"Utopian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... powers on the work in hand without wasting time or energy on unnecessary aches and pains; people whose bodies are kept up to the top notch of vitality by well-digested food, well-slept sleep, well-forgotten fatigue, and well-used reserve energy. That such a state of affairs is no Utopian dream, but is merely a matter of knowing how, will appear more clearly ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... specialist in his own particular field—in commerce, in the government diplomatic service, in the professions of law and medicine, in the ranks of pure science. We are bordering on the fantastical, are we not? Dreaming, you will probably say, of the Utopian in crime organisation. Quite so, Mr. Dale. I only ask you to consider the POSSIBILITIES if what I say is true. Now let us proceed. I am going to take you into three rooms—the three whose doors you see ahead of you. You will notice that, including the one you have just left, there ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... it took place, was so small that it failed to raise a ripple on the social pool of the Western Hemisphere. But to the self-chosen few who suffered shipwreck and privation, financial loss from their already depleted store, disaster to their Utopian dreams, and a great void in their hearts where once had been love of country, it became a tragedy—the tragedy ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... this social state of the Vril-ya, it was singular to mark how it contrived to unite and to harmonise into one system nearly all the objects which the various philosophers of the upper world have placed before human hopes as the ideals of a Utopian future. It was a state in which war, with all its calamities, was deemed impossible,—a state in which the freedom of all and each was secured to the uttermost degree, without one of those animosities which make freedom in the upper world depend on the ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... named Lieutenant-general of France. It is asserted, that this appointment has been effected by the influence of General Lafayette over the provisional government; but how little in accordance is this measure with the well-known Utopian scheme of a republic, which has for years been the favourite ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... purposes, induce men to prefer a guinea to a pound of wages. But, after all, there is something in the demand for fair play and for the means of leading decent lives, which requires a better answer. It is easy, again, to say that all Socialists are Utopian. Make every man equal to-day, and the old inequalities will reappear to-morrow. Pitch such a one over London Bridge, it was said, with nothing on but his breeches, and he will turn up at Woolwich with his pockets full of gold. It is as idle ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... distrusted manufactures because they produced big cities and collected crowds; if he had nevertheless to have manufactures, he wanted protection in the interest of self-sufficiency. When he could not find these conditions in the real world, he went passionately into the wilderness, and founded Utopian communities far from foreign contacts. His slogans reveal his prejudice. He is for Self-Government, Self-Determination, Independence. Not one of these ideas carries with it any notion of consent or community beyond the frontiers of the self-governing groups. The field of democratic ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... not know them—and how could you?—you, a man who lived the greater part of your life in a monastery apart from your fellows, apart from the problems, apart from the battle against conditions that make men—men. You, in the seclusion of your own kind, conceived dreams of Utopian madness and you came forth and cast your foolish fancies like a net upon the ignorant. And now you find your failings; you see the petty smallness of your ideals and you retreat—back into your ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... Socialism, the ideal of the Co-operative Commonwealth in which the economic conditions will give birth to the highest, purest, most altruistic ethics the world has yet seen. It is true the co-operative commonwealth is far more than a Utopian ideal, it is a scientific prediction, but at this point I wish to emphasize its function as ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... cooerdinated efforts to accelerate progress, more conscious of the needs of a distant future, perhaps, or even of an ideal of universal efficiency as a means of realizing some one world purpose or many good purposes. This is not now, as it once might have been called, merely an Utopian dream. In some slight degree it is already being accomplished. Fifth, social and moral feelings are widened in scope, and must be still further extended; it is in the form of the democratic spirit, that these feelings must find expression. And this democratic spirit ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... and was admired by Byron in his rather wayward mood of Pope-worship as the last representative of the legitimate school. The position is significant. Crabbe condemns Goldsmith's 'Nature' because it is 'unnatural.' It means the Utopian ideal of Rousseau which never did and never can exist. It belongs to the world of old-fashioned pastoral poetry, in which Corydon and Thyrsis had their being. He will paint British squires and farmers and labourers as he has seen them with his own eyes. ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... object of my peculiar astonishment was, that Jews, Protestants, and Catholics, all flocked alike, and frequently, at the SAME TIME, to exercise their particular forms of worship within this church!