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Idealistic   /aɪdˌiəlˈɪstɪk/   Listen
Idealistic

adjective
1.
Of or relating to the philosophical doctrine of the reality of ideas.  Synonym: ideal.
2.
Of high moral or intellectual value; elevated in nature or style.  Synonyms: elevated, exalted, grand, high-flown, high-minded, lofty, noble-minded, rarefied, rarified, sublime.  "Argue in terms of high-flown ideals" , "A noble and lofty concept" , "A grand purpose"






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"Idealistic" Quotes from Famous Books



... scientific sense) are similarly impotent because they are, in the life of man, subordinate to ends. Consequently, Spinoza was able to write upon Human Freedom with a truth and clarity and force excelling by far all theological, teleological, "free-will," idealistic philosophers from Plato to Josiah Royce. Spinoza was able to write thus because, not in spite of the fact that he placed at the heart of his philosophy the doctrine of necessity; because, not in spite of the fact that ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza

... MARBLE. The image is that of the sculptor, who sees the statue lie, so to speak, imbedded in the marble block, and whose duty is so to carve it, neither cutting too deep or too shallow, so that the perfect form is revealed. The idea of the disputation is the root-idea of idealistic philosophy. That each man is, as it were, a block of marble in which the ideal man is buried. The purpose of the educator ought to be to cut the form out, perikoptein, as Plato ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... foreigners—Scandinavians, Dutch, Hungarians, Germans, and Italians—found themselves in Paris and in London, and astonished each other by the similarity of their views. All Europe in this period was discussing very much the same things, and not only the more intelligent among the workers but the more idealistic among the youth from the universities were in revolt, discussing fervently republican, socialist, communist, and anarchist ideas. In "Young Germany," George Brandes gives a thrilling account of the spiritual and intellectual ferment ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... Controversy 2. New Systems: Trendelenburg, Fechner, Lotze, and Hartmann 3. From the Revival of the Kantian Philosophy to the Present Time (a) Neo-Kantianism, Positivism, and Kindred Phenomena (b) Idealistic Reaction against the Scientific Spirit (c) The Special Philosophical Sciences ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... many earnest and capable Japanese students. The Imperial University has a strong corps of philosophical instructors. Occidental metaphysical thought, both materialistic and idealistic, has found many congenial minds. Indeed, it is not rash to say that in the thought of New Japan the distinguishing Oriental metaphysical conceptions of the universe have been entirely displaced by those of the West. Christians, in particular, have entirely abandoned the old ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... youth of Bolivar was more or less like that of the other boys of his city and station, except that he gave evidence of a certain precocity and nervousness of action and speech which distinguished him as an enthusiastic and somewhat idealistic boy. ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell

... here to decry R. L. Stevenson. I only desire faithfully to try to understand him, and to indicate the class or group to which his genius and temperament really belong. He is from first to last the idealistic dreamy or mystical romancer, and not the true idealist or dealer direct with life or character for its own sake. The very beauty and sweetness of his spirit in one way militated against his dramatic success—he really did not believe in villains, and always ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... training; according to whether he has been formed or deformed by some strong personality whose disciple he has become; according to whether he is a radical or a conservative; according to whether he is the dreamy, idealistic type or whether he hankers after concrete facts; according to whether sociology is a primary interest or only an incidental, ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... had the time to learn the sweet lesson which Nature teaches to her elect—the lesson of a great, a true, human and passionate love. To him, at present, Juliette represented the perfect embodiment of his most idealistic dreams. She stood in his mind so far above him that if she proved unattainable, he would scarce have suffered. It was such a ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... a pitiable object for some time. He not only suffered painfully from his bruises but had to meet the irate looks and casehardened bearing of his parents. Brutality made soldiers of visionary and idealistic temperaments. It kept the ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry

... as well. Modern psychical research, as I have already pointed out, is supplying us with further evidence for the survival of human personality after bodily death than the innate conviction humanity in general seems to have in this belief, and the many reasons which idealistic philosophy advances in favour of it. The question of the reality of the phenomenon of "materialisation," that is, the bodily appearance of a discarnate spirit, such as is vouched for by spiritists, and which is what, it appears, was aimed at in necromancy ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove

... his bed and removed her heavy clothes. What sort of hostilities did Monohan threaten? Had he let a hopeless love turn to the acid of hate for the man who nominally possessed her? Stella could scarcely credit that. It was too much at variance with her idealistic conception of the man. He would never have recourse to such littleness. Still, the biting contempt in Fyfe's voice when he said to Benton: "You underestimate Monohan. He'll play safe ... he's foxy." That stung ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... was a restatement of the idealistic philosophy, and an application of its beliefs to religion, nature, and life. But in a looser sense, and as including the more outward manifestations which drew popular attention most strongly, it was the name given to that spirit of dissent and protest, of universal ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... ladies, here's your chance to prove it! That's what brings me today. As two of the self-respecting, idealistic and womanly women of this community, I have come to urge you ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.

... society.' 'Of Law', says Hooker,[63] here as elsewhere echoing the ancients, 'there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world.' The State takes precedence of the party or the trade union because, however idealistic in their policy these latter may be, the State covers all, not merely a section of the community, and is able not merely to proclaim but to enforce the rule of law and justice. Put in modern language, one might define the Greek idea of the State as the ...
— Progress and History • Various

... himself).—"Before we plunge into that Serbonian bog—the controversy between the Realistic and the Idealistic academicians—I think the first thing to decide is what you want Kenelm to be hereafter. When I order a pair of shoes, I decide beforehand what kind of shoes they are to be,—court pumps or strong walking shoes; and I don't ask the shoemaker to give me a preliminary lecture ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... wishes for honest and able men; but the kind of ability it {129} desires is the ability which will run in harness, an unoriginative industry, a mind plastic to the will of its superiors. The Colonial Office had no fancy for a turbulent, great-hearted, idealistic Howe, with views on Imperial consolidation, who avowedly wanted office as a means of influencing the British public, and if possible of entrance into the Imperial parliament. Colonial secretaries were little likely to choose as their assistant the man who had taught Lord John Russell ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant

... his work. For, even in his earlier poems, he not seldom crossed the line that divides the poet from the philosopher, and all but broke through the strict limits of art in the effort to express—and we might even say to preach—his own idealistic faith. In his later works he did this almost without any disguise, raising philosophical problems, and discussing all the pros and cons of their solution, with no little subtlety and dialectical skill. In some of these poems we might even seem to be receiving a philosophical lesson, in place ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... refusing to be a woman, engenders devils; the man, trying to be a God, loses paradise and his innocence, for the element of the supernatural intruded upon him and abstracted his thoughts from this earth. These were the half idealistic and half realistic elements from which the three greatest spiritual incarnations of the Evil Spirit sprung up. Luther took the Evil Spirit as a bodily entity, with big horns, fiery eyes, a reddish, protruding tongue, a long tail, and the hoof of a horse. ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... Manhattan up to where Albany now stands, one vast series of teeming cities with suburb touching suburb. The problem then will be how to feed this multitude. Developments in Russia show that, no matter how idealistic one's theory of government may be, food, in the last analysis, is the thing which makes or ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various

... have been too idealistic: he wished to protect the Church as a sort of earthly paradise, of which the rules might seem to him as paternal as those of heaven, but might well seem to the king as capricious as those of Fairyland.' The ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... method. The very form of fiction carries with it something of disavowal; indeed, very much of the Fiction of the Future pretty frankly abandons the prophetic altogether, and becomes polemical, cautionary, or idealistic, and a mere footnote and commentary ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... evidently a disciple of Des Cartes. Your theory is based on the idealistic principle, 'I think, therefore I am.' I confess that I could never be satisfied with mere subjective consciousness on a point which involves the cooperation of another mind. Nothing less than the most positive and luminous testimony of the senses could ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... nature of moral codes and standards from the social point of view. It is evident that moral codes from the social point of view are simply formulations of standards of conduct which groups find it convenient or necessary to impose upon their members. Even morality, in an idealistic sense, seems from a sociological standpoint to be those forms of conduct which conduce to social harmony, to social efficiency, and so to the survival of the group. Groups, however, as we have already pointed out, cannot do as they please. They are always hard-pressed in competition by ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood

... in it, too, after all. There was the counsel of despair about everything, the pressure on us all to think that all efforts to be more than base are delusions. We were so terribly fooled with our idealistic hopes about the war . . . who knows but that we are being fooled again when we try for the higher planes of life? Perhaps those people are right who say that to grab for the pleasures of the senses is the best . ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... Barrington, late of Silvertree and its gossiping, hectoring, wistful circles, was in the foreground. She had had an Idea which could be utilized in the high service of the world, and the most utilitarian and idealistic public in the world had seized ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... inherit this relation to the will; and we shall see that the moral tone and affinity of metaphysical systems corresponds exactly with the primary function belonging to that type of idea on which they are based. Idealistic systems, still cultivating concretions in discourse, study the first conditions of knowledge and the last interests of life; materialistic systems, still emphasising concretions in existence, describe causal relations, and the habits of nature. Thus ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... when I used to listen to the gorgeous day-dreams of the two, I felt dejectedly that my own most radiant visions were by comparison the offspring of a lifeless and gloomy fancy. There was nothing problematical or idealistic in their ideas of a happy destiny. What they wanted was, in the first place, money; in the second place, money; thirdly and finally, money. I doubt whether Mrs. Lenox ever resigned herself to the sway of fiction or poetry, but I am sure that had she studied ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... had been a man worthy the steel of Mr. Darrow. Not that Prof. Foster was an unscrupulous optimist. He was merely an intellectual whose congenital tendencies were idealistic, just as Mr. Darrow's psychic and subconscious tendencies were anti-idealistic. And apart from this divergence of congenital tendencies Mr. Darrow and Prof. Foster had a great deal in common. They both loved argument. They both doted upon seizing an idea and energizing ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... twenty dollars per column and mebbe a 'boost.' I can't wait, you can't wait! It's up to us to strike now! If these men knew you have their names they'd hike for Texas or the high seas. Come now! Everybody tells me you're one of these idealistic highbrow rangers who care more for the future of the West than most natural-born Westerners. What's your plan? If you'll yoke up with me we'll run these devils into the earth and win great fame, and you'll be doing ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland

... Siva is slowly making its way into the heart of Brahmanic ritualism, another movement is at work which is gradually drawing many of the keenest intellects among the Brahmans away from the study of ritual towards an idealistic philosophy which views all ritual with indifference. ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett

... the categoric imperative, nor in ideas. Inasmuch as science does not get beyond this chain, it is materialistic; inasmuch as it must nevertheless perceive the existence, or at least the possibility of the existence, of a "thing per se," even if it does not see any way to its perception, it is idealistic. But man also has ideal impulses, and he has to follow them just as much as the impulse of perception. By virtue of these ideal impulses, he makes in imagination a picture of the "thing per se" in the activity ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... people, willing to settle for comfort and conformity, civilization offers the leisure to learn, and an opportunity to test themselves out against a big field of ardent competitors. But for energetic, forward-looking, idealistic young people, the opportunities offered by western civilization are deemed inconsequential, trivial and in the long run, inadequate. For them, the game is not worth ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing

... Alexandrian of the third century A.D., with whom Augustine is contrasted, as in an earlier age we might contrast Seneca with Philo; the Latin writers rhetorical, practical, realistic; the Greek authors idealistic and fervent, apt to see deep moral significance in all human life. And this is really the manner and mental attitude of all the famous Latin fathers: of Lactantius, the clear, precise Ciceronian, whose every page shows the perennial value of the Latin tongue; of Tertullian, the subtle and acute ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... of Utopia has convinced me that in taking thought for the education of the young it is impossible to be too idealistic, and that the more "commonsensical" and "utilitarian" one's philosophy of education, the shallower and falser it will ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... democracy. It is simply its fulfilment. Why take the trouble to number and register and enfranchise all the innumerable John Robinsons, when you can take one John Robinson with the same intellect or lack of intellect as all the rest, and have done with it? The old idealistic republicans used to found democracy on the idea that all men were equally intelligent. Believe me, the sane and enduring democracy is founded on the fact that all men are equally idiotic. Why should we not choose ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... Rabindranath Tagore was a stalwart friend of India's idealistic scientist. To him, the sweet Bengali singer addressed the following ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... the literature of this country were always distinguished by a fine, stirring optimism, a genuine sympathy, and an idealistic sentiment, which in the book under notice find their ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston

