Reference > Quotations > Frank J. Wilstach, comp. > A Dictionary of Similes
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Frank J. Wilstach, comp.  A Dictionary of Similes.  1916.
 
Impossible
 
  Impossible as an echo without a voice to start it.
            —Anonymous		  1
  Impossible as for a blind man to describe color.
            —Anonymous		  2
  Impossible as for a lawyer to feel compassion gratis.
            —Anonymous		  3
  Impossible as for one buried alive to lift his gravestone.
            —Anonymous		  4
  Impossible as for the full-grown bird to live imprisoned in the eggshell.
            —Anonymous		  5
  Impossible as for the man in the moon to come down.
            —Anonymous		  6
  Impossible as for the poles to come together till the earth is crushed.
            —Anonymous		  7
Impossible as for widows to feed on dreams and wishes;
Like hags on visionary dishes.
            —Anonymous		  8
  Impossible as to count the waves.
            —Anonymous		  9
  Impossible as to hiss and yawn at the same time.
            —Anonymous		  10
  Impossible as to hold the wind with a net.
            —Anonymous		  11
  Impossible as to join in a procession and look out the window.
            —Anonymous		  12
  Impossible as to jump away from your shadow.
            —Anonymous		  13
  Impossible as to mend a bell.
            —Anonymous		  14
  Impossible as to paint a sound.
            —Anonymous		  15
  Impossible as to recall the days that are past.
            —Anonymous		  16
  Impossible as to reconcile cats and rats, or hounds and hares.
            —Anonymous		  17
  Impossible as to replace a hatched chicken in its shell.
            —Anonymous		  18
  Impossible as to stem the eternal flood of time.
            —Anonymous		  19
  Impossible as to wash a black man white.
            —Anonymous		  20
  Impossible as to wet the sea.
            —Anonymous		  21
  As impossible for him to take flight of fancy as it would be for a watchmaker to put together a chronometer with nothing except a two-pound hammer and a whip-saw in the way of tools.
            —Joseph Conrad		  22
  Impossible as it would be for a full balloon not to go up.
            —Charles Dickens		  23
  A little girl without a doll is almost as unfortunate and quite as impossible as a woman without children.
            —Victor Hugo		  24
  Impossible as for a blind man to copy Raphael.
            —London Telegraph		  25
  Truth is as impossible to be soiled by any outward touch as the sunbeam.
            —John Milton		  26
  As impossible as that a man should walk in procession at his own funeral.
            —Thomas Paine		  27
  Impossible as to cut fire into steaks, or draw water with a fish-net.
            —François Rabelais		  28
  Impossible as a centaur or a griffin.
            —John Skelton		  29
  Impossible as to get the whole music of the spheres into a sonata.
            —Robert Louis Stevenson		  30
 
 
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