quotations about possibility
It looks impossible until you do it, and then you find it is possible.
EVELYN UNDERHILL
The Letters of Evelyn Underhill
As long as nothing happens anything is possible.
GRAHAM GREENE
Our Man in Havana
Round about what is, lies a whole mysterious world of might be, -- a psychological romance of possibilities and things that do not happen. By going out a few minutes sooner or later, by stopping to speak with a friend at a corner, by meeting this man or that, or by turning down this street instead of the other, we may let slip some great occasion of good, or avoid some impending evil, by which the whole current of our lives would have been changed. There is no possible solution to the dark enigma but the one word, "Providence."
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Table-Talk
By striving to do the impossible, man has always achieved what is possible.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
attributed, The Explorers
When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this -- you haven't.
THOMAS EDISON
attributed, Quote This!: A Collection of Illustrated Quotes for Educators
It's the possibility that keeps me going, not the guarantee.
NICHOLAS SPARKS
The Notebook
Your inability to see other possibilities and your lack of vocabulary are your brain's limits, not the universe's.
SCOTT ADAMS
God's Debris: A Thought Experiment
Every second the Universe divides into possibilities and most of those possibilities never happen. It is not a uni-verse -- there is more than one reading. The story won't stop, can't stop, it goes on telling itself, waiting for an intervention that changes what will happen next.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Stone Gods
Probable impossibilities are always to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
The attempt
Is all the wedge that splits its knotty way
Betwixt the impossible and possible.
ALICE CARY
"The Maiden of Tlalscala"
Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.
GLORIA STEINEM
attributed, Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing
Do not think that what is hard for thee to master is impossible for man; but if a thing is possible and proper to man, deem it attainable by thee.
MARCUS AURELIUS
attributed, Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing
Strive not, my soul, for immortal life, but make the most of the possibilities open to you.
PINDAR
Pythian Odes
So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Walden
Don't be obsessed with the idea that there is only one possibility. If you think so, there is only one.
KATHARINE HATHAWAY
The Journals and Letters of the Little Locksmith
How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
The Sign of Four
Nothing is impossible; there are ways that lead to everything, and if we had sufficient will we should always have sufficient means. It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible.
FRANCOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
attributed, Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing
Consider possibilities; if desirable, act on them.
GIDEON LEE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Impossibilities are merely things of which we have not learned, or which we do not wish to happen.
CHARLES CHESTNUT
The Marrow of Tradition
Everything possible to be believ'd is an image of truth.
WILLIAM BLAKE
"Proverbs of Hell", The Marriage of Heaven and Hell