"Idealize" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Here her words begin to have a warmer tinge of feeling;" but as spring advanced, imperceptibly yet surely, in spite of pauses and apparent retrogressions, just so surely she revealed a certain warmth of sympathy. He was engaged in a work which made it easy for her to idealize him. His unselfish effort to help men live, to keep bitter tears from the eyes of their relatives, appealed most powerfully to all that was unselfish in her nature, and she was beginning to ask, "If I can make this man happier, ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... Why then idealize and make a divinity of this creature, when we know that the education she ordinarily receives, takes away from her, little by little, all which ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... from an objective reality, will always be in advance of it. So it is with all man's activities when he comes to man's estate. In science he has always an ideal of a more perfect knowledge before him though he becomes scientific by experience. In art he is always striving to idealize fresh things, though he first becomes an artist from the pure spontaneous pleasure of expressing what is in him. The deliberate projection of the ideal into the future, seeing how far it will take us and whether we are journeying in the right direction, is a late stage. As to ...
— Progress and History • Various
... the Baron, "we must pardon much to men of genius. A delicate organization renders them keenly susceptible to pain and pleasure. And then they idealize every thing; and, in the moonlight of fancy, even the ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... he had not attained a moral and intellectual culture which enabled him even to idealize so beautiful and perfect a creature. She was not a saint in the mystical or imaginative sense of the word, but, as a queen reigning by the divine right of her surpassing loveliness and grace in even Hillaton's exclusive society, ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... may be called nature romance. Its purpose is both to entertain and to awaken sympathy and love for animals. Stories of this kind, like other romances, idealize the characters and may have a strong appeal to the emotions. Of the stories in this section, we may classify as nature romance Beatrix Potter's "Peter Rabbit," Sewell Ford's "Pasha, the Son of Selim," Ouida's "Moufflou," and ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... maintained in the Dismal Swamp a refuge for slaves, and purposed an uprising to conquer their freedom. To Southern imaginations it might well recall Nat Turner and the horrors of his revolt. Mrs. Stowe inevitably idealized everything she touched; and to idealize the leader of a servile insurrection might well be regarded as carrying fire into a powder magazine. The moving expostulation of the Christian slave Milly with Dred, the death of Dred, the frustration of his plans, and ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... believes in education, because he has heard the commodity highly recommended in the newspapers. Usually, he is a man who has not had college advantages, and so he is filled with the fallacy that he has dropped something out of his life. We idealize the things that are not ours. H. H. Rogers was an exception—he was at home in any company. He took little on faith. He analyzed things for himself. And his opinion was that the old-line colleges tended to destroy individuality and smother initiative. He believed that the High School was the key ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... we know of a true friend, the more we find to reverence in him, and the more ground for humility in ourselves: "Have a quick eye to see" their virtues; nay, more, idealize those virtues as much as you will, for this is a very different thing from endowing them with those they have not; this is only learning to see with that divine insight essential to the highest truth in ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... par with the instructions for the removal of the Acadians on the eve of the breaking out of the French and Indian War. The banished Missourians have, however, as yet found no Longfellow to sentimentalize over them or to idealize, in a story of Evangeline, their misfortunes and their character. History has been spared the ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... once occupied. Thus it is almost possible, by judiciously selecting from his works, and using such keys as we possess, to construct as it were a kind of autobiography. Nor, if we make due allowance for the great writer's tendency to idealize the past, and intensify its humorous and pathetic aspects, need we at all fear that the self-written story of his life should convey ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... seven virgins of Crotona in order to paint his famous picture of Venus. Great as was the beauty of Phryne or Aspasia or Lais, yet no one of them could have served for a perfect model; and it required a great sensibility to beauty in order to select and idealize what was most perfect in the human figure. Beauty was adored in Greece, and every means were used to perfect it, especially beauty of form, which is the characteristic excellence of Grecian statuary. The gymnasia were universally frequented; and the great prizes of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... pattern, by which to square his life and guide his actions. At some time in our life I am sure that each of us has selected the person who filled most nearly our notion of what we should like to become, and measured ourselves by this pattern. But there comes a time when we must idealize even the most perfect individual; when we invest the character with attributes which we have selected from some other person, and thus worship at a shrine which is ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... temple. It is easy to feel with what joy he would first look upon Zion from the shoulder of the Mount of Olives, as he came over it on his journey from Galilee; to conceive how the temple and the ritual would fill him with awe in his readiness not to criticise, but to idealize everything he saw, and to think only of the significance given by it all to the scripture; to imagine how eagerly he would talk in the temple court with the learned men of his people about the law and the promises with which in home and school his youth had been made familiar. Nor is it ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... increased, and therefore the process of adaptation is facilitated—in other words, progress is accelerated. Among the most effective agencies for the promotion of progress, therefore, must be included those which stimulate this power of idealization. In short, he who in any age helps to idealize those factors and forces upon which the progress of his age depends, is perhaps the most useful man, the most powerful agent in the promotion of human well-being, even though from the strictly realistic ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... besides, he believes in the biblical attitude of woman. Put a woman on the mantelpiece and call her luscious, poetic names and then see how soon she'll hop down when another man simply cries 'I love you.' If a man wishes to spoil a woman successfully let him idealize her." ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... In vhat part of se vorldt does she lif, and how long she is marriedt? No-o, no! Sare is only vun kindt of vife in se whole vorldt vhat realize her ideal hussbandt; and sat is se vife vhat idealize her real hussbandt. Also not se hussbandt and se vife only; I sink you even cannot much Christ-yanity practice vis anybody—close related—vissout you idealize sem. But ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... however they might wish to keep the fact a secret, or otherwise dispose of them by pensions or emigration, but she could not bear to KNOW IT HERSELF! She never could be happy as the mistress of Scrooby Priory with that knowledge; she did not idealize it as a principle! Carefully weighing it by her own practical common sense, she said to herself that "it wouldn't pay." The highest independence is often akin to the lowest selfishness; she did not dream that the same pride which kept her grandfather from the workhouse ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... Moreover, I need them to give relief to my common characters; and I never sacrifice them without necessity. But these common characters interest me more than they interest you. I aggrandize them; I idealize them in an inverse direction, in their ugliness or their stupidity. I give to their deformity terrifying or grotesque proportions. You could not do this. You are wise not to look at people and things that would cause you nightmare. ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... of that," he said quickly, "but it is a great puzzle at present and I am thankful to say, I think it is quite safe to wait a year or two yet. You and I live so much apart from society that we idealize it a good deal, though you are a stray-away bit of it. We too seldom see the ideal gentleman or lady; we have to be contented with keeping the ideal in our minds, it seems to me, and saying that this man is gentlemanly, and that woman ladylike. But I do believe ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... idealize the village when one views it from this height. To the tourist, who comes merely to admire, it is a view that possesses the glamour of enchantment. How happy should be the people who dwell in this peaceful village, ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... opposite, opinions as to what constitutes Love. One opinion is that Love is sexual love, sexual attraction, sexual desire. To people holding this opinion love and sexual desire or "lust" are synonymous. And they laugh and sneer at any attempt to idealize love, to present it as something finer and subtler, let alone nobler, than mere sex attraction. The writer has heard one cynical woman—and more than one man—say: Love? There is no such a thing. Sexual intercourse is love, and that's all there ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... in Germany, and all the children idealize him. Whatever he puts his name to, goes. He and a popular pastor worked up a huge subscription for war-waifs, and when the money had been raised it was found the waifs were already well provided for. I believe the money was appropriated to a fund for helping the indigent middle class. ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... escape from such, he delivered up his soul to poetry, and felt happy when he sheltered himself, from the influence of human sympathies, in the wildest regions of fancy. His imagination has been termed too brilliant, his thoughts too subtle. He loved to idealize reality; and this is a taste shared by few. We are willing to have our passing whims exalted into passions, for this gratifies our vanity; but few of us understand or sympathize with the endeavour ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... without knowing it at the time, or without a reasoned suffering. He suffered as a child suffers, simply, almost ignorantly: it was upon reflection that his nerves began to quiver with retroactive anguish. He was also able to idealize the situation when his wife no longer even wished to do so. His fancy cast a poetry about these Venetian friends, whose conversation displayed the occasional sparkle of Ollendorff-English on a dark ground of lagoon-Italian, and whose vivid smiling ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... poet would see it, and as Lamartine saw Jerusalem. But Byron was more curious about the pagan cities of antiquity than concerning the places consecrated by the sufferings of our Lord. He cared more to swim across the Hellespont with Leander than to wander over the sacred hills of Judaea; to idealize a beautiful peasant girl among the ruins of Greece, than converse with the monks of Palestine in ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... has rendered a similar service in relation to the Buddhism of Ceylon, while Bigandet has set forth that of Burmah, and Alabaster that of Siam. Sir Monier Williams, in his more recent work, "Buddhism," has done much to counteract the fashionable tendency of most Orientalists to idealize the Buddhist system. ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... have the particular kind of ice-cold intellect necessary if one is to detach one's self completely from the idols of the market-place. Indeed, the poetic temperament is only too apt, out of the very warmth of its sensitive humanity, to idealize the old traditions and throw a glamour around them. That is why, both in politics and religion, there have been, ever since Aristophanes, so many great reactionary poets. Their warmth of human sympathy, their "nihil alienum" attitude; nay! their very sense ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... from temperament. The conservative temper of such a poet as Sir Walter Scott leads him to idealize the past, and to concern himself but little about the future. The rebellious temperament of such a poet as Shelley leads him to idealize the future, and concern himself but little about the past. But by contriving to idealize both the past and the future, and mixing ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... was going on, and—which of them was idealizing? It mightn't be so bad, after all. Hadn't I, perhaps, over-sentimentalized to myself the case of John Mayrant? Hadn't I imagined for him ever so much more anxiety than the boy actually felt? For people can idealize down just as readily as they can idealize up. Of Miss Hortense Rieppe I had now two partial portraits—one by the displeased aunts, the other by their chivalric nephew; in both she held between her experienced lips, a cigarette; there the similarity ceased. And then, there ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... said, "I warned you not to idealize me. Men ought not to idealize any woman. We aren't worth it. We've done nothing to deserve it. And it hampers us. You don't know the thoughts we have; the things we can do and say. You are a sisterless man; you have never heard ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... we idealize in certain lines, and exploit in others. Both of them are misinterpreted, balked of their full usefulness, ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... it's best to tell you, Kenny," he added honestly, hoping to spur the culprit on to more and better work. "It may help. They said downstairs that you interpret everything, even trees and snow, in terms of unreality. You over-idealize. I suppose it's your eternal need of illusion. We've spoken of ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... 'And the joy of not having any more visits to make! I wonder if you've ever thought of that? Just at first, I mean; for society's getting so deplorably lax that, little by little, it will edge up to us—you'll see! I don't want to idealize the situation, dearest, and I won't conceal from you that in time we shall be called on. But, oh, the fun we shall have had in the interval! And then, for the first time we shall be able to dictate ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... asked smiling. "If there are obstacles, so much the more interesting. I don't fancy that romantic streak in your nature which permitted you to idealize Mortimer has quite dried up. Once romantic always romantic—I deduce from human nature ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... remarkable scene, pictorially, I agree with you. And an artist, of course—but isn't it a trifle quixotic, Peter, to idealize them because they are having a good time? There's no virtue in it. It is conceivable that they might have to work just as hard and have just as many little children to look after, and yet not have these dances you praise them ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... not a popular religion, and to thousands of educated men it did not appeal. Few people are so immaterialistic that they can dispense with symbols; many can idealize symbols in which others see nothing but matter; and only those devoid of artistic perception deny the religious value of sculpture, painting, and music. Protestantism might be an ideal religion if men were compounded of pure reason; being what they were, many adopted it because they were impervious ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... the world outlined vague visions. Boy fashion he wrote to Bob Hendricks once or twice a month or a season, as the spirit moved him, and measured everything with the eyes of his absent friend. For he came to idealize Bob, who was out in the wonderful world, and their letters in those days were curious compositions—full of adventures by field and wood, and awkward references to proper books to read, and cures for cramps and bashfully expressed ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... the soul which is falling out of human integrity into the purely mechanical mode. If we idealize ourselves sufficiently, the spontaneous centers do at last work only, or almost only, in the mechanical mode. They have no dynamic relation with another being. They cannot have. Their whole power of dynamic relationship is quenched. They act now in reference purely to the mechanical world, ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence |
