"Utopian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... phrase of "fare-well" is one of epicurean invitation, not of dismissal; while such are the combined luxuriousness and economy that, says one authority, "the modern London club is a realization of a Utopian coenobium,—a sort of lay convent, rivalling the celebrated Abbey of Theleme, with the agreeable motto of Fais ce que voudras, instead ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... pledged word; neither interest nor even necessity moves it 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
... schemes for the political regeneration of the whole world, and a trunkful of French fashions, neither of which, as I reckoned, were likely to take much with us. He made me laugh inwardly twenty times a-day by his Utopian theories and fancies. Truth to tell, in matters of politics or of sound common sense, these Frenchmen are for the most part mere children, and reach their dying day without ever becoming men. Take them by their weak points, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... by Kant and boldly set up the grand conception of an universal peace as the goal for which all that is best among men is inevitably making. Still, I trust that in our enthusiasm for ethic and for the ideal of its master, we have not lost our heads and betaken ourselves to Utopian impracticabilities. No ethical man could think of fixing a limit within which a national disarmament must take place, and the swords of the world beaten into ploughshares, any more than he could name the date ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... month or two? In return, you shall favour me with the loan of one of those Norfolk-bred grunters that you laud so highly; I promise not to keep it above a day. What a funny name Bungay is! I never dreamt of a correspondent thence. I used to think of it as some Utopian town or borough in Gotham land. I now believe in its existence, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... with a perfected science and working to a logical conclusion the industrial system of to-day. Its triumph had not been simply a triumph over Nature, but a triumph over Nature and the fellow-man. This, I must warn you, was my theory at the time. I had no convenient cicerone in the pattern of the Utopian books. My explanation may be absolutely wrong. I still think it is the most plausible one. But even on this supposition the balanced civilization that was at last attained must have long since passed its zenith, and was now far fallen into decay. The too-perfect security ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... itself from lukewarmncss. For a lukewarm Church he would not condescend to legislate, nor did he regard it as at all inevitable that the Church should become lukewarm. He laid it as a duty upon the Church to reclaim the lost, because he did not think it utopian to suppose that the Church might be not in its best members only, but through its whole body, inspired by that ardour of humanity that can charm away the bad passions of the wildest heart, and open to the savage and the outlaw lurking in moral wildernesses an entrancing view of the ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... 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
... 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 ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... Utopian," continued young Norman. "Law and custom permit—not to say sanctify—our sort of business. So—I do my best. But I shall not conceal from you that it's distasteful to me. I wish to get out of ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... virtue into caucuses; had Henry George for its spokesman of economic change, moving across the continent from California to New York with an argument and a program for new battles against privilege; had Edward Bellamy for its Utopian romancer, setting forth a delectable picture of what human society might become were the old iniquities reasonably wiped away and co-operative order brought out of competitive chaos; had William Dean Howells for its annalist of manners, turning ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... miracles had 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
... 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 ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... is a 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 ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... 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
... 1848 appeared to George Sand a realization of her Utopian dreams, and plunged her thoughts into a painful disorder. She soon, however, became dissatisfied with the result of her republican theories, and she turned to two new sources of success, the country story and the stage. Her delicious romance of "Francois le Champi" ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... Gwendolen's necklace for her, and which was at 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
... him at home when it is,' said Caffyn; 'these things generally find the culprits "out" in more senses than one, to use an old Joe Miller. He would look extremely well in the Old Bailey dock. But this is Utopian, Uncle.' ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... speech, and expressly stated then, and withdraw nothing, that after the entry of England, then of Italy, Roumania, and finally of America into the war, I considered a victory peace on our side to be a Utopian idea. But up to the last moment of my official activities, I cherished the hope of a peace of understanding from month to month, from week to week, even from day to day, and believed that the possibility would arise ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... France, Russia, and ourselves, jointly or separately. I have desired this and worked for it, as far as I could, through the last Balkan crisis, and, Germany having a corresponding object, our relations sensibly improved. The idea has hitherto been too Utopian to form the subject of definite proposals, but if this present crisis, so much more acute than any that Europe has gone through for generations, be safely passed, I am hopeful that the relief and reaction which will follow may make possible ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... a terrible man. His head was stuffed full of all sorts of Utopian ideas, of impracticable theories, and notions absolutely without method. His studies had been too desultory to amount to anything. He had mastered a few Latin phrases, and covered his real ignorance by a smattering of the science of medicine as practised among the Indians and the Chinese. ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... wrote against Luther, and opposed Henry's Church innovations, we are struck with his Utopian claim for great freedom of inquiry on all subjects, even religion; and the bold assertion that no man should be punished for his religion, because "a man cannot make himself believe anything he pleases," as Henry's six bloody articles so fearfully asserted he must. The Utopia was written in Latin, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... Churchmen. If his Lordship's reading of the old Nelsonian motto is "England expects that every clergyman (Dissenter or Churchman) should do somebody else's duty," then England will have to wait a considerable time for the Utopian realisation ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... more inclined to Saxon individualism and revolutionary co-operation than to his socialism, in which he saw salvation, and which they regarded as pedantic and hybrid. Bismarck's system had no justification and derogated all laws of ethics and justice. With his Utopian schemes the professors in their lecture-rooms endeavored to excite the Socialists, who, if they had listened and demanded their realization would have been exposed to be shot down in the streets by the soldiery, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... diversion to others. Thus his virtue spontaneously opens the springs of wit and humour in him amid the terrors of the storm and shipwreck; and he is merry while others are suffering, and merry even from sympathy with them; and afterwards his thoughtful spirit plays with Utopian fancies; and if "the latter end of his Commonwealth forgets the beginning," it is all the same to him, his purpose being only to beguile the anguish of supposed bereavement. It has been well said that "Gonzalo is so occupied ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... man, from that moment, may be considered as tending to the clear profit of his species. No sane mind in a sane body resolves upon a real crime. It is a man of violent passions, bloodshot eyes, and swollen veins, that alone can grasp the knife of murder. The system of a simple diet promises no Utopian advantages. It is no mere reform of legislation, whilst the furious passions and evil propensities of the human heart, in which it had its origin, are still unassuaged. It strikes at the root of all evil, and is an experiment which may be tried with success, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... in the first freshness of their Utopian enthusiasm, and their church establishment was the very heart of their enterprise. It became therefore a matter of primary importance to educate preachers. For ages preparation for the ministry had consisted mainly in acquiring a knowledge of Latin, the ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... modern Utopian friends look at each other rather doubtfully, for their ultimate hope is the dissolution of all special ties. But again I seem to hear, like a kind of echo, an answer from beyond the world. "You will have real obligations, and therefore real adventures when you get to my ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... of the proletary's case; and he knew that his opinion was shared with complete unanimity by all who had known Griswold in Printing House Square. To a man they agreed in calling him Utopian, altruistic, visionary. What milder epithets should be applied to one who, with sufficient literary talent—not to say genius—to make himself a working name in the ordinary way, must needs run amuck among the theories and write ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... utopia against another, and everything one says 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 line ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... exemption 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 ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... 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 different ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... the spirit rests between the time when its labors in the second heaven have been completed and the time when it again experiences the desire for rebirth. But from this realm inventors bring down their original ideas; there the philanthropist obtains the clearest vision of how to realize his utopian dreams and the spiritual aspirations of the saintly minded are given ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... and saw how his whole scheme hung together, harmonizing the work and leisure of the operatives, instead of treating them as half machine, half man, and neglecting the man for the machine. Nor was she content with Utopian generalities: she wanted to know the how and why of each case, to hear what conclusions he drew from his results, to what solutions ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... Revolution the fate of the people was in the hands of philosophers of none too mean an order. It cannot be denied, however, that in our time the habits of the thinker have undergone a great change. He has ceased to be speculative or Utopian; he is no longer exclusively intuitive. In politics as in literature, in philosophy as in all the sciences, he displays less imagination, but his powers as an observer have grown. He inclines rather to concentrate his attention ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Utopian, was opposed by many well meaning men who feared that its effect would be to give a shock to the trade and domestic industry of the province; and who thought that, as the depreciation had been gradual, justice required that the appreciation ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... personality than that of Collot d'Herbois, one of the most hideous products of that utopian Revolution, whose grandly