Impossibility

Impossibility is the state of something not being possible. In law, such a state of affairs is a defense to a breach of contract — for example, a contract to pay painters to paint a house may be voided as impossible if the house burns to the ground the day before the painters arrive.

It is easy to kill someone with a slash of a sword. It is hard to be impossible for others to cut down. ~ Yagyū Munenori

Quotes

• It is not a lucky word, this same impossible; no good comes of those that have it so often in their mouth.
  • Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution, A History (1837), Part III, Book III, Chapter X.

• The task was impossible, and mortal human beings accomplished nothing but their own destruction when they attempted the impossible.
  • Stephen R. Donaldson, The Power That Preserves (1977), Chapter 14

• Hope not for impossibilities.
  • Thomas Fuller, The Holy State and the Profane State (1642), Of Expecting Preferment, Maxim I.

• It is easy to kill someone with a slash of a sword. It is hard to be impossible for others to cut down.
  • Yagyū Munenori, as quoted in Behold the Second Horseman (2005), by Joseph Lumpkin, p. 53.

• Achieving impossibilities is the method of Economy of Evolution;
  ...all directed to a discovery of the Creativeness of the Universe!
  • B. B. Stoller, Biologizing the Universe (1983)

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 390

• You cannot make a crab walk straight.
  • Aristophanes, Pax, 1083.

• And what's impossible, can't be,
  And never, never comes to pass.
  • George Colman the Younger, Broad Grins, The Maid of the Moor.

• Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.
  • Samuel Johnson, Rasselas, Chapter XII.

• Simul flare sorbereque haud facile
  Est: ego hic esse et illic simul, haud potui.
  • To blow and to swallow at the same time is not easy; I cannot at the same time be here and also there.
  • Plautus, Mostellaria, Act III. 2. 105.

• Certainly nothing is unnatural that is not physically impossible.
  • Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Critic, Act II, scene 1.

• Certum est quia impossibile est.
  • The fact is certain because it is impossible.
  • Tertullian, De Carne Christi, Chapter V, Part II. Called "Tertullian's rule of faith." Also given "Credo quia impossibile." I believe because it is impossible. Same idea in St. Augustine—Confessions, VI. 5. (7). Credo quia absurdum est. An anonymous rendering of the same.

• You cannot make, my Lord, I fear, a velvet purse of a sow's ear.
  • John Walcot, Lord B. and his Notions.