... colleges, schools, clubs: mining, engineering, medical science, and art institutions: all mark the character of the people as lovers of progress, art, and science, with strongly developed literary and artistic perceptions and idealistic aims, which they are striving to apply to the good of their people, as far as circumstances render it possible. All the machinery of State affairs and municipal and social life are excellently ordered theoretically, ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... of the nineteenth century this old austerity and actuality in the Puritan vision had fallen away into two principal lower forms. The first is a sort of idealistic garrulity upon which Bernard Shaw has made fierce and on the whole fruitful war. Perpetual talk about righteousness and unselfishness, about things that should elevate and things which cannot but degrade, about social ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... life could and should be a certainty. There should be no sudden deaths resulting from the popular diseases of today. In fact, pneumonia, typhoid fever, tuberculosis, cancer and various other ills that are fatal to the vast majority of the race, should and could be abolished. This may sound idealistic, but though such results are not probable in the near future, ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker

... Dublin, all this while, there was a little David practising his youthful strength upon the intellectual lions and bears of Trinity College. This was George Berkeley, who was destined to give the same kind of development to the idealistic side of Descartes' philosophy, that the Freethinkers had given to its sceptical side, and the Newtonians ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... pointed by a slight flavour of irony, made her talk of the mine absolutely fascinating to her visitors, and provoked them to grave and indulgent smiles in which there was a good deal of deference. Perhaps had they known how much she was inspired by an idealistic view of success they would have been amazed at the state of her mind as the Spanish-American ladies had been amazed at the tireless activity of her body. She would—in her own words—have been for them "something of a monster." However, the Goulds were in ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... Lieutenant Feraud did not seem to him specially worthy of attention on the part of a woman with a reputation for sensibility and elegance. But there was no saying. At bottom they were all alike—very practical rather than idealistic. Lieutenant D'Hubert, however, did not allow his mind to dwell on these considerations. "By thunder!" he reflected aloud. "The general goes there sometimes. If he happens to find the fellow making eyes at the lady there will be the devil ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad

... Roman,—a style which, however, is rather an adaptation or amalgamation of other styles than an original and independent creation or development. The contrast is very great between the "lively Grecian," imaginative and idealistic in the highest degree—who seemed to have an innate genius for art and beauty, and who was always eager to perpetuate in marble his ideal conception of the "hero from whose loins he sprung," or to immortalise with some splendid work of art the name of ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith

... receive a reasonable justification, and that no matter how lofty the development it has its basis in the fundamental conditions of associated animal and human life. We may surround the subject with a vague and attractive idealistic verbalism, but we come back to this as a starting point. The love of family, with all its attendant values, rests upon the fact of crude sexual desire, refined, of course, during the passing of many generations, ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... quite other than to push myself within the charmed circle of the chivalrous. What I wish to do is to make plain that a man abnormally elated may be swayed irresistably by his best instincts, and that while under the spell of an exaltation, idealistic in degree, he may not only be willing, but eager to assume risks and endure hardships which under normal conditions he would assume reluctantly, if at all. In justice to myself, however, I may remark that my plans for reform have never assumed quixotic, ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... criticism that the picture of prosperous "Sweet Auburn" never applied to any village in Ireland is just, no doubt, but it is outside the question. Goldsmith was a hopeless dreamer, bound to see everything, as he saw his debts and his gay clothes, in a purely idealistic way. ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... such events as are passing before our eyes, how can we keep our minds free? We have to say to ourselves: "See what has come of that philosophic, artistic, scientific development whose grandeur and idealistic character all the world has proclaimed!" "That is what the infernal cur had in his belly," said Faust as he saw the dog which was playing at his side change into Mephistopheles. What! Having declared the morality of Plato and Aristotle ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... of light; he is one of the highest who appeared on earth, and is transformed into a mythical, allegorical being, with his human nature, his sufferings and death completely suppressed. The redeemed soul is then as a kind of angel, or ideal being, brought in triumph into the idealistic realm of light as soon as it has purified itself to the nature of a spirit, by means of penitence, chastisements, and finally the death of the physical body. Hence the Gnostics attached little importance to the means of mercy in the Church, ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... on that point. It was true that the atmosphere of riches which fairly exuded from the girl now at his side had a very strong appeal for his lower instincts. But he was not a man to be ridden by his lower instincts. No; he had set his foot upon the fleshpots; his idealistic nature ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... the loan exhibitions. Soon after, a celebrated scientist from England who had bowled over all the pins set up by his predecessors, lectured in our Bojotia; and fired with zeal for truth, I swept aside all my costly idealistic rubbish into a 'doomed pyramid of the vanities', and swore allegiance to the Positive, the 'Knowable', whose priests handled hammers, spectroscopes, electric batteries—and who set up for me a whole Pantheon ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... think I can explain exactly," he said slowly. "Cynthia runs with a fast crowd, and she smokes and drinks—and you're—well, you're idealistic." ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks

... taking up now; I should have everything to gain, and nothing to lose by it. But your mistake is just this, that when you might identify your own interests with the side of the "haves," as I do, you go out of your way to identify them with the side of the "have-nots," out of pure idealistic Utopian philanthropy. You belong by birth to the small and intrinsically weak minority of persons specially gifted by nature and by fortune; and why do you lay yourself out with all your might ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... Comte and Mill; experience disclosed to him a deeper continuity than they could find; closer than before the nature and fate of the single individual were shown to be interwoven in the great web binding the life of the species with nature as a whole. And the continuity which so many idealistic philosophers could find only in the world of thought, he showed to be present ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel

... too late? Were they anachronisms from the forgotten age of romanticism, or were they just born in time to assist at the birth of another romantic, idealistic age? Would dreams and love and beautiful writing ever come into fashion again? Would the poet be again a creature of passion, and the novelist once more make you laugh and cry; and would there be essayists any more, whose pages you would mark and whose phrases you would roll over and over again ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne

... dealt in the preceding pages, is common to, and follows as the corollary from, all systems in which the personality and transcendence of God are either explicitly denied or virtually ignored. Monism, that is to say,—whether of the idealistic or the materialistic variety, whether pantheist or atheist in complexion—finds its ethical counterpart ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... mediaeval art was religious; the only concession to the secular being found in the illuminations of some of the chivalry romances. Gothic architecture was the expression of Teutonic genius, which is realistic and stands for the reason, while Italian sacred painting was idealistic and stands for the imagination. In the most perfect art, as in the highest type of religion, reason and imagination are in balance. Hence, the influence of Van Eyck, Memling, and Duerer on Italian painters was wholesome; and the Reformation, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... one feels certain enough that amid the jolts and jars and shocks of actual life even the most idealistic of philosophers leave their logic to shift for itself and just drift on as they may in the groove of traditional usages or ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... and stopped short. How indeed was he to prove to them that he was Euschemon? His personal resemblance to his effigy, the work of a sculptor of the idealistic school, was in no respect remarkable; and he felt, alas! that he could no more work a miracle than you or I. In the sight of the multitude he was only an elderly sexton with a cast in his eye, with nothing but his office to keep him out of the workhouse. A further and more ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... justice; but it does not permit a swift movement. A man is not allowed to leap up and declare a certain state of things to be intrinsically intolerable. To make the matter clear, it is better to take a specific example. Certain of the idealistic vegetarians, such as Mr. Salt, say that the time has now come for eating no meat; by implication they assume that at one time it was right to eat meat, and they suggest (in words that could be quoted) that some day ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton

... beautiful but limited representations of the human body, to an attempt to paint the invisible, the spiritual side of man's nature. The work of these artists was great because it was not imitative and because it stretched toward an unending and ideal future. But the idealistic and aspiring temper of early Tuscan art had the defects of its qualities. Its spiritual ecstasy once conventionalized and reduced to a formula led to unreality, and, if not to untruth, at least to an unwholesome ignoring of a part of truth. There ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... various other noble architectural fanes is no longer with us; it has gone, and, apparently, inspiration with it. We can now only construct walls, and put roofs on them—admirable edifices, no doubt, to keep out the rain, but signifying nothing from an artistic or idealistic point of view. And so it is in regard to Japan. Architecture there, considered as an art, is dead. It may be imitated or reproduced, but the reproduction will impose on no person of artistic sensibilities ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... Teresa, that marvellous woman? The Americans puzzle me," he continued. "You are the most practical people on the globe and yet the most idealistic. When I hear of a new religion, I am morally certain that ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... number of canvases in this gallery which have nothing to do with the predominating impressionistic character of the gallery. The Puvis de Chavannes gives one a very fine idea of the idealistic outlook of this greatest of all modern decorators. His art is so genuinely decorative that to see one of his pictures in a frame seems almost pathetic, when we think how infinitely more beautiful ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus

... expresses Himself in creative action called forth by changing situations. It cannot regard Evolution as merely the unrolling in time of the eternally complete, as in the view of monistic idealism. We find in Bergson, however, two hints which suggest that some vague idealistic conception has been present to his mind. For instance, in speaking of Time in relation to God, we find him suggesting that "the whole of history might be contained in a very short time for a consciousness at a higher degree of tension than our ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn

... hospital—an intermediate stage—waiting for the draft with which he would be going into Palestine, all had been very nice to him, friendly, and as it were indulgent; so might schoolboys have treated some well-intentioned dreamy master, or business men a harmless idealistic inventor who came visiting their offices. He had even the feeling that they were glad to have him about, just as they were glad to have their mascots and their regimental colours; but of heart-to-heart simple comradeship—it seemed they neither wanted it of him nor expected him ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... without the sympathetic, idealistic and altruistic impulses, which after all are the mainsprings of social adaptation. Probably these innate feelings can be found in prisoners as generally as in other men. It is the lack of these qualities that often keeps men outside the jail. They "get by" where kindly and impulsive ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow

... believe it in my heart to have been wholly otherwise, and I think of Him as one with whom any simple and affectionate person, man, woman, or child, would have been entirely and instantly at ease. Like all idealistic and poetical natures, he had little use, I think, for laughter; those who are deeply interested in life and its issues care more for the beauty than the humour of life. But one sees a flash of humour here and there, as in the ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson

... As such it was an anachronism. The specific moment in the development of thought at which the Parmenidean Epic was natural has been already described. The Romans of the age of Lucretius had advanced far beyond it. The idealistic metaphysics of the Socratic school, the positive ethics of the Stoics, and the profound materialism of Epicurus, had accustomed the mind to habits of exact and subtle thinking, prolonged from generation to generation upon ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... OF CIVILIZATION.—Civilizations differ; some are more material, laying stress upon man's conquest of his material environment. Others exhibit a greater appreciation of idealistic elements, the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, the cultivation of the fine arts, the development of humanitarian sentiment. For civilization in general it is not necessary to advance an argument. But there are elements in many civilizations which ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... The supply stations take on a new meaning to the boy who is yearning to reach the flag at the top. But it needs to be said here that the traditional superintendent and teacher will greet this entire plan with a supercilious smile. They will call it visionary, unpractical, and idealistic—then return to their seventy-five per cent regime with the utmost complacency and self-satisfaction. It is ever so with the traditional teacher. He seeks to be let alone, that he may go on his complacent way without hindrance. To him ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson

... upper lip, it would have been impossible to establish a parallel. The only things these two might have claimed in common were a slackness of trade and a liking for the aromatic Virginia leaf, though Dame Trippew had taken hers in a dainty idealistic powder, and the sergeant took his in realistic plug through the medium of an aggressive ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... of the combined optimism and expectancy, the regenerative phenomena which ensue on the abandonment of effort, remain firm facts of human nature, no matter whether we adopt a theistic, a pantheistic-idealistic, or a medical-materialistic view of their ultimate ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... necessity impels people to the discovery of something, which, if it has any existence at all, has only an idealistic existence, and which, when it is discovered, cannot be utilised in any possible direction. Utility is the first attribute of all terrestrial bodies. A stone, for instance, is a useful inorganic substance—it can be built into a house, or thrown at a duck, or, when ground into sand, it ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens

... to read Walt twenty-five years ago and although he has drawn upon his intellectual store constantly for more than a quarter of a century the fountain of his genius still is flowing with undiminished volume and the waters are as pure as in the idealistic days ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason

... disillusion brought out, as we have seen in Brutus, all the kindness in Shakespeare's nature. He will believe in men in spite of experience; but the idealistic pose could not be kept up: sooner or later Shakespeare had to face the fact that he had been befooled and scorned by friend and mistress—how did he meet it? Hamlet is the answer: Shakespeare went about ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... Greek philosophy. The Ionic philosophers had sought to find the first principle of all things in the elements, and the Pythagoreans in number, or harmony and law, implying an intelligent creator. The Eleatics, who now arose, went beyond the realm of physics to pure metaphysical inquiries, to an idealistic pantheism, which disregarded the sensible, maintaining that the source of truth is independent of the senses. Here they were ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... your most intimate feelings called out from the housetops and discussed in the streets. And remember, please, that Robert is a dreamer—a poet. Of course, in every active expedition there must be some few idealistic, Quixotic souls who have to suffer vicariously for the rest. He is such an one. But that sort of feeling of soreness which comes from the sense of martyrdom is not quite the same as a raw wound on one's own personal score. I do hope I ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... 1917, of the extreme radical Socialist, Lenine. He is generally credited in this country with being an agent of Germany, but men of his type are not easily subsidized, nor would it have been necessary for the Germans to do so. Utterly idealistic, a wild fanatic, unpractical to the point of being unbalanced, he represented that wing of radicalism which lives in Utopias and will give no consideration to things as they are. They preach the doctrine of the brotherhood of man with the same bitterness that many religious sects ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... to secure factory legislation later brought upon us a certain amount of distrust and suspicion; until then we had been considered merely a kindly philanthropic undertaking whose new form gave us a certain idealistic glamour. But sterner tests were coming, and one of the first was in connection with the new building for the Jane Club. A trustee of Hull-House came to see us one day with the good news that a friend of his was ready to give twenty thousand dollars ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... was remarkably handsome; the even profile, well-shaped head, and blond colouring were much the same in uncle and nephew, the uncle's face having, perhaps, a more idealistic cast. The twenty years' difference in age had only given the elder man a finer, fairer, more faded look, and the smooth light hair, still thick, ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson

... the Allies had fought the war and upon which they were determined that the future government of the world should rest. They were, indeed, not so much a pact of peace as a punishment of war; and an idealistic scheme of government by consent started by imposing on the weaker party conditions with which it could not but violently disagree. Millions of Germans in Alsace-Lorraine, Bohemia, Poland, and East Prussia were transferred to alien domination; millions of others in German Austria ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... Florentine citizens surrounding him; Benozzo Gozzoli's noble naked figure of Noah with his ungainly, hideously dressed figure of Cosimo de' Medici; Mantegna's exquisite Judith with his preposterous Marquis of Mantua; in short all the purely realistic with all the purely idealistic art of the fifteenth century. We may give one last instance. In Signorelli's Orvieto frescoes there is a figure of a young man, with aquiline features, long crisp hair and strongly developed throat, which reappears unmistakably ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... direction. Even in England the influence of Bergson has led modern thought away from the pure materialism of the monists, and it seems probable that Benedetto Croce's Philosophy of the Spirit will carry the movement a step nearer towards the idealistic concept of reality. And among the latest signs of the new tendency must be counted the brilliant work of Emil Lucka, the young Austrian "poet-philosopher," whose conception of the development of love must rank with the most daring ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... had already sharply defined itself. It was idealistic, and its ideals were expressed in the new kind of young men in business downtown. They were optimists—optimists to the point of belligerence—their motto being "Boost! Don't Knock!" And they were hustlers, believing in hustling and in honesty because both paid. They loved their city ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... that their marriage would be an incomplete relationship Tollman had inwardly smiled. Of her faithfulness he could be sure and she herself would be his. The rest was a somewhat gossamer and idealistic matter which her youth exaggerated ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... for 1897-8 [1] took for his subject the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity in relation to contemporary idealistic philosophy. The scope of these lectures is, not to prove the doctrine of the Trinity philosophically, but to show that the difficulty besetting the conception of a multiplicity of persons united by a superpersonal bond, is just the same difficulty ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... little nearer, but did not know how to set about it; he was afraid of troubling what he called her innocence. Hitherto he had scored no great success. Angelina, aged fifteen, with the figure of a fairy, a glowing complexion, and a rich southern voice, was perfectly aware of his idealistic sentiments. She responded to the extent of gazing at him, now and then, in a most disconcerting fashion. It was as though she cared little about idealism. She did not smile. There was neither love nor disdain in that gaze; it was neither hot nor cold, nor yet lukewarm; it was something ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... abound with rare qualities, forming a harmonious ensemble; they also exhibit great observation and knowledge of humanity, and through all of them runs an incomparable and distinctive charm. He will always be considered the leader of the idealistic school in the nineteenth century. It is now fifteen years since his death, and the judgment of posterity is that he had a great imagination, linked to great analytical power and insight; that his style is neat, pure, and fine, ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet

... judicial, economic, industrial and agrarian legislation of a very radical and extensive kind. Their horizon of vision includes the sufferings and aspirations of the often incongruous elements of the vast whole, but their ideology is still based on the long outworn idealistic capitalism and for this reason alone does not and cannot appeal to not-owning classes. Their agrarian program is in this respect the most striking example. It is worked out in great detail and is aimed at a betterment of the condition of peasants ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,

... essential form of any representation, whether time be the father of space or space the father of time, one thing is certain, which is that the efforts of the Kantian or neo-Kantian apriorists and of the pure empiricists and the idealistic empiricists all end in the same darkness; that all the philosophers who have grappled with the formidable dual problem, among whom one may mention indiscriminately the names of the greatest thinkers of yesterday and to-day—Herbert ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck

... arrange the pieces of the game into some reasonable order. What was to be thought of a priesthood who, contrary to all the traditions of their Church, had nursed a revolution against the rights of property? or of a people, amazingly quick of apprehension, idealistic of temperament, who time after time submitted themselves blindfold to the tyranny of a single leader, worshipped a man, and asked no questions about his policy? How was he to place an aristocracy who refused to lead, and persisted in whining about their wrongs ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... back. At first I too thought there might be something in it. But I was forced to a different view by dint of reflection on the notorious fact that my uncle is far readier in a good cause to "shell out" his dollars and cents than any of his idealistic critics. Reduction of a problem to dollars and cents, I have come to see, is just his means of arriving at definiteness. My uncle wants to do a good business, whether in the gross joys of the flesh or in the ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... contract. Agents; dealerships; distributors and a general salesmanager, Albert Weener, at the top. Incorporate. Get it all down in black and white and signed by Miss Francis right away. For her own good. An idealistic scientist, a frail woman, protect her from the vultures who'd try to rob her as soon as they saw what the Metamorphizer would do. Such a woman wouldnt have any business sense. I'd see she got a comfortable living out of it and free her from responsibility. Then she could potter around ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... that I haven't understood—I won't say a single word; I've understood all the words.... But what can be this era of disembodied concord you are looking forward to. Life is a thing of form. It has its plastic shape and a definite intellectual aspect. The most idealistic conceptions of love and forbearance must be clothed in flesh as it were before they can ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... three women whose interests brought them daily to the court-room had undergone considerable change. The girl that he had put upon a pedestal to worship from afar, the girl to whom he had given an idealistic love, he saw now in another light. His reverence for her had died hard, but in the face of her arrogance, her vindictiveness and her petty snobbery it had finally succumbed, so that when he compared her with the girl who had been of ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... technicalities. In 1873 he was appointed vice-chancellor and principal of Glasgow University. He delivered the Gifford Lectures in 1892-1893 and in 1895-1896. His Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (1880) is an attempt to show the essential rationality of religion. It is idealistic in character, being in fact a reproduction of Hegelian teaching in clear and melodious language. His argument for the Being of God is based on the hypothesis that thought—not individual but universal—is the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... and I could all three join in amicable accord, over the solution of our difficulty, along radical and idealistic lines. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... stand? Coordinately with the idea of toil, does it violate the laws of the universe; do the surfaces thereof reflect the light of day; is the color probable; is the action possible? If under this scrutiny the work fails, its acceptable idealistic expression ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... entirely extemporaneous; no record of it was ever made, but those who heard it still carry the memory of an eloquent and fiery outburst that placed Knapp's work in its proper relation to American history and gave an unforgettable picture of a patient, idealistic, achieving man whose name will loom ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... thousands of Eastern men to the valley of the Mississippi was still further augmented by streams of refugees from the unsettled and distressed conditions of Germany. In Ohio, Kentucky, southern Illinois, and Missouri these idealistic emigrants from Europe found new homes and substantial encouragement. They sent glowing accounts of the new world to their friends at home, and the tide of immigration which was destined to enrich American life ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd

... regard it. The truths and the rules which I have set forth, let them, after I am gone, be the Teacher to you." But in Buddhist writings, including the oldest Pali texts, Dharma or Dhamma has another important meaning. It signifies phenomenon or mental state (the two being identical for an idealistic philosophy) and comprises both the external and the internal world. Now the Dharma-kaya is emphatically not a phenomenon but it may be regarded as the substratum or totality of phenomena or as that which gives phenomena whatever ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot



Words linked to "Idealistic" :   idealism, noble



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