conceived theories of a universal levelling of mankind only succeeded in dragging into prominence a number of half-brutish creatures who, revelling in their own abasement, would otherwise have remained content in ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... with the attention of various kinds paid her by every one, at High Down, and when her wonted dread of Marian's disapproving eye would return, hardening herself against it with the thought that Marian could not make every one as Utopian as her own Edmund and Fern Torr, that she was proud and determined in prejudice, and after all what right had she to interfere? Of Walter, Caroline did not dare ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... this 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 ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... cessation of 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 ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... Slavery, protection, and monopoly find defenders, not only in those who profit by them, but in those who suffer by them. If you suggest a doubt as to the morality of these institutions, it is said directly—"You are a dangerous innovator, a utopian, a theorist, a despiser of the laws; you would shake the basis upon ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... Utopian ideas by certain hereditary influences; his grandmother's nervous disorders became in him so much chronic enthusiasm, striving after everything that was grandiose and impossible. His lonely childhood, ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... 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
... other volatile products. But some very solid matters also have been precipitated, some crystals of poetry translucent, symmetrical, enduring. The immediate practical outcome was disappointing, and the external history of the agitation is a record of failed experiments, spurious sciences, Utopian philosophies, and sects founded only to dwindle away or be reabsorbed into some form of {439} orthodoxy. In the eyes of the conservative, or the worldly-minded, or of the plain people who could not understand the enigmatic utterances of the reformers, the ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Joseph Moll, all workingmen, were among those who made an imposing impression upon Engels. Even more notable was Weitling, a tailor, who traveled all over Germany preaching a mixture of Christian communism and French utopian socialism. He was a simple-hearted missionary, delivering his evangel. "The World As It Is and As It Might Be" was the moving title of one of his books that attracted to him not only many followers among the workers, but also ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... 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 ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... of 'Looking Backward,' that distinguish it from the generality of Utopian literature, lie in its definite scheme of industrial organization on a national basis, and the equal share allotted to all persons in the products of industry, or the public income, on the same ground that men share equally in the free ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... "if you like to undertake a wild goose chase of this sort it is your business, and not mine; but I consider the idea is the most Utopian that I ever heard of. As to where the tent stood, is it likely that a man would remember to within a hundred yards where a tent stood fourteen years ago? Why, you might dig up acres and acres of ground and not be sure then that you had hit upon the ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... words, and would not be able to make so trivial a start toward the "crushing" they are forever talking about as to fire into another man's open eyes or jam a bayonet into a single man's stomach. Among the Utopian steps which one would most gladly support would be an attempt to send the editors and politicians of all belligerent countries to serve a week ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... all. The desire to resuscitate the past is the most unfruitful and dangerous of Utopian dreams, and the art of good living does not consist in retiring from life. But we are trying to throw light upon one of the errors that drag most heavily upon human progress, in order to find a remedy for it—namely, the belief that man becomes happier ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... warm and loving. Notwithstanding the stern realities that marked her path, there was a vein of romance in her nature which, unfortunately, attained more than healthful development, and while it often bore her into the Utopian realms of fancy, it was still impotent to modify, in any degree, the social difficulties with which she was forced to contend. Ah, there is a touching beauty in the radiant up-look of a girl just crossing the limits of youth, and commencing her journey through the checkered sphere of womanhood! ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... applied to such bodies as these? The one may, indeed, by physical force, altogether destroy the other. But this is not the question. A third party, a general of their own, for example, may, by physical force, subjugate them both. Nor is there any form of government, Mr Mill's utopian democracy not excepted, secure from such an occurrence. We are speaking of the powers with which the constitution invests the two branches of the legislature; and we ask Mr Mill how, on his own principles, he can maintain ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... make-believe land that from then till now every one who read Utopia sees the beauty of More's idea. But every one, too, thinks that this land where everything is right is an impossible land. Thus More gave a new word to our language, and when we think some idea beautiful but impossible we call it "Utopian." ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... sympathy, never; but 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 schedules of safety, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... artist and philosopher best secured under a government that is stable and lasting; better still under a government that confines itself rigidly to its own sphere and leaves manners and morals to the taste of the individual; best of all under that Utopian absence of any government, whether of the many or of the few, whereof all ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... you "The Utopian," because I thought some of the little essays would fall in with all that filled your mind, and perhaps help you to a spirit of hopefulness and confidence which will come to you and abide with you, I am sure. You will soon receive another book written by several ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... 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 ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... Sunday amusement," interrupted Lady Angleby sarcastically. "You are too Utopian, Sir Edward. Your colony will be a dismal failure and disappointment if you conduct it ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... abundance. This would be the true country for emigration from our impoverished islands, and will, of course, be crowded when conveyances shall become more manageable. A railroad across Canada must still be a rather Utopian conception, but it might be well worth the expense of making by government, even though it produced nothing for the next half-dozen years, for the multitudes whom it would carry through the heart of this superb country in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... go into someone else's house and press him hard, though unknown to the hard-pressed one. Not until he was satisfied, did Leverrier reveal his identity. I suppose Dr. Lescarbault expressed astonishment. I think there's something utopian about this: it's so unlike the stand-offishness of New ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... 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 ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... risk of being called "Utopian" I would submit that the world is not so foolish as to allow that sort of thing to go on indefinitely. It is, indeed, quite a recent human development. All this great business of armament upon commercial lines is the growth of half a century. But it has grown with the vigor ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... precedence of noble birth, when wealth would be more equally distributed, and the days when one man perished of hunger while another reveled in luxury should cease to be. His dreams were neither exactly Liberal nor Radical; they were simply Utopian. Even then, when he was most zealous, had any one proposed to him that he should inaugurate the new state of things, and be the first to divide his fortune, the futility of his theories would have struck him more plainly. Mingling in good society, the influence of clever ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... 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 ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... will brand these men with shame for all time. I'll fix 'em! I'll go back to Washington, and if the government has any backbone, if it's still American, they'll go to work or fight! (Pointedly.) This is what comes of your Utopian dreams, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... did— If yet upon the dial of your life Her sun mark out the short sweet hours of joy, And all too swiftly on the shadows glide— If yet you prize the loving heart you hold, From this most mad delusion waken up, That blindly blights her whom it seeks to bless; Cease your Utopian and unsafe essays, And rather turn your studious care to call The fading roses back into her cheeks, And shed health's gladness on her feeble frame; Reflect whilst yet you may, lest late Remorse Stalk, ghost-like, through the chambers of your soul, Haunting ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... interval of his work, brought to every task he attempted an educated mind and a certain dogged obstinacy, which caused him to surmount all difficulties. He prospered amazingly. But money, instead of numbing his activities, only sharpened them, and he soon began to formulate his ideal—the Utopian dream of an entirely British Africa from ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... stupidity, he flies full tilt at the pedantic education of 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 ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... 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 all evil in the world and bring about a return of ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... O hours Utopian which we may anticipate! Thick London fog how easy 'tis to dissipate, And make the most pea-soupy day as clear As ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... direction of international copyright. It was to be a petition signed by the leading American authors, asking the United States to declare itself to be the first to stand for right and justice by enacting laws against the piracy of foreign books. It was a rather utopian scheme, as most schemes for moral progress are, in their beginning. It would not be likely ever to reach Congress, but it would appeal to Howells and his Cambridge friends. Clemens wrote, outlining ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... contemplation to insert a decree de coercendo imperio in the Constitution of America.... I knew then, as well as I do now, that all North America must at length be annexed to us. Happy indeed, if the lust of dominion stop here. It would therefore have been perfectly utopian to oppose a paper restriction to the violence of popular sentiment, in a popular Government." (3 Mor. Writ., 185.) A few days later, he makes another reply to his correspondent. "I perceive," he says, "I mistook the ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... shame that the change should be 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 ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... so very much, really," he smiled. "I had to learn a little, if I wanted to work the land, so I borrowed an elementary text from Cutler." Had he been a trifle idealistic in quitting his snug, if uninspiring, job on the faculty to join in this Utopian venture? So many of the other men at the university had enrolled, it had seemed a splendid ...
