“But what was possible or practical had been replaced by a far baser impulse. Hope.”

“What could go wrong... Doing some stupid impulsive thing that caused the death of drowthers was practically a family tradition.”

“Yes - it was happiness she still wanted, and the glimpse she had caught of it made everything else of no account. One by one she had detached herself from the baser possibilities , and she saw that nothing now remained to her but the emptiness of renunciation. "The House of Mirth”

“But it was possible to teach what one could not practice.”

“Hope is possible, when you decide to believe that what you are hoping for is possible.”

“I do not believe that an “impulseto knowledge” is the father of philosophy; but that another impulse, here as elsewhere, has only made use of knowledge (and mistaken knowledge!) as an instrument.But whoever considers the fundamental impulses of man with a view to determining how far they may have here acted as INSPIRING GENII (or as demons and cobolds), will find that they have all practiced philosophy at one time or another, and that each one of them would have been only too glad to look upon itself as the ultimate end of existence and the legitimate LORD over all the other impulses.”