- All's Well That Ends Well
- Antony and Cleopatra
- As You Like It
- The Comedy of Errors
- Coriolanus
- Cymbeline
- Hamlet
- Henry IV, Part 1
- Henry IV, Part 2
- Henry V
- Henry VI, Part 1
- Henry VI, Part 2
- Henry VI, Part 3
- Henry VIII
- Julius Caesar
- King John
- King Lear
- Love's Labor's Lost
- A Lover's Complaint
- Macbeth
- Measure for Measure
- The Merchant of Venice
- The Merry Wives of Windsor
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Othello
- Pericles
- The Rape of Lucrece
- Richard II
- Richard III
- Romeo and Juliet
- Shakespeare's Sonnets
- The Taming of the Shrew
- The Tempest
- Timon of Athens
- Titus Andronicus
- Troilus and Cressida
- Twelfth Night
- The Two Gentlemen of Verona
- Venus and Adonis
- The Winter's Tale
The speaker of these lines is the story’s narrator Gimpel, who is attempting to explain and justify his tendency to believe whatever he is told, no matter how absurd. For Gimpel, a story’s implausibility is not enough to make him reject it instantly because, as Gimpel sees it, even unlikely things could potentially occur.
Here he cites the Wisdom of the Fathers, an important book of Jewish ethics that is also known as the “Pirkei Avot,” in which it is observed that “everything is possible.” It’s notable that Gimpel finds his rationale for his belief in such a significant…