— The Venus Trap • Evelyn E. Smith
... 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 ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... by Mr. Schenck against the plan proposed by the committee was, that it failed to offer inducements for a gradual enfranchisement of the negro. He said: "Now, sir, I am not one of those who entertain Utopian ideas in relation, not merely to the progress, but to the immediate change of sentiment, opinions, and practice among the people of those States that have so lately been slave States, and so recently in rebellion. ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... unpoetical. He was not renouncing but carrying on the tradition, 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
... existence is so frequently deplored, may be providentially intended as a barrier to that great movement, if it come. Certainly, while China remains as she is, nothing more disastrous for the future of the world can be imagined than that general disarmament of Europe which is the Utopian dream of ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... and heart-felt wishes of a whole people, informed and directed by the greatest power of understanding in the community, unbiassed by any sinister motive."[21] Hazlitt was not a republican, and he disapproved of the Utopian rhapsodies of Shelley, woven as they seemed of mere moonshine, without applicability to the evils that demanded immediate reform. But he did insist that there was a power in the people to change its ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... thinkers enumerated here but the men derisively described by Karl Marx as the "Utopian Socialists" of the nineteenth century? Utopian Socialism is thus simply the open and visible expression of Grand Orient Freemasonry. Moreover, these Utopian Socialists were almost without exception Freemasons or ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... man of practice and of facts, uncontrolled by principles and wise in ancestral experience, replied: "We must not listen to this dreamer, this theorist, this innovator, this Utopian, this political economist, this friend to N*w Y*rk. We would be entirely ruined if the embarrassments of the road were not carefully weighed and exactly equalized between N*w Y*rk and M*ntr**l. There would be more difficulty in ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... words," said Harman, "set the wolves to form protective enactments for the sheep. I fear, my good sir, that such a scheme is much too Utopian for any practically beneficial purpose. In the meantime, if it can be done, let it. No legislation, however, will be able, in my mind, to bind so powerful a class as the landlords of Ireland are, unless a strong and sturdy public opinion is ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... complete the circle of its prosperity; so that it is now difficult to perceive the grand importance, commercial and political, which this despised peninsula, which is called Lower California, will yet attain when the transition of time and the sequel of events come to realize these Utopian offspring of a patriotic sentiment; but we will occupy ourselves with the statistical ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... 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 ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... 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 abbey like a frightened crab creeping beneath the ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... see, in fact, without difficulty, that this exaggerated taste for poverty could not be very lasting. It was one of those Utopian elements which always mingle in the origin of great movements, and which time rectifies. Thrown into the centre of human society, Christianity very easily consented to receive rich men into her bosom, just as Buddhism, exclusively monkish in its origin, soon began, ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... into real, living realities, and to enforce us to act honestly, equitably and righteously ourselves. Hence it is that even to-day those who advocate any such doctrines, any such social change, are either dismissed as impossible, utopian dreamers, or denounced as revolutionary demagogues, as "prophets of iniquity," "preachers of immorality," "advocates of villany," as enemies of society, and so on; and if this fails of its desired effects, other ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... terrifying gaiety; they exulted in their toughness, they called themselves "grizzlies" and "mountain cats" and what not; they sang wild songs about their irritability, their motto was "Treat 'em rough!" It was a scary atmosphere for a dreamer and utopian; Jimmie Higgins shrank into himself, afraid even to reach about for some fellow-Socialist with whom he might exchange opinions about the events of the ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... and it is, therefore, a matter of importance that they should think aright. It is of importance, that they should be guarded against fallacious Utopian promises. Henceforth, there is no security for the stability of the world but in the contentment of minds. There is no rest for mankind, unless men will understand the conditions of their destiny; unless, instead ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... mean to say that we have entered the Utopian age, for the present international situation is a peculiar one, since we are at the same time blessed with peace and cursed with militarism. This is not an age of war, yet we are burdened by great and ever-increasing armaments; the mad race for naval supremacy continues, while the ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... that. I think I am not in a position to be dreaming of marriage. Marriage! I cannot bear the word; it sounds so silly and utopian. I have settled it decidedly that marriage and love