—a circumstance, almost partaking of the felicity of an Utopian commonwealth. I observed, indeed, a small crucifix upon the altar, which confirmed me in the belief that the Lutheran worship, according to the form of the Augsbourg confession, was practised here; and the verger told me there was no other place of worship in the village. His information ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... when the workers of the community may be grouped in co-operative bodies, either competing with one another, or related by some bond which shall minimize the friction of competition, while not impairing the freedom and integrity of each several group, is not perhaps a wild utopian vision. To students of English industrial history the transition to such a state will not appear more marked than the transition through which industry passed under the Industrial Revolution to the present capitalist system. ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... tenderest feelings of a woman's heart and cherish them yourself as long as you need them, as long as your children require a nurse to love them, and then to blight and thwart and destroy them, whenever your own use for them is at an end. This may be Utopian; but it is always a little thing if one mother or two mothers can be brought to feel more tenderly to those who share their toil and have ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... explained it in an article and left others to make the first effort at realisation. The man who created Bayreuth was not the man to imagine altogether vainly that he could, per favour of a king, whom he must have known to be utterly weak, turn some millions of citizens and villagers into an Utopian nation of art-lovers and so on. But hatred surrounded him everywhere; the machinery of the state came early to a standstill, and, finally, the king had to ask him to withdraw for a longer ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... not be troubled with its immediate fulfilment. The visionary who believes in his own most frantic vision is always noble and useful. It is the visionary who does not believe in his vision who is the dreamer, the idler, the Utopian. This then is the second moral virtue of the older school, an immense direct sincerity of action, a cleansing away, by the sweats of hard work, of all those subtle and perilous instincts of mere ethical castle-building which ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Devonshire coast. Tell Thackeray that he is never to invite me to his house, as I intend never to go: not that I would not go out there rather than any place perhaps, but I cannot stand seeing new faces in the polite circles. You must know I am going to become a great bear: and have got all sorts of Utopian ideas into my head about society: these may all be very absurd, but I try the experiment on myself, so I can do no great hurt. Where I shall go in the summer I ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... Eliza Haywood would probably have profited little by her panegyric. For though the "Memoirs of a Certain Island" like the "Adventures of Eovaai" made a pretence of being translated into English from the work of a celebrated Utopian author, the British public found no difficulty in attributing it by popular acclaim to Mrs. Haywood, and she reaped immense notoriety from it. In prefaces to some of her subsequent works she complained of the readiness of the world to pick meanings in whatever ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... certainly making progress, and in the last seasons at Covent Garden it was occasionally employed even before the fashionable subscribers, who may be presumed to have tolerated it, since they did not manifest any disapproval of its use. Since the first edition of this book was published, the Utopian idea, as it then seemed, of a national opera for London has advanced considerably towards realisation, and it is certain that when it is set on foot, the English language alone will ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... the foe of the Girondins, and of the pure, altruistic, Utopian Republicanism for which they stood; and whilst he lived and laboured, their own endeavours to influence the people were all in vain. From his vile lodging in the Rue de l'Ecole de Medecine in Paris he span with his clever, wicked ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... from censure which is allowed to the theorists, the builders of ideal states somewhere in the clouds. On his own behalf he expressly disclaims any such intention. "To sequester out of the world," he says, "into Atlantic and Utopian politics, which never can be drawn into use, will not mend our condition; but to ordain wisely as in this world of evil, in the midst whereof God has placed us unavoidably." Poetry might well have served him, if his object had been to add another to imaginary commonwealths. He took up with politics ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... far as to leave out the natural conservative element of all democracies—domestic slavery. As a result, we have presented now social, religious, and domestic anarchy. From Millerism, and Spiritualism, every Utopian idea has numerous advocates. The manufacturer is an aristocrat, while the working-man is a serf. The latter class, constantly goaded by poverty, seek a change—they care not what it may be. Democracy unrestrained by domestic ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... is not Utopian: but I will tell you what would have seemed, if we had not seen it, Utopian on the side of evil instead of good; that ever men should have come to value their money so much more than their lives, that if you call upon them to become soldiers, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... aristocratic self-complacency, exemplified in Goethe, had gradually and completely Weaned succeeding poets. Klinger, at the same time, coarsely portrayed the vices of the church and state, and Meyern extravagated in his romance "Dya-Na-Sore" on Utopian happiness. The poems of Muller, the painter, are full of latent warmth. Burger, Pfeffel, the blind poet, and Claudius, gave utterance, in Schubart's coarse manner, to a few trite truisms. Musaeus was greatly ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... beneficial, and may not. Woman suffrage is an experiment. Like everything else, we will never know its effects until after it is tried. We only wish that there were a few more men in that convention who could make as able speeches as did these ladies—notwithstanding the Utopian ideas advanced. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... train and educate them, so as to give them an opportunity of making the best possible use of their capacities. He is quite an ingenuous man, who says just what he thinks, and who would never think of aiming at the impracticable. What may at first have seemed to be quite a Utopian enterprise to quidnuncs in American social and political circles is to him a very ordinary business. He has solved what has been to others a dark problem, because he has failed to see that there was any problem which needed solution. He ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... French critics, M. Caro, a member of the Academy, who deals somewhat austerely with her religiose enthusiasms and with her Utopian projects for social reformation, remarks ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... grounded hopes; good prospect, bright prospect; clear sky. assumption, presumption; anticipation &c. (expectation) 507. hopefulness, buoyancy, optimism, enthusiasm, heart of grace, aspiration. [person who is hopeful] optimist, utopian, utopist[obs3]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... the dignity of man, as to treat this proposition as an impossible and Utopian dream? We ask, how many prisoners of war have ever broken their parole, and if officers and soldiers are ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... human race in general and the American people in particular. The Friends yearly Meeting, the Conference of the American Anti-Slavery societies, the Grahamites or Vegetarians, the Temperance advocates and other upholders of beneficent, benevolent, and Utopian ideals assembled on these occasions, and with much eloquence, made it clear to the meanest understanding that the universal adoption of the principles especially professed by each would do away with ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... principal subject of this evening, I wish to anticipate one or two objections which may arise in your minds to what I must lay before you. It may perhaps have been felt by you last evening, that some things I proposed to you were either romantic or Utopian. Let us think for a few moments ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... Timoleon, of Hampden, of Washington, and Lincoln. These were as good men, as disinterested and unselfish men, as ever served a State; and they were also as strong men as ever founded or saved a State. Surely such examples prove that there is nothing Utopian in our effort to combine justice and strength in the same nation. The really high civilizations must themselves supply the antidote to the self-indulgence and love of ease ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... he could succeed in taming the selfishness of self. But he told himself now that the struggle to do so had hitherto been vain. There had been but the one thing which had ever been to him supremely desirable. He had gone through the years of his early life forming some Utopian ideas,—dreaming of some perfection in politics, in philanthropy, in social reform, and the like,—something by devoting himself to which he could make his life a joy to himself. Then this girl had ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... first canto, fresh from the description of the female college, with its professoresses, and hostleresses, and other utopian monsters, we ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... bread for all. And while middle-class citizens, and workmen infested with middle-class ideas admire their own rhetoric in the "Talking Shops," and "practical people" are engaged in endless discussions on forms of government, we, the "Utopian dreamers"—we shall have to consider the question of ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... away in an instant, and therefore we may ask, with Job, chap. xxviii. ver. 1, 12, "Surely there is a vein for the silver," etc. "But where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding?" What Utopian isles is she transported unto, that mortal men, the more they seek her, find more ignorance,—the further they pursue, they see themselves at the further distance? Thus it is in those things that are most obvious to our senses, but how much more in spiritual and invisible things ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... literature does for us, blessing our world or banning it—it is a wonder and a shame that books of whatever tendency are so cast forth upon the waters to sink or swim at hazard. I acknowledge, friend, your present muttering, Utopian! Arcadian! Formosan! to be not ill-founded: the sketch is a hasty one; but though it may have somewhat in common with the vagaries of Sir Thomas More, Sir Philip Sidney, and that king in impudence, George ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Mr. Fowler, the Oxford Professor of Logic, which treat of the department of Fallacies. Perhaps Bentham's Book of Fallacies is too political for me to commend it to you here. But if there happens to be any one in Birmingham who is fond of meeting proposed changes by saying that they are Utopian; that they are good in theory, but bad in practice; that they are too good to be realised, and so forth, then I can promise him that he will in that book hear of something very much to ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 1: On Popular Culture • John Morley
