the Greeks in philosophy and science were authoritative guides, if in art and literature they were unapproachable, if the Roman republic, ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... beings had been done to death in a manner which invited and even challenged the attentions of the French police. A terrible risk had been run and run in vain. The blow had been struck at the very moment when its object was unattainable! Estermen shivered as he tried to imagine for himself the coming interview. Gone, he feared, was his life of pleasant luxury among the flesh-pots and easy ways of Paris; his bachelor apartments, occupied in name by him but of which the real tenant was his dreaded master. And behind all this ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... all the rest of those cheeks which were so often languorous and sallow, except when they were punctuated with little fiery spots, plunged him in acute depression, as proving that one's ideal is always unattainable, and one's actual happiness mediocre. He was taking her an engraving which she had asked to see. She was not very well; she received him, wearing a wrapper of mauve crepe de Chine, which draped her bosom, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... culture of the imagination, books, although not the only, are the readiest means of supplying the food convenient for it, and a hundred books may he had where even one work of art of the right sort is unattainable, seeing such must he of some size as well as of thorough excellence. And in variety alone is safety from the danger of the convenient food ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... thou shalt be greatly benefited all thy life long.' He, astonied at her speech, promised that, if he heard anything new from her, he would quickly free her from her captivity. The nightingale turned towards our friend and said, 'Never try to attain to the unattainable: never regret the thing past and gone: and never believe the word that passeth belief. Keep these three precepts, and may it be well with thee.' The man, admiring the lucidity and sense of her words, freed the bird from her captivity, ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... on Margaret, and life yielded to her its specious sweets. She was still young. If in her great house, in her dazzling career, in the whirl of resplendent prosperity, she had hours of unsatisfied yearning for something unattainable in this direction, the world would not have guessed it. Whenever we heard of her she was the centre and star of whatever for the moment excited the world of fashion. It was indeed, at last, in the zenith of her ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and promised no peace for the soul here or hereafter until its innate capabilities for wisdom, love, and power for good are developed and exercised. His precepts and example would be foolishness and a stumbling-block, his character an unattainable ideal, were it other than the first fruit ripened on the tree of life, the promise ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... completely in the dark as to the true intrinsic nature of physical objects, and if there were good reason to regard them as mental, we could not legitimately reject this opinion merely because it strikes us as strange. The truth about physical objects must be strange. It may be unattainable, but if any philosopher believes that he has attained it, the fact that what he offers as the truth is strange ought not to be made a ground of objection to ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... the woods alone. The rural districts are poorly policed and the ears of the farmer working in the field are always alert for the sound of the bell or the horn calling for help, perhaps from his own home. Occasionally, in spite of all precautions some human animal, inflamed by brooding upon the unattainable, leaves a victim outraged and dead, or worse than dead. Granted that such a crime occurs in a district only once in ten, or even in twenty years; that is enough. Rural folks have long memories, and in the back of their minds persists an uncontrollable morbid dread. The news of another victim ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... to the back room, and, without undressing, planted myself on the side of the bed next the wall. Sleep was, however, an unattainable luxury, with the squire's voice in the next room, as he told how the country was going to the dogs, because "niggers and white folks wouldn't respect the laws. It took half a man's time to larn it to 'em, and much thanks he ever got by setting ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... pathos in unsuccessful authorship. The book that perishes unread is the deaf mute of literature. The great asylum of Oblivion is full of such, making inaudible signs to each other in leaky garrets and unattainable ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... years of his life in the vicinity of emperors, kings, viceroys, and presidents, and their greatness had long ago ceased to interest or even to amuse him. He was conscious only of an agitation which had already passed through the process of analysis. He loved, he loved the impossible and the unattainable, and it was the exhilaration of this thought that agitated him. He never would be the same again—he would be better. Neither did ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... after meditating on some of the most glorious productions of art, felt himself, as he says, "disheartened and cast down at the unattainable superiority of the artist, and that it was only by reflecting on the immense labour and continued efforts which such masterpieces must have required, that I regained my courage and my ardour," she observes, "This passage, my dear son, is to me as precious as gold, and I send it to you ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... herself to be unconquerable, even unattainable, and Caligula, before this mad frenzy had fully seized hold of him, had—in his own brutish way—indulged her in this, allowing her to lead her own life and secretly laughing at the machinations that went on around him to obtain the most ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... conception of human life and of politics, and also their own conduct and character (Tim). We can imagine how a great mind like that of Pericles might derive elevation from his intercourse with Anaxagoras (Phaedr.). To be struggling towards a higher but unattainable conception is a more favourable intellectual condition than to rest satisfied in a narrow portion of ascertained fact. And the earlier, which have sometimes been the greater ideas of science, are often lost ...
