Impossibility

“ It is difficult to imagine the results of an impossibility—and knowledge in this case is an impossibility. Still at times the grim cynicism of the whole thing comes over one with a rush, and one—laughs. ”

“ Possibility, along with the other modalities of necessity and impossibility and contingency, raises problems upon which I do not mean to imply that we should turn our backs. But we can at least limit modalities to whole statements. ”

“ As there is only a logical necessity, so there is only a logical impossibility. ”

“ Success presented itself as an impossibility, and the hope of it as a wild hallucination. ”

“ From contingent actuality, as known to it, the mind can argue to the eternal actuality of Necessary Being, and to the impossibility either of a state of absolute nothingness, or of an order of purely possible things apart from all actuality. ”

“ For the purposes of poetry a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility; ”

“ And again: “It needs must be that what can be thought and spoken of is; for it is possible for it to be, and it is not possible for what is nothing to be.” The impossibility of change follows from this principle ”

“ The impossibility of the one results from the moral perfections of God, and the impossibility of the other from the immutable properties, qualities, relations and nature of the things themselves, as in the instances of the mountains, vallies, &c., before alluded to, and in numberless other such like cases. ”

“ So many things seem to us, until those two great magicians, chance and crime, complete the trick, and make the impossible only too actual. I candidly confess to you that, when my sound reason leaves me for a moment, I also hear a voice within me crying: 'It is impossible!' And yet it must be so--and we can do nothing but kick our bleeding heels against the thorns of fate. What is the matter with you all at once? ”

“ that which it is impossible to force, it is impossible to hinder. ”

“ You most want to hear what we do. And that can best be summed up in one word: everything. Everything, and yet that, too, has its limitations. Impossibilities are beyond even us. Improbabilities are given a fair chance. ”

“ And what’s impossible can’t be;
And never, never, comes to pass! ”

“ May not our taking things to be possible, in matters of higher moment, when we can show no good reason that they are so, lead us into unnecessary disputes and vain theories? Ought we to admit that as a just argument in reasoning, or even as a pressing difficulty, which is grounded on the supposition that such a thing is possible, when in reality we have no good evidence of its being possible, and for anything we can show to the contrary, it may be impossible?’ ”

“ Is not experience more than any one idea or any one ideal? Being really alive, is it not infinitely more than this or that thing, than this or that place or time, than this or that power or will, than this or that point of view? And, if more, what so surely as universal duplicity and self-opposition can ensure at once its vitality and its integrity? ”

“ If this be true, then the total limitation, the determination, the fragmentariness, the ignorance, the error, — yes (as forms or cases of ignorance and error) , the evil, the pain, the horror, the longing, the travail, the faith, the devotion, the endless flight from its own worthlessness, — that constitutes the very essence of the world of finite experience, is, as a positive reality, somewhere so experienced in its wholeness that this entire constitution of the finite appears as a world beyond which, in its whole constitution, nothing exists or can exist. ”

“ What was it, then, which determined Something to exist rather than Nothing, and bestowed being on a particular possibility, exclusive of the rest? External causes, there are supposed to be none. Chance is a word without a meaning. ”

“ Could blind chance constitute order and decorum, and consequently a providence? That wisdom, order, and design should be the production of nonentity, or of chaos, confusion, and old night, is too absurd to deserve a serious confutation, for it supposeth that there may be effects without a cause, viz.: produced by nonentity, or that chaos and confusion could produce the effects of power, wisdom, and goodness. Such absurdities as these we must assent to, or subscribe to the doctrine of a self-existent and providential being. ”

“ Alike in ordinary life and in science, even in science where such a result was perhaps hardly to be expected, we found what at least seemed like illusion and what certainly was paradox, and almost against our will we had to conclude that a spirit of contradiction and duplicity and vacillation dwelt at the very centre and the very heart of our human experience. ”

“ Should the worst come to the worst, which I believe to be altogether impossible,—mind, I think it next to impossible, for I have never for a moment believed him to be guilty,—we will,—visit him,—together. ”

“ The immediate reaction of the human brain to this inconceivable catastrophe was that of sublime disbelief in its possibility. The finite mind, incapable, as it is, of grasping the infinities, resolutely declined to accept any proposition outside the history of man's experience. ”

“ Slowly, oh, how slowly! does the human mind awaken to the truth that in this, as in every thing else pertaining to the natural world, nothing happens by chance, nothing of arbitrary will, but all is subject to immutable law. ”

“ It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever. ”

“ The being which suddenly appears, without a cause, without a reason, without any thing, is an absurd representation which our intellect rejects as instantly and as strongly as it accepts the principle of contradiction. ”

“ fate is for imbeciles: all is possible to the resolved mind. ”

“ All is to them a dull round of probabilities and possibilities; but the history of all times and places is nothing else but improbabilities and impossibilities,—what we should say was impossible, if we did not see it always before our eyes. ”

