Impossibility

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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

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.

Quotes[edit]

  • 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.
  • 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[edit]

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 390
  • You cannot make a crab walk straight.
  • And what's impossible, can't be,
    And never, never comes to pass.
  • Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.
  • 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.
  • 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.

External links[edit]

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