Unattainability Quotes

There is no past that we can bring back to us by the longing for it.

We worship perfection because we can't have it; if we had it, we would reject it. Perfection is inhuman, because humanity is imperfect.

Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.

Utopia lies at the horizon. When I draw nearer by two steps, it retreats two steps. If I proceed ten steps forward, it swiftly slips ten steps ahead. No matter how far I go, I can never reach it. What, then, is the purpose of utopia? It is to cause us to advance.

You cannot make, my Lord, I fear, a velvet purse of a sow's ear

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot? The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

There is a wonderful expression: seeing through a glass darkly. Everything, even life, is inevitably removed from you. You can't reach, or touch, the real. You just see reflections

The essence of romantic love is that wonderful beginning, after which sadness and impossibility may become the rule.

Man is never perfect, nor contented.

Perfection is shallow, unreal, and fatally uninteresting.

It's easy to convince men to love you, Puck. All you have to do is be a mountain they have to climb or a poem they don't understand.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

It is the Land of Truth (enchanted name!), surrounded by a wide and stormy ocean, the true home of illusion, where many a fog bank and ice, that soon melts away, tempt us to believe in new lands, while constantly deceiving the adventurous mariner with vain hopes, and involving him in adventures which he can never leave, yet never bring to an end.

Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star. It's dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago. Maybe the star doesn't even exist any more. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything.

The people who are absent are the ideal; those who are present seem to be quite commonplace.

The things most worth wanting are not available everywhere all the time.

Asks the Possible of the Impossible, "Where is your dwelling-place?" "In the dreams of the Impotent," comes the answer.

But I'm always dreaming, even when I'm awake; it is never finished." -the Lady Amalthea, from The Last Unicorn

And specialness - everyone wants it. But Jesus, is it the most essential thing there is? Most people aren't talented. So what are they supposed to do - kill themselves?

Bohemia is nothing more than the little country in which you do not live. If you try to obtain citizenship in it, at once the court and retinue pack the royal archives and treasure and move away beyond the hills.

There are times when you want to go where you used to go and you can't go there.

The thing with perfection is that it's never perfect.

Beauty is ever to the lonely mind a shadow fleeting; she is never plain. She is a visitor who leaves behind the gift of grief, the souvenir of pain.

There’s something about sitting alone in the dark that reminds you how big the world really is, and how far apart we all are. The stars look like they’re so close, you could reach out and touch them. But you can’t. Sometimes things look a lot closer than they are.

But love may have to be left off the exam. Most of us will never learn.