“ By the time I get back, the hinges of the book have usually hung themselves without my knowing when or how. Hence the paradox: we achieve the impossible by doing the possible; we climb our mountain of troubles by walking away from it. ”

“ As to the reputed impossibilities which rest on no other grounds than our ignorance of any cause capable of producing the supposed effects; very few of them are certainly impossible, or permanently incredible. ”

“ Whatever its origin, whether it stands in the relation of cause or effect, it is an indulgence that insidiously takes the snap and sparkle out of life and leaves us for the time being colorless and weak.
Next to uncertainty, an uninspired certainty is wrecking to the best of human prospects. ”

“ You ask what is the use of drawing the Impossible? Your asking proves that you do not feel the charm of this vision of youth,—this dream of spring. I hold that the Impossible bears a [295] much closer relation to fact than does most of what we call the real and the commonplace. ”

“ The puzzles in the doctrines of the simple and the complex, of the causeless and the caused, into which this world of ours forces us, should teach us further to recognise it for what it is—insufficient and pointing beyond itself,—to its own transcendent depths. So, too, the problems that arise when we penetrate farther and farther into the ever more and more minute, and the indefiniteness of our thought-horizons in general should have the same effect. ”

“ The most unbelieving of us will admit that "there is a destiny which shapes our ends, rough hew them as we may," and it is in the stupid resistance to having our ends shaped for us that we stop and groan at what we call the limitations of circumstances. ”

“ There is, however, an inveterate instinct in humanity—not perhaps to be altogether disregarded—according to the voice of which this unaccountable element of chance and circumstance, or, shall we say, of destiny, is itself the result of the interposed influence of the invisible companions. But whether this be so or not, the fact remains that some alien element of indeterminable chance or circumstance or destiny does frequently enter into that accumulation of obscure conditions which seem to be necessary before the magic of the apex-thought is roused. ”

“ The doubt which perplexes us as to the great problem of our destiny,—the doubt which allows so much latitude to the workings of our conscience,—does it not indicate the path we ought to follow? Should not men regard their freedom with peculiar reverence, when the Divinity they invoke has mercifully refrained from fettering it? ”

“ When I judge that in so far as in me lies I shall realise a certain end, the endeavour to realise that end becomes ipso facto an integral part of the conception of myself. Failure to realise it is regarded as my failure, my defeat. ”

“ and, besides, nothing is worth doing except what the world says is impossible. ”

“ They are created as we are, with certain powers and spheres for action and being; with certain possibilities which, whether they will or not, may become impossibilities, but with, alas! impossibilities which must remain such. ”

“ It is full of those paradoxes, contradictions and anomalies which have no place in waking life, but which fill our more fantastic dreams and are taken as matters of course till we return to our narrow, rigid, objective world of limited causation and tri-dimensional logic. ”

“ Why, because I scorn to trick the ignorant by scientific skill which I have neither the time nor the patience to explain to them—and again—because I want to fathom the Impossible;—I want to prove if indeed there is any Impossible. ”

“ When things get to the worst they must mend, as the old adage goes. Our situation, if the adage is true, must soon be in a better condition. I hope this may be the case! I can not see how we would, or could, be in a worse condition. ”

“ Failure to think of the right possibility leaves insoluble difficulties, balanced arguments pro and con, utter bewilderment and despair. But the right possibility, as a rule, when once conceived, justifies itself swiftly by its astonishing power of absorbing apparently conflicting facts. ”

“ When it appears that our fate may be determined by a single word which we feel the power of uttering, we can scarcely help thinking that upon our own heads must be all the consequences which may follow; and thinking thus, we must realize our weakness and insufficiency. ”

“ But this alternative—what is it but a wild forlorn hope? A desperate step with scarce a chance of success? May not the consequences be a thousandfold worse than the worst that can come of doing nothing? ”

“ For, stiff and blank as you may determine to be, circumstances will overpower you. Under their influences you will not be able to avoid becoming softer and more redundant. But you will resist the process, I see, and you will make it as painful as you can. ”

“ "and to the timid and hesitating, everything is impossible, because it seems so." ”

“ “Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life’s impossible; ”

“ A difficulty in distinguishing this task, which Ethics may perhaps undertake with some hope of success, from the hopeless task of finding duties, arises from an ambiguity in the use of the term ‘possible.’ An action may, in one perfectly legitimate sense, be said to be ‘impossible’ solely because the idea of doing it does not occur to us. ”

“ If we fail, our blood will be on our own heads (or, more probably, in some one else’s stomach) , but though we fail, we are in no worse case than those who dared not postulate: uncomprehended chaos will engulf both them and us. If we succeed, we have the clue to the labyrinth. Our assumption, therefore, is at least a methodological necessity ”