are superfluities, intended only for the rich, who live at ease, and have no need to take thought for the morrow; or desperations—the last and reckless joy of the deeply wretched, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... of their wings as they soar over the blooming heather and the "bright consummate flowers." And these human bees had their passions, too! their massacres; their tragedies; their "Rival Queens"; their combats; their sentinels; their dreams of that Utopian form of government realized in the communistic ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... how the result proposed in the last paragraph is to be attained, and to add that the difficulty of carrying so laudable a proposal into effect lies wholly in the details, and therefore that until some working plan is suggested, the consideration of improving the human race is Utopian. But this requirement is not altogether fair, because if a persuasion of the importance of any end takes possession of men's minds, sooner or later means are found by which that end is carried into effect. Some ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... would not hear of concessions, since the Lutherans would then be charged with inconsistency and the Emperor would only increase his demands. (C. R. 3, 292.) Evidently then, even at that time Melanchthon was not entirely cured of his utopian dream. ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... for the Rocky mountain barrier to man's presumption, scouted at a possible wagon road, not to say railway, across the continent, lamented the unprofitable theft of California, and cursed the Alaska purchase as money worse than thrown away. In view of what has been and is, can anyone call it a Utopian dream to picture the Pacific bordered by an advanced civilization with cities more brilliant than any of the ancient East, more opulent than any of the ...
— Some Cities and San Francisco and Resurgam • Hubert Howe Bancroft
... 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 ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... regulations, Ivan soon would abandon plausible theories of individual freedom as Utopian chimeras, not adapted to exigencies of practical civic needs. Siberian penal exile would become essential part of police supervision, with possible excesses, as in all provisions ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... discarded the healthful but unflattering realism of Jeremias Gotthelf (1797-1854), and chosen, with a half-didactic purpose, to contrast the peasant's honest rudeness and straightforwardness with the refined sophistication and hypocrisy of the higher classes. George Sand, with her beautiful Utopian genius, poured forth a torrent of rural narrative of a crystalline limpidity ("Mouny Robin," "La Mare au Diable," "La Petite Fadette," etc., 1841-1849), which is as far removed from the turbid stream of Balzac ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... members were University professors, lawyers, newspaper men, and a few business men. "But," says one of them, "in spirit they were poets, philosophers and prophets. They were aware that their solutions of problems vexing to the brains of other men, would be Utopian, but as they were not willing to be classed with ordinary Utopians they named their club Amaurot, after the capital of Utopia, thus signifying that while they dwelt in Utopia, they were not subject to it but ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... to say to my brother journalist, Horace Greeley, and that is that the Utopian ideas which have for so many years formed the principal topic of his radical sheet are ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... Plato, a 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 Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... militia law, and an unpaid cash account bulky enough to take Cuba! Country publishers suffer in this way intensely. About one half of the "subscribers" to the Clarion of Freedom, or the Universal Democrat, or the Whig Shot Tower, seem to labor under the Utopian notion that printers were made to mourn over unpaid subscription lists; or that they "got up" papers for their own peculiar amusement, and carried them or sent them to the doors of the public for mere pastime! Every publisher, of about every paper we ever examined, about this time of year, has ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... this country as in France, may be regarded as an offset of the French Revolution. It is true that, in all times, the striking disparity between the conditions of men has given rise to Utopian speculations—to schemes of some new order of society, where the comforts of life should be enjoyed in a more equalized manner than seems possible under the old system of individual efforts and individual rights; and it may be added that, as this disparity of wealth becomes more glaring in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... 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 may say all in one. Curates and ushers are generally unmarried. ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... of a country they make something like a consuming disease. Out of patriotism—which can be respected as long as it remains in the domain of sentiment and art on exactly the same footing as the sense of family and local pride, all equally sacred—out of patriotism they make a Utopian and impracticable idea, unbalancing the world, a sort of cancer which drains all the living force, spreads everywhere and crushes life, a contagious cancer which culminates either in the crash of war or in the exhaustion ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... the realities of life. Till the time of her coming to Paris, for very dearth of outward impressions, she had lived chiefly in dreams, the life of all others most favorable to the prolongation of ignorance and credulity. The liberty and activity she had enjoyed for the last two years were fatal to Utopian theories. ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... surprised and disappointed, therefore, at finding that on this subject I was often indulging in an Utopian dream, rather than a well-founded opinion. I have been concerned at finding that these fine estates were too often involved, and mortgaged, or placed in the hands of creditors, and the owners exiled from their paternal lands. There is an extravagance, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... the socialists do not have to create socialism, they only have to cooeperate in the historical process which will inevitably make socialism grow. In thus recognizing the supremity of the law of history, socialism, utopian up to this time, becomes scientific and, under its new form, it is no longer subject to the influence of personal opinions, no matter how full of genius they may be. But this "scientific socialism," which, on account of the backwardness of political ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... 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 action is a circumscribed ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... came; and since the Gospel came it is more than a dream. If you wrench away the idea from its foundation, as people do who talk about fraternity, and seek to bring it to pass without Christ, it is a mere piece of Utopian sentiment—a fine dream. But in Christianity it worked. It works imperfectly enough, God knows. Still there is some reality in it, and some power. The Gospel first of all produced the thing and the practice, and then the theory came afterwards. The Church ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... of this last stroke of good fortune for Castile came the news that the old King of Aragon, Fernando's father, was dead, and now, in truth, came that unity of Spain which had been the dream of more than one Utopian mind in days gone by. With fortune smiling upon them in so many ways, the sovereigns of this united realm were still confronted by many serious problems of government, especially in Castile, which called for speedy settlement. The long years of weak and vicious ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... to the Brown staff of his decision not to cross the frontier, there was a restless movement in the chairs around the table, and the grimaces on most of the faces were those with which a practical man regards a Utopian proposal. The vice-chief was drumming on the table edge and looking steadily at a point in front of his fingers. If Lanstron resigned he ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... An Utopian dream it appears, if we note but one side of the picture. If we consider the lightness with which so many men look upon the physical form of women; and if we realize the attitude of so many women toward men, in their conflict with life, ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... the ideals they frame are fragmentary and shallow, often mere provisional vague watchwords, like liberty, equality, and fraternity; they possess no positive visions or plans for moral life as a whole, like Plato's Republic. The Utopian or visionary moralists are often rather dazed by this wicked world; being well-intentioned but impotent, they often take comfort in fancying that the ideal they pine for is already actually embodied on earth, or is about to be embodied on earth ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... generous, and impulsive in him had sprung suddenly to the surface, and so for the moment transformed him, that he was literally a different man to what he had ever been before. He pictured to himself the lovely bright face of the young girl as his daily companion—a Utopian vision of a small home where he was to be content with her society, and she with his, and where by some magic or other everything was to be arranged for them with an elegant simplicity which he, for that moment, forgot would ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... 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 ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 1: On Popular Culture • John Morley
... scorn of doing wrong to others. This is the type of 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
... but a utopian scheme to dream of bridging such a flood as this,' observed Holt. 'No piers of man's construction could withstand the force that is in motion on the river to-night. I fear the promoters of the ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... did transport them (not) so much for the excessive multitude of men and women, which were in Utopia multiplied, for number, like grasshoppers upon the face of the land. You understand well enough, nor is it needful further to explain it to you, that the Utopian men had so rank and fruitful genitories, and that the Utopian women carried matrixes so ample, so gluttonous, so tenaciously retentive, and so architectonically cellulated, that at the end of every ninth month seven children at the least, what male what female, were brought ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... from a true desire to restore the Roman Republic. They desired to restore a thing that was in itself evil—the evils of which had induced Caesar to see that he might make himself its master. But Cicero had conceived a Republic in his own mind—not Utopian, altogether human and rational—a Republic which he believed to have been that of Scipio, of Marcellus, and Laelius: a Republic which should do nothing for him but require his assistance, in which the people should vote, and the oligarchs rule in accordance ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... after they get into the patent-office, schemers and speculators whose plans end in ruin, boon companions, brilliant talkers, sparkling orators, elegant and ornate poets who sing blithely for their own day and generation, preachers and statesmen who are ever led away by Utopian and millennial dreams; in short, men who may shine while they live, but are ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... which I repeat I have seen vast quantities burnt, and bestow it as a charity on such persons as might think it worth acceptance for sale, "over the Border;" why they should not do so, I have yet to learn.[5] However, waiving this scheme, which S.S. may be inclined to think rather Utopian, and conceding, that if Scotland needs not for fuel, her refuse chips and shavings, they would not answer in that light as a marketable commodity in the sister country, still wood and wood-ashes have become of late years, agents so valuable and important in chemistry, and other ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... 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 to try for a dead level, when ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... seems made trouble, also, in an attempt to usurp his father's place and take charge of affairs, as "next friend." One generation is about the limit of a Utopian Community. When those who have organized the community weaken and one by one pass away, and the young assume authority, the old ideas of austerity are forgotten and dissipation and disintegration enter. So do we move ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... 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 ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... here, you know. We'd never tell. Why, he won't even play a little game of poker! And he doesn't smoke! Imagine it—not even when he's by himself, and no one would know! Isn't that odd? But he can preach. He's really very interesting; only a little too Utopian in his ideas. He thinks everybody ought to be good, you know, and all that sort of thing. He really thinks it's possible, and he lives that way himself. He really does. But he is a wonderful person; only I feel sorry for his wife sometimes. She's quite a cultured ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... which arises from the conviction of his sound heart and his manly nature. Wrestling at one time with bitter poverty, at one with unhappy passion—lonely in his habits, prematurely broken in his health, his later wisdom dispelling his early dreams of Utopian liberty—still, throughout all, his bravery never fails him, his gentleness is never soured; his philanthropy changes its form, but it is never chilled. Even when he wanders into error, it is from his search for truth. That humanity which the French writers of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... certain classes of books, so that in time she might come to be an authority on historical or biographical or scientific or literary books for children, and the children might learn to go to her as their specialist on the class of books they cared most for. Perhaps this may sound Utopian. I believe there are libraries present and to come for which it is ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... The thing that is not dangerous is always respectable. And so with socialism in the United States. For several years it has been very respectable,—a sweet and beautiful Utopian dream, in the bourgeois mind, yet a dream, only a dream. During this period, which has just ended, socialism was tolerated because it was impossible and non-menacing. Much of its thunder had been stolen, and ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... overdriven, Utopian stuff! A kingdom always coming, and never come! I hold by what is. This solid, plowable earth will serve my turn. My business is what I can find ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... have to interrupt; "if you talk of the things that are clearly possible in the world to-day, they will say you are an Utopian dreamer!" ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... obstructed activities were instinctive. This is not true merely in the melodramatic instances of drug addicts and drunkards. It is true in the case of social habits which have become established in a large group. Any Utopian that dreams of revolutionizing society overnight fails to take into account the enormous control of habits over groups which have acquired them, and the powerful emotions, amounting sometimes to passion, which are aroused ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... 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 may receive. On the contrary, no care that can be used in the construction of our Government, ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... against our civilization, but rather in its favor. For it is but a recognition of the fact that no people on earth is yet fitted for a pure democracy as a basis of their institutions: it is an adapting of ourselves to that state of things for which we are most fitted, instead of grasping at some Utopian scheme of perfection, which the common sense of the nation tells us is beyond our present capacity. On the other hand, it is a frank acknowledgment of our own defects and frailties. As the '[Greek: gnothi seauton]' of the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... 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 ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... an imaginary much less a Utopian village. There are thousands of "Aramonis" where the railroads have gone, drawing all the physical conveniences and social conventions after them, where once coureurs de bois followed ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... Paramount, the First (King of Utopia) Scaphio and Phantis (Judges of the Utopian Supreme Court) Tarara (The Public Exploder) ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... of 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 ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel |
