unattainable

Not one of them stood back and said hang on a minute. many of the ‘targets’ (measures of public satisfaction) were unattainable from the start and as such we cannot sign up for it, thanks but no thanks.

Policing Pledge Is A Lie SHOCK « POLICE INSPECTOR BLOG Inspector Gadget 2010

If he threatens that many jobs they'll vote Republican overwhelmingly making the first term unattainable anyway.

Election Central Morning Roundup 2009

I reply, dear Wevie, that the soul whose desires are not fixed upon the unattainable is dead even while it liveth, and that I am glad, in the midst of all my comforts, to feel myself still a pilgrim in pursuit of something that is neither house nor lands, nor children, nor health.

Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910 Maud Howe Elliott 1915

It remained for the smug, "sober judgment" of our day to pronounce it "unattainable" -- unattainable!

Valere Aude Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration Louis Dechmann

Almost the first he had heard of her was that she was "unattainable" -- yet _they_ had known each other at once ....

Son of Power Zamin Ki Dost 1905

MCCANN: Well, of course all hostage-takers want the unattainable, which is they want -- supposedly this was in Urdu.

CNN Transcript Jan 29, 2002 2002

These microtonal intervals permit fine shades of musical expression unattainable by the Western chromatic scale of 12 semitones.

Autobiography of a Yogi Yogananda, Paramhansa, 1893-1952 1935

Besides, the actual was so barren, so narrow, so strangling, that the dream of the unattainable was the only air in which the soul could survive.

Hungry Hearts 1920

These microtonal intervals permit fine shades of musical expression unattainable by the Western chromatic scale of 12 semitones.

Autobiography of a Yogi Paramahansa Yogananda 1922

Aspiration toward the unattainable is the condition of growth.

Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning Robert Browning 1850