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.

Sourced

• 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.

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

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.