... spun out of the emptiness of one's own entrails. But the practical Briton knows better. He has never forgiven John Morley for going into politics (though I doubt not "honest John" would now find much to revise in his essay on "Compromise"); and he finds Socialism ever so much more Utopian since William Morris went into it. Can you imagine a true-born Briton following the flag of Swinburne, or throwing up a barricade with George Meredith? To the last Beaconsfield was suspected of persiflage because he wrote novels and was witty. America makes her authors ministers and envoys, but ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... the formation of schemes that took him away from Cambridge for good and all. In June, 1794, he made a visit to an old schoolfellow at Oxford. Here he met Robert Southey of Balliol College. A friendship sprang up between them out of which, before the end of the summer, grew the Utopian scheme of Pantisocracy. A company of gentlemen and ladies were to emigrate to America, take up lands in the Susquehanna valley, and there establish an ideal community in which all should bear rule equally and find happiness in a life of justice, labor, and love. The education of the young in the ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... utopian, organized his ideal republic in the name of science, which, through modesty and euphemism, he called philosophy. Aristotle, a practical man, refuted the Platonic utopia in the name of the same philosophy. Thus the social war has continued since Plato and Aristotle. The modern socialists refer ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... object. He stood forth as counsel for his unfortunate countrymen, pleading the cause of that degraded race before the tribunal of posterity. The exaggerated tone of panegyric consequent on this becomes apparent in every page of his work. He pictures forth a state of society such as an Utopian philosopher would hardly venture to depict. His royal ancestors became the types of every imaginery excellence, and the golden age is revived for a nation, which, while the war of proselytism is raging on its borders, enjoys within all the blessings of tranquillity and peace. ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... the imaginations of Socialists have beautifully pictured their utopian state for the benefit of the credulous and oppressed. Unfortunately, however, for the followers of Karl Marx, a little reasoning and common sense show that their visionary state, instead of being a heavenly paradise, would in reality be a descent into chaos and anarchy. Domestic ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... Wolsey, Ridley, Ascham, and Sir Thomas More, the author of the "Utopia," a romance in the scholastic garb. It describes an imaginary commonwealth, the chief feature of which is a community of property, on an imaginary island, from which the book takes its name. The epithet "Utopian" is still used as descriptive of ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... parish magazines always be written by the clergy? Is it Utopian to hope that a day will dawn when it will be perceived even by clerical editors that Apostolic Succession does not invariably confer literary talent? What can an intelligent artisan think when he reads—what he reads—in his parish magazine? A serial story by a Rector unknown to fame, who, ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... In this respect the Utopian dreams of social justice in which many contemporary socialists and anarchists indulge are, in spite of their impracticability and non-adaptation to present environmental conditions, analogous to the saint's belief in an existent kingdom of heaven. They ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... been wisely rejected by the schools which had received the Greek wisdom. In course of time a period of intoxication came upon him. He imagined that he was to bring about a new church which he everywhere calls the Kingdom of God. His views were Utopian; he lived in a dream life, and his idealism elevated him above all other agitators. He founded a sect, and his disciples became intoxicated with his own dreams. But he did not sanction all their excesses: for instance, he did not believe the inexact and contradictory ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... of men for any sort of thefts. Now you no longer put men to death for theft; you look back upon that cruel code of your mother England with an abhorrence as great as his own. We, for our part, who have realized the Utopian dream of brotherly equality, look back with the same abhorrence upon a state where some were rich and some poor, some taught and some untaught, some high and some low, and the hardest toil often failed to supply a sufficiency of the food which luxury wasted in its riots. That state seems as atrocious ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... philosophers of his time. J. J. Rousseau it was who made the idea popular, and it met with widespread acceptance for many years. It is not surprising, therefore, that the phrase has long been a favorite with the demagogue and the utopian. Even now the doctrine is by no means dead. The American educational system is based largely on this dogma, and much of the political system seems to be grounded on it. It can be seen in the tenets of labor unions, in the practice of many philanthropies—traces ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... abandon all my cherished political convictions for your sake. It is to be hoped that the Radicals will not follow up their success with the caucus by organising the young ladies of their party and letting them loose on society as propagandists of their Utopian ideas ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... the uniformity and decision of the Evangelical system,—his dark notions in relation to God (candidly confessed) with the glorious recognition of Him in the Gospel as 'our Father,'—his utterly absurd application of his general principles of morals, in his most Utopian of all Republics, with the broad, plain social ethics of Christianity,—the tone of mournful familiarity (whatever his personal immunity) in which he too often speaks of the saddest pollutions that ever degraded humanity, with the spotless purity of the Christian rule of life,—the hesitating, ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... forced prematurely by the efforts of this man Symes. Really I feel a distinct sense of personal injury at his innovations." Van Lennop laughed slightly. "The old way was the best way for a long time to come, it seems to me. That was real democracy—a Utopian condition that had of necessity to go with the town's growth, but certainly not at this stage. In larger communities it is natural enough that those of similar tastes should seek each other, but, in a place like Crowheart where the interests and the mental ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... the Society were in the main on things abstract or Utopian. Social Reconstruction was a constant theme, Hubert Bland outlined "Revolutionary Prospects" in January, 1885, and Bernard Shaw in February combated "The proposed Abolition of ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... the most celebrated—justly celebrated—of Rabelais's imaginations is that of the Abbey of Theleme [Thelema]. This constitutes a kind of Rabelaisian Utopia. It was proper of the released monk to give his Utopian dream the form of an abbey, but an abbey in which the opposite should obtain of all that he had so heartily hated in his own monastic experience. A humorously impossible place and state was the Abbey of Theleme,—a kind of sportive Brook Farm ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... the monasteries, and asserts the highest ideals of science and humanity. With an equal loathing of asceticism, he satirizes the monks themselves, and sketches out, in his description of the Abbey of Theleme, a glowing vision of the Utopian convent. His thought was bold; but he lived in a time when the mildest speculation was fraught with danger; and he says what he has to say in the shifting and ambiguous forms of jest and allegory. Yet it was by no means simply for the sake of concealment that he made his work into the singular mixture ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... much of the efforts of Governments and financiers to regulate the exchanges, but nothing comes of it. The only obvious cure is a Utopian one: institute one currency for Europe in the name ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... of life. Let us in our literature avoid as much as possible the painful side of human nature and the pains and penalties of human weakness; let us endeavour to depict a state of existence as far as possible approaching the Utopian ideal, though not necessarily the Nirvana of the Buddhists nor the paradise of fools; let us look not downwards into the depths of black despair, but upwards into the starry heavens; let us gaze at the golden evening brightening in the west. Richard Jefferies has taught us ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... of calculated and morbid violence, of policy and recklessness. He was educated up to a certain point: he had a good knowledge of many things, science, sociology, and his various trades: he had a very poor knowledge of many others: and he was just as cocksure with both: he had Utopian notions, just ideas, ignorance in many directions, a practical mind, many prejudices, experience, and suspicion and hatred of burgess society. That did not prevent his welcoming Christophe. His pride was tickled by being sought out by a well-known ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... union would be chimerical. I pity the man who requires an argument in support of the position that Ireland wants her parliament; and that individual who pronounces the attainment of such a consummation to be Utopian, is reminded of the Catholic question. Look at the Catholic cause. Do I not remember when it was difficult to procure a meeting of five Catholics to look for a restoration of our then withheld rights? I recollect when we agitators were almost as much execrated by our fellow-slaves, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... same laws of a commercial or industrial combine. Ethnical and moral values do not follow the laws of the mart and the stock exchange. If in our extensive Dominion even a unity of tariff, readily acceptable to the East and to the West, is Utopian, how much more so would be the unity of the school system? Education, to be effective, must take the colour of the environments to meet the needs of the community. The levelling process would be most detrimental, for uniformity in education ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... safe from this all-powerful corporation, and that is the legisiative delegation from the city. If the refuse matter were taken from that, there would be nothing left. It has been proposed that the Legislature itself should be purified; but this idea is Utopian, PUNCHINELLO fears. If Niagara were squirted through its halls, the water would be dirtied, but the halls would not be cleansed. Alas, poor city! Trampled under the heels of the aristocratic HONG and PENNY BUNN, what is there ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... that of their predecessor, John Sobieski, the principles of these seminaries might be considered sound. But soon after the death of the last-named monarch, when the latent mischief contained in the Utopian idea of the perfection of an always elective monarchy began to shake the stability of even the monarchy itself, certain of the public teachers evinced correspondent signs of this destructive species of freemasonry; and about the same period the Voltaire venom of infidelity against all the laws ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... stretched out, will ultimately end, our solar system will be gone, without even a memory left of anything that ever was dreamed or done within it. That is the inevitable issue of such a "risky" universe. When scientifically-minded men, therefore, now take a long look ahead, the Utopian visions of the mid-Victorian age are not foremost in their thought. Rather, as one of ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... pick at will one's employees and allies, one's friends and agents, to repel the dishonest and rebuke the impudent, dealing with those whom one chooses to deal with, where personal choice can fairly be exercised; but such a privilege is Utopian in business, even among men of fortune, and envied Ritchie has little more freedom than humble Jones. Besides, the pursuit of startling success, though it often ruins possibilities of contentment, rarely creates them. Frederic Soulie, having had the misfortune to gain $16,000 in one year by ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... is dangerous. People think that dreamers do no harm. They are mistaken: dreamers do a great heal of harm. Even apparently inoffensive utopian ideas really exercise a noxious influence. They tend to inspire disgust ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... the conservative party, opposed and prevented the formation of a body of reformers who, like Gizzi and Pius IX., would have labored intelligently to forward the cause of reform, never losing sight of the great principles of humanity and justice, never sacrificing to Utopian theories inalienable rights, above all the rights of property—the very groundwork of the social fabric. Without the aid and countenance of a body of reformers, the able ministry that now surrounded the Pope found it difficult to proceed. They could not determine for ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... of moderation and forbearance for which our countrymen were once distinguished, continue to be cherished. If this continues to be the ruling passion of our souls, the weaker feeling of the mistaken enthusiast will be corrected, the Utopian dreams of the scheming politician dissipated, and the complicated intrigues of the demagogue rendered harmless. The spirit of liberty is the sovereign balm for every injury which our institutions ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... deplore the present tendency while some regard it as the final accomplishment of the long predicted breakup of China. But remedies for China's ills based upon ignoring history, psychology and actual conditions are so utopian that it is not worth while to argue whether or not they are theoretically desirable. The remedy of China's troubles by a strong, centralized government is on a par with curing disease by the expulsion of a devil. The evil of sectionalism is real, but ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... administration, and not a few similar curious facts might be cited. The confident anticipation of many Russians that their country will one day enjoy political life without political parties is, if not a contradiction in terms, at least a Utopian absurdity; but we may be sure that when political parties do appear they will be very different from those which exist in Germany, France, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... are not wrong," murmured Crisostomo in a low voice, "when you say that justice should seek to do good by rewarding virtue and educating the criminals. Only, it's impossible, Utopian! And where could be secured so much money, ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... order of things, had viewed with satisfaction the substitution of the Consular for the Directorial government, and entertained no personal dislike to the First Consul. Among the Chateaux, more than anywhere else, it had always been the custom to cherish Utopian ideas respecting the management of public affairs, and to criticise the acts of the Government. It is well known that at this time there was not in all France a single old mansion surmounted by its two weathercocks which had not a systems of policy peculiar to itself, and in which the question ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... rose up in fury Against their boastful friend, For prehistoric patience Cometh quickly to an end. Said one, "This is chimerical! Utopian! Absurd!" Said another, "What a stupid life! Too dull, upon my word!" Cried all, "Before such things can come, You idiotic child, You must alter Human Nature!" And they all sat back and smiled. Thought they, "An answer to that last It will be hard ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... definite meaning. It is used by all sorts of people to cover all sorts of vague and indefinite schemes to improve or revolutionize society. [Footnote: It has been said that the word "socialism," as currently used, has four distinct meanings: (1) Utopian socialism, i.e., schemes like More's Utopia; (2) the socialist party and its program, i.e., "the socialization of the instruments of production;" (3) The Marxist doctrine of social evolution, i.e., "the materialistic conception of history;" (4) a vague body of beliefs of the working ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... work in him still, there was something beyond his habitual compassionate fervor—something due to the fascination of her womanhood. He was very open to that sort of charm, and mingled it with the consciously Utopian pictures of his own future; yet any one able to trace the folds of his character might have conceived that he would be more likely than many less passionate men to love a woman without telling her of it. Sprinkle food before a delicate-eared bird: there is nothing ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... California would strike off a series of medals symbolic of some of the Utopian conditions which prevail there. I would like to suggest a model for one. I was walking once in the vicinity of the Ferry with a woman who knows the labor movement of California as well as an outsider ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
... his son replied carelessly. "I don't remember Uncle Phil much. Jeff's a queer fellow, full of Utopian notions about brotherhood and that sort of thing. But he's practical in a way. He gets things done in ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... no laggard steps; they were accustomed to this sort of untimely treatment from the New England climate, and they had no intention of being betrayed thereby into pondering over southern lands or sunny vineclad hillsides where summer always lingered. Boston might not be climatically Utopian, but there was at all events something virile, something manly and admirable about a sort of weather for which no other good word ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... am only going to ask you to read a little five cent pamphlet, by Gaylord Wilshire, called The Significance of the Trust, and a little book by Frederick Engels, called Socialism, Utopian and Scientific. Later on, when I have had a chance to explain Socialism in a general way, and must then leave you to your own resources, I intend to make for you a list of books, which I hope you will be ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... pedant nor yet a revolutionary: his theories were Utopian and he had an extraordinary ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... had found it difficult to carry out the scheme described in the last chapter. They indeed who know anything of such matters will be inclined to call it Utopian, and to say that one so wise in worldly matters as our schoolmaster should not have attempted to combine so many things. He wanted a gentleman, a schoolmaster, a curate, a matron, and a lady,—we ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... untrammeled by outside influence, is considerable, largely a genial satire on critics and philosophers; his stay in the moon is a kind of Utopian fancy. ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... "Utopian but foolish," Sir Timothy declared. "All the same, Mr. Ledsam, let me tell you this. You have a curious attraction for me. When I was asked why I had invited you to The Sanctuary last night, I frankly could not ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... single-stratum condition of society cannot be reached without a profound inward change; politics are still stirred and shaken by conflicts, and society by the strife of classes. A very different picture from the promised Utopian Paradise of a common feeding-ground for ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... the house which cannot be done by machinery is that of handling beautiful things and has a meaning in the life of the individual and the family, service will not be required in the vast majority of homes: then we may approach to the Utopian ideal of the nobility ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... Europe is thus unfairly exalted. Is this not so? If we had the number of genera strictly, or nearly strictly European, one could compare better with Asia and Southern America, etc. But I dare say this is a Utopian wish, owing to difficulty of saying what genera to call mundane; nor have I my ideas at all clear on the subject, and I have expressed them even less clearly than I ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... It was a Utopian idea, very likely, as human nature is made; full of that native optimism which was always overflowing and drowning his gloomier logic. Clearly he forgot his despair of humanity when he formulated that document, and there is a world of unselfish ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... more progressive in appearance, than encouragement of labor and of industry? There is no democrat who does not consider it one of the finest attributes of power, no utopian theorist who does not place it in the front rank as a means of organizing happiness. Now, government is by nature so incapable of directing labor that every reward bestowed by it is a veritable larceny from the common treasury. ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... kutime. Usufruct gxuado. Usurer procentegisto. Usurp uzurpi. Usurpation uzurpo—ado. Usurper uzurpulo. Usury procentego. Utensil uzajxo, ilo, ujo. Utilise utiligi. Utility utilo—eco. Utmost ekstrema. Utopia utopio. Utopian utopia. Utter ekparoli. Utterance ekparolo. Utterly tute. Uttermost ekstrema, ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... decorating the same street, and the praying-machines of the Lamas grinding out perpetual bliss without let or hinderance from those who believe in another way of reaching the ear of the Unknowable. This Utopian scene of universal toleration has not failed to attract the representatives of our own faith. The Moravians have long had an establishment on the south-eastern mountains, and we read of the conversion of the descendants of the last rajah of Kishtwar by an American ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... proposed is not new. It is not a Utopian and visionary theory, unsupported by experience. It has been successfully tried in the Island of Barbadoes, by the late Joshua Steele; and the result exceeded his most sanguine expectations. "The first principles, of his plan," says ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... are seldom read, and may be passed over lightly. We mention only, as indicative of his wide range, his History of Henry VII, his Utopian romance The New Atlantis, his Advancement of Learning and his Novum Organum. The last two works, one in English, the other in Latin, were parts of the Instauratio Magna, or The Great Institution of True Philosophy, a colossal work ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... Personally, I should like, while the child is very young, I mean in main, not in years, to exclude the element of dramatic excitement, but though this may be possible for the individual child, it is quite Utopian to hope that we can keep the average child free from what is in the atmosphere. Children crave for excitement, and unless we give it to them in legitimate form, they will take it in any riotous form it presents itself, and if ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... in the nineteenth century, Robert Owen had preached a Socialist crusade with strenuous persuasion—but, ignoring politics, he outlived the temporary success of his cause. The utopian Socialism of Owen flourished and died, as Chartism, under ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... as to the originals of the Pickwickian characters—some Utopian enough, but I do not think that any have been offered in the case of Mr. Pott, the redoubtable editor of the Eatanswill Gazette. I am inclined to believe that the notorious and brilliant Dr. Maginn was intended. He ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... Peace lured the Powers to her House at the Hague With promises specious and welcome though vague Of a time when the terrors of war should lie hid And the leopard fall headlong in love with the kid, She drew up a set of Utopian rules For the guidance of all the best ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... to mention among other things in this play, that Shakespeare has anticipated nearly all the arguments on the Utopian schemes ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... the Academy of Music was but a fleeting incident, memorable only for the protestations with which it was begun and for its brevity. For the famous Norwegian violinist it was a Utopian dream with a speedy and rude awakening. After he had retired the Lagrange troupe came from downtown and completed the season with the help of the stockholders, and Maretzek, the erstwhile impresario and lessee, became the conductor. For four years, 1855, 1856, ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... to commit felony. It loves to protect and not to oppress those who are weaker than itself. It has at heart the work of propagating throughout the world certain principles of social life which certainly are utopian, but are yet beautiful to have before the eyes and in the heart, in order to live not only for the present, but also ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... impulse our society could not but advance with enormous strides in all that pertains to true civilization, since thinkers would then be the rule instead of the exception, and talent almost universal, which is now, like angels' visits, comparatively 'few and far between.' This is no Utopian vision: it is a reality within the scope of human exertion and the capacity of our people of to-day, if men would but exert themselves to such an end, and properly apply the energy and labor which is now too often excited upon unworthy and trifling objects. The realm of knowledge is so ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... all war between the civilized nations of the world can, as I see it, only be brought about in two ways, both Utopian and likely impracticable, for many years to come. War could be made only to cease entirely if all the nations of Europe could be organized into a United States of Europe and if free trade were established throughout the world. In the first instance, the extreme nationalism, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... exalted ambition. He had no dearer aim than to be able to make 'leisurely pilgrimages through Caledonia, to sit on the fields of her battles, to wander on the romantic banks of her rivers, and to muse by the stately towers or venerable ruins, once the honoured abodes of her heroes.' But that was a Utopian dream; he had dallied long enough with life, and now it was time he should be in earnest. 'I have a fond, an aged mother to care for; and some other bosom ties perhaps ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... former wrecks, we have yet persisted in following the old wretched way. What a humiliating confession! what a comment on the alleged practical discernment of this practical people! what a text for radicals, socialists, and all sorts of Utopian dreamers! If the mischiefs of these monetary aberrations were confined to a mere loss of wealth,[B] which is proverbial for its winged uncertainty, we might regard them as a seeming admonition of Providence against putting too much trust ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... Fanny's pearl," he replied placidly; "I was afraid they had been a legacy from your mother. I much prefer them to have been William's—it will give them such a Utopian sparkle." ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Bernardin, through his imagination, was an Utopian visionary, an idyllic dreamer; through his temper, an angry disputant with society. His life was a fantastic series of adventures. Having read as a boy the story of Crusoe, and listened to the heroic record of the travels and sufferings of ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... must be abstract and hypothetical. Subject to this criticism and caution, I will try to characterize in abstract strokes the opposite imaginative forces, and point out what to my own very fallible mind seems the best Utopian hypothesis, the most promising ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... many other schemes of similar kind have made their appearance, the enumeration and discussion of which is outside our present purpose. So much is certain that all these schemes were Utopian. Nevertheless, a League of Nations having once come into existence, International Law grew more and more, and when in 1625 Hugo Grotius published his immortal work on 'The Law of War and Peace,' the system of International Law offered ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim
... another to name certain curious theories which have been put forth to account for the origin of Masonry in general, and of the organization of the Grand Lodge in particular. They are as follows: First, that it was all due to an imaginary Temple of Solomon described by Lord Bacon in a Utopian romance called the New Atlantis; and this despite the fact that the temple in the Bacon story was not a house at all, but the name of an ideal state. Second, that the object of Freemasonry and the origin of the Third Degree was the restoration of Charles II to the throne ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... mark you, this does not commit me to compliance with all your Utopian schemes. If you were raving mad, I should sympathize, but nevertheless I should see that the strait-jacket was brought into requisition. When your generosity train dashes recklessly beyond regulation ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... unanimous in their hatred as the nations are, Germany would stand as one man, sword in hand; and this sublime and imposing spectacle would cause Napoleon to retreat with his host beyond the Rhine, the German Rhine, whose banks would be guarded by the united people of Germany." "You speak like a Utopian, my dear count," said the emperor, with a shrug. "If the united people of Germany are alone able to defeat and expel Bonaparte, he will never he defeated and expelled, for Germany will never be ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... parades and great cleansings of implements and of streets, with regulations of the strictest, anticipating all the different occasions for punishment, a thousand fatigues, each with as many harsh knocks, the litany of optimist phrases, abstruse and utopian, in the orders of the day, and a captain who chiefly concerned himself with the two hundred cartridges and the reserve rations. The regiment had no losses, or almost none; a few wounds during reliefs, and sometimes one or two deaths which were announced like accidents. We ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... national airs on a staging erected on the green in front of the post-office. Nightly meetings took place at Grimsey's Hall, and the audiences were good-humored and orderly. Torrini advanced some Utopian theories touching a universal distribution of wealth, which were listened to attentively, but failed to ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich |
