Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
Impossible
Impossible as an echo without a voice to start it.
—Anonymous
Impossible as for a blind man to describe color.
—Anonymous
Impossible as for a lawyer to feel compassion gratis.
—Anonymous
Impossible as for one buried alive to lift his gravestone.
—Anonymous
Impossible as for the full-grown bird to live imprisoned in the eggshell.
—Anonymous
Impossible as for the man in the moon to come down.
—Anonymous
Impossible as for the poles to come together till the earth is crushed.
—Anonymous
Impossible as for widows to feed on dreams and wishes;
Like hags on visionary dishes.
—Anonymous
Impossible as to count the waves.
—Anonymous
Impossible as to hiss and yawn at the same time.
—Anonymous
Impossible as to hold the wind with a net.
—Anonymous
Impossible as to join in a procession and look out the window.
—Anonymous
Impossible as to jump away from your shadow.
—Anonymous
Impossible as to mend a bell.
—Anonymous
Impossible as to paint a sound.
—Anonymous
Impossible as to recall the days that are past.
—Anonymous
Impossible as to reconcile cats and rats, or hounds and hares.
—Anonymous
Impossible as to replace a hatched chicken in its shell.
—Anonymous
Impossible as to stem the eternal flood of time.
—Anonymous
Impossible as to wash a black man white.
—Anonymous
Impossible as to wet the sea.
—Anonymous
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
Impossible as it would be for a full balloon not to go up.
—Charles Dickens
A little girl without a doll is almost as unfortunate and quite as impossible as a woman without children.
—Victor Hugo
Impossible as for a blind man to copy Raphael.
—London Telegraph
Truth is as impossible to be soiled by any outward touch as the sunbeam.
—John Milton
As impossible as that a man should walk in procession at his own funeral.
—Thomas Paine
Impossible as to cut fire into steaks, or draw water with a fish-net.
—François Rabelais
Impossible as a centaur or a griffin.
—John Skelton
Impossible as to get the whole music of the spheres into a sonata.
—Robert Louis Stevenson