— The Republic • Plato
... come on Thursday, and Edith will bring her girls the next day. Her husband, our Q.C., cannot come till his circuit is over, but of course you know more about his movements than I do. I wonder you have never said anything about those girls of his, but I suppose you class them as unattainable. I have said nothing to my mother or Emily of our plans, as I wish to be perfectly unbiased, and as I have seen none of the nieces for five years, and am prepared to delight in them all, I may be reckoned as a blank sheet as to their merits.—Your ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... engraves one's indignation at their success; the old baron in his castle, preceded and surrounded by loyal dependants, who desired only to live under his protection and die in his defence, inspires a notion of dignity unattainable by those who, seeking the beautiful, are by so far removed from the sublime of life, and affords to the mind momentary images of surly magnificence, ill exchanged perhaps by fancy, though truth has happily substituted a succession of soft ideas and social comforts: ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... unapproachable. She had not offered an apparition less so in those days when he began to come under the suspicion of Canaan, when the old people began to look upon him hotly, the young people coldly. His very exclusion wove for him a glamour about her, and she was more than ever his moon, far, lovely, unattainable, and brilliant, never to be reached by his lifted arms, but only by his lifted eyes. Nor had his long absence obliterated that light; somewhere in his dreams it always had place, shining, perhaps, with a fainter ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... out, mounted again, and rode to the hotel, where I left my horse with instructions for its return to its owner. Then, at my best speed, I hastened down the hill again, reached the grounds of the convent, and approached the door. Perfect rest and freedom from excitement were unattainable until I had learned whether Marie Delhasse was still safe within the old white walls which I saw before me; for, though I could not trace how the change in me had come, nor track its growth, I knew now ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... From the outskirts of the crowd he perceived Victoria presiding over the punchbowl that held the lemonade. He liked to think of her as Victoria; the name had no familiarity for him, but seemed rather to enhance the unattainable ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Madonna del Sorriso grew slowly into life; it was not that most perfect life of which the artist had dreamed, for hitherto beauty had sufficed to him and he had never sought to burden his creations with questions of the soul; but now the sadness of the unattainable that was growing within him looked out of the wonderful eyes of the maiden on his canvas, yet he tossed his brushes aside in discontent. "Her smile eludeth me, though it hath the candor of a child's," ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... it seemed to him as if she were now less beautiful than he had imagined her; the enchantment she had exercised upon him was thrown off by simple considerations of good sense. And yet he gave a long sigh of regret when he thought she was unattainable except by marriage. He, however, thanked heaven that he had not gone far enough to have compromised himself with her. The most his conscience could reproach him with was an occasional imprudence in moments ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... manifestations of mortal thought. We awake from each still human, still with our problems before us. We must break the mesmerism of the belief that the practical application of Jesus' teachings must be relegated to the realm of death, or to the unattainable. We must apply the Christ-principle, and learn to hit the mark, for sin is always ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... she kept her head above the stream, and that the failure of the material event did not frustrate or hinder her ultimate achievement. But Charlotte's was not by any means "a chainless soul". It struggled and hankered after the unattainable. What she attained and realized she realized and attained in her imagination only. She knew nothing of the soul's more secret and intimate possession. And even her imagination waited to some extent upon experience. When Charlotte wrote of passion, of its tragic suffering, or of its ultimate ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... man and the woman were yearning, they came finally to believe, after the unattainable, but each was strong enough of character to do with nothing ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... solemnity, these gentlemen, Grumkow the spokesman, in soft phrase, but with strict clearness, made it apparent to her, That marry she must,—the Hereditary Prince of Baireuth,—and without the consent of both her parents, which was unattainable at present, but peremptorily under the command of one of them, whose vote was the supreme. Do this (or even say that you will do it, whisper some of the well-affected), his Majesty's paternal favor will return upon you like pent ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... misgivings; behind this shield, even in rapacity, he had experienced peace of mind, absence of remorse. If he could have put away from him his love for the girl he would have done so willingly. Why should he battle and strive for an unattainable something as intangible as a dream? It was so paradoxical that Allis's love for Mortimer seemed hopeless because of the latter's defeat, while his, Crane's love, was equally hopeless in his ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... 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 ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... 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
... keeps a poet In his high singing mood, Like unappeasable hunger For unattainable ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... of a completely sophisticated woman. Nothing seemed to surprise her. Whatever happened was all part and parcel of the great adventure. Yesterday she was an overwatched girl, looking yearningly at a city that appeared to be unattainable. To-day she was a married woman who, a moment ago, had been standing before a minister, binding herself for good or ill to a man who was delightfully a boy and of whom she knew next to nothing. What did it matter—what did anything matter—so long as she achieved her ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... wast cathedral with its domes rising into space, denotes that you will be possessed with an envious nature and unhappy longings for the unattainable, both mental and physical; but if you enter you will be elevated in life, having for your ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... stationary. It dealt largely in theories of moral perfection, which were so sublime that they never could be more than theories; in attempts to solve insoluble enigmas; in exhortations to the attainment of unattainable frames of mind. It could not condescend to the humble office of ministering to the comfort of human beings. All the schools contemned that office as degrading; some censured it as immoral. Once indeed Posidonius, a distinguished writer of the age ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... translations from the Greek are made Miltonically, or Pope-ishly, or Shakespearian-ally, and seldom with that racy literalness which characterizes Carlyle's occasional bits of German poetic version. Sometimes, as in the present instance, the old form is almost unattainable, for Hebrew poetry and the modes of speech used at Herod's court are too little known in their first fresh life to be vividly reproduced. Consequently the more modern forms are indispensable. But, from the stand-point of English poetry, SALOME is a production of more than marked ability—it ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... it the door opened and closed and Ardea stood before him. She had thrown a wrap over her shoulders, and the light from the music-room windows illuminated her. There was cool scorn in the slate-blue eyes, but in Tom's thought she had never appeared more unutterably beautiful and desirable—and unattainable. ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... pretty similar. To us, from the outside, gazing over the policeman's shoulders at the bewildering beauties as they pass into Court or ball, they may seem beings of unearthly splendour and in the enjoyment of an exquisite happiness by us unattainable. It is to console some of these dissatisfied beings that we are narrating our dear Becky's struggles, and triumphs, and disappointments, of all of which, indeed, as is the case with all persons of merit, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... parliamentary toils and triumphs; and what sustained his young hero through something of the same sort of trial was also his own support. He too had his Dora, at apparently the same hopeless elevation; striven for as the one only thing to be attained, and even more unattainable, for neither did he succeed nor happily did she die; but the one idol, like the other, supplying a motive to exertion for the time, and otherwise opening out to the idolater, both in fact and fiction, a highly unsubstantial, happy, foolish time. I used to laugh and tell him I had no belief in any ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... sentiments, although they move in the very 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 approach of the factitious ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... put these two propositions together; that silence and inaction are unattainable, and dangerous and improper projects almost unavoidable, and what are we to do? Something we must do. However desirous we might be to do nothing, it is impossible, because others will not consent to do nothing; and if we relinquish the task of action, it will infallibly ...
— The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. • Unknown
... upon her, with musing astrologic eye, with grand patience, fascinated by her very splendours, not without hope. When at 8 P.M. a banquet was served to 250 guests in the Radcliffe Library, the upper gallery being open to a crawling public to see the lions feed, Harris, watching thence the unattainable under the blue of the canopy—blue always in honour of the Sea—thought within himself: "Ah, Mr. 76, you've got it all, ain't you?—for the time being. But 'ow'd you feel if I had a pistol now? Gawd! I can just ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... Here was Aunt Jane's, but it was no matter for a tear or even a sigh. And I thought how the sting of life would lose its venom, if for every soul the unattainable were embodied in nothing more embittering than two exquisite ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... sorrow). I see it, Ellida. Step by step you are slipping from me. The craving for the boundless, the infinite, the unattainable will drive your soul into the darkness of night ...
— The Lady From The Sea • Henrik Ibsen
... 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
... was in that peculiar, not to say painful attitude, which less agile mortals find unattainable, but which appears to mean true rest to Turk ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... "A woman's mission is to have children. The female of any species has only one mission—to reproduce its kind. An' Nature has only one mission—toward greater strength, virility, efficiency—absolute perfection, which is unattainable." ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... like stars and her lips were like soft hills rising out of dim, star-lit plains. "She is unattainable, she is far off like the stars," he thought. "She is unattainable like the stars but unlike the stars she breathes, she lives, like myself she ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... horrible consciousness of our nothingness—dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Because of my mother alone have I been able to keep intact the faith of my early days. It still seems to me that when I have finished playing my poor part in life, when I no longer run in the overgrown paths that lead to the unattainable, when I am through amusing humanity with my conceits and my sorrows, I will go there where my mother, who has gone before me, is, and she will receive me; and the smile of serenity that she now wears in my memory will have become one ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... to me shall be held sacred, and you have thereby secured her from every outbreak of my passion. She stands so high above me that I can only adore her as my saint, can love her only as one loves the unattainable stars!" ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... few hours back seemed a calamity. But out there beside the whispering wheat, under the passionless stars, in the dreaming night, it had turned into a blessing. He asked nothing but to serve. To serve her, his country, his future! All at once he who had always yearned for something unattainable had greatness thrust upon him. His tragical situation had evoked ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... new phase had been entered in the life of Colorado Jim. Passion, long dampered down by wild living and arduous toil, leaped up in one soul-consuming flame. He was in love with a woman—a woman as far above him, and as unattainable as a star. He moved about like a drunken man, bewildered by this new ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild |
