"Ideal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... strongly marked in this connection. Catholicism with its striving for absolute uniformity, acknowledging no individual differences, but eager to shape all life and all doctrines in harmony with one definite ideal, very consistently pronounced one single, historical woman to be divine, and made her the object of universal worship. This dogma had to be rigid, immutable, and almost meaningless. Again, the historic and pagan principle of Catholicism was ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... facts. The truth is that they dodge the facts, even when they are favourable, and lay all stress upon the surrounding and concealing superficialities. The average stupid and sentimental man, if he has a noticeably sensible wife, is almost apologetic about it. The ideal of his sex is always a pretty wife, and the vanity and coquetry that so often go with prettiness are erected into charms. In other words, men play the love game so unintelligently that they often ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... the power within. It seemed enough that there should be no wilful mis-statements, and no errors but those arising from the inevitable conditions to which all writings are liable. The skeptic who proceeds to peruse the Bible, expecting it everywhere to be conformable to the highest ideal standard—that there shall be nothing to perplex his understanding, to try his belief, or to offend his taste, will be disappointed, and will either give up his task, or go on in weariness and hesitation. On the other hand, if he be told to prepare ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... if our acts are already determined for us. There are therefore good reasons why the human baby should be, at the moment of its birth, the most helpless living thing; and as a consequence it is imperative, if the eugenic ideal is worthy of attainment, that every baby should have the benefit of trained and efficient care ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... was on the high road to a nose. The beneficent Power that discriminated for him having vanished utterly, he was, like a bankrupt gentleman, obliged to do all the work for himself. This is nothing more than the tendency of the generations downward from the ideal. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... something over some one. On the other hand, to place people a yard or more apart so that conversation has to be shouted into the din made by everyone else's shouting, is equally trying. About two feet from plate center to plate center is ideal. If the chairs have narrow and low backs, people can sit much closer together, especially at a small round table, the curve of which leaves a spreading wedge of space between the chairs at the back even if the seats touch at the front corners. But on the long straight sides ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... made up your mind?" he cried. "Very well! An usher you shall be, since that is your ideal; but I warn you that I decline all responsibility for the future and that I wash my ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... not the outcome of a great, magnanimous spirit, like that of the Roman emperor, who declared: "I had rather keep a single Roman citizen alive than slay a thousand enemies." Compare the last command given to the children of Israel with the words of Marcus Aurelius: "I have formed an ideal of the State, in which there is the same law for all, and equal rights and equal liberty of speech established for all—an Empire where nothing is honored so much as the freedom of the citizens." I am on the side of ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... set her lover aloft as her ideal, the embodiment of truth, honor, and manhood. He had fallen. Truth, honor, manhood, had passed out of existence for her. And she had loved him so well! ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... exaltation of the man of action above the man of thought are typical. His heroes, fair-haired and blue-eyed, stalwart and vigorous, relying on strength and longing for adventure, tender-hearted and contemplative when not aroused to violent action and bent on deeds of valor, personify the national ideal. His whole vision of life is Scandinavian, bright and vivid, with a tinge of melancholy. Tegner was, with Geijer and Ling, the first to adopt national subjects, to use the Scandinavian myths and folk-lore in their poetry, in opposition to the classical themes ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... are quoted in the last paragraph of the Doctrine of the Mean, as representing the ideal of perfect virtue. They are indicative of Power, operating silently, and not to be perceived by the senses, but resistless in ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... intuition would often fail; the blindness of love would then be fatal as it is proverbial. No, love works differently, and in its blindness lies its strength. Man and woman, each strongly desires to be loved, each opens to the other that heart of ideal aspirations which they have often hid till then; each, thus knowing the ideal of the other, tries to fulfil that ideal, each partially succeeds. The greater the love, the greater the success; the nobler the idea of each, the more durable, the more beautiful the effect. Meanwhile the ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Virginia, to take one notable example, I have witnessed a perfect ferment of social activity at one of the gatherings. It brought together such an ideal combination of the best spirits in both rural and urban life that I anticipate some striking developments in rural civilization which will surely extend beyond ...
— The Rural Life Problem of the United States - Notes of an Irish Observer • Horace Curzon Plunkett
... qualification; and the close imitation of the monastic model adopted by the Regular Canons was sufficient proof that the Church generally acquiesced in this view. The great reform movement of the eleventh century had emanated from the monks of Cluny; but just as the degradation of the monastic ideal by the Benedictines had called into existence the Order of Cluny with its reformed Benedictine rule, so now the failure of the Cluniacs to live up to the expectations and to minister to the needs of the most fervent religious spirits caused the foundation of ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... non-combatant countries whose interests counsel them to embrace the cause of Russia and that of her allies. In effect, public opinion in these countries, responsive to all that is meant by the national ideal, has long since pronounced itself in this sense, but you will understand that I cannot go into this question very profoundly, seeing that the Governments of these countries, with which we enjoy friendly relations, have not yet taken a definite decision. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... and, quite unconsciously as I take it, made an appeal to the heart—a strange thing for an Englishman to do. My kind heart has ever been my most vulnerable point. We French are sentimentalists. France has before now staked its very existence for an ideal, while other countries fight for continents, cash, or commerce. You cannot pierce me with a lance of gold, but wave a wand of sympathy, and I ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... most dazzling colors, but our more serious thoughts will respect a useful prejudice, that establishes a rule of succession, independent of the passions of mankind; and we shall cheerfully acquiesce in any expedient which deprives the multitude of the dangerous, and indeed the ideal, power of giving ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... picture, in which he appeared reclining on a divan, with a beautiful Greek woman fondly couched at his feet, and soothing him with the witchery of her guitar. Having satisfied himself with the ideal picture thus created, he would pass into action; the guitar he would buy instantly, and would give such intimations of his wish to be wedded to a Greek, as could not fail to produce great excitement in the families, of the beautiful ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... instincts were all individualistic and personal; and indeed I believe that all his life he was an artist in the largest sense, in the fact that his work was the embodiment of dreams, the expression of the beauty which he constantly perceived. His ideal was in one sense a larger one than the technically artistic ideal, because it embraced the conception of moral beauty even more ardently than mere external beauty. The mystical element in him was for ever reaching out in search of some Divine essence in the world. He was not in search at any ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... possible—there are many incidents of this great tragedy which nothing has ever surpassed or ever can surpass in impressiveness. It is a consolation, too, that human nature at such times does betray here and there a gleam of that side of it which gives forth a reflection of the ideal manhood or womanhood. Bits of heroism and of tender devotedness scattered throughout this dark, dismal picture of destruction and despair light it up with wonderful beauty, and while they bring tears to the eyes of the sternest ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... apt selection from the marvellous exploits of the Knights of the Round Table, related in thrilling language and illustrated in an ideal manner with pictures in colour and black and white. A perfect present for a boy or girl. Printed on rough art paper. 12 full-page colour plates. 144 ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... to the fairy grotto deep in the thicket of trees. It was Yetive's favorite dreaming place. Dark and cool and musical with the rippling of waters, it was an ideal retreat. She dropped upon the rustic bench that stood against the moss-covered wall of boulders. With the gentle reserve of a man who reveres as well as loves, Baldos stood above her. He waited and she understood. How unlike most impatient ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... and rugged mountains of British Columbia and Alberta form an ideal home for the big-horn (and mountain goat), and it would be an international calamity for that region to be denuded of its splendid big game. With resolute intent and judicial treatment that region can remain a rich and valuable hunting ground for five hundred years to come. Under ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... can't make out whether this Mrs. Dampier is all she seems to be. And I want to prepare you for a possible disappointment, my dear. When I was a young man I once took a great fancy to someone who—well, who disappointed me cruelly—" he was speaking very gravely. "It just spoilt my ideal for a time—I mean my ideal of human nature. Now I don't want anything of that kind to happen to you or to our boy in connection with this—this ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... the healing time of his spirit. And in that healing time she was the chief human minister. Somewhere in the 'Prelude' he tells that in early youth there was a too great sternness of spirit about him, a high but too severe moral ideal by which he judged men and things, insensible to gentler and humbler influences. He compares his soul to a high, bare craig, without any crannies in which flowers may lurk, untouched by the mellowing influences of sun and shower. His sister came with her softening influence, ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... bony, craggy Scotsman, with a square fighting head and a bulldog jaw, he had conquered the exclusiveness and routine of the British service by the same dogged qualities which made him formidable to Dervish and to Boer. With a cool brain, a steady nerve, and a proud heart, he is an ideal leader of infantry, and those who saw him manoeuvre his brigade in the crisis of the battle of Omdurman speak of it as the one great memory which they carried back from the engagement. On the field of battle ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... dull, practical life into poetry; he can turn lyrical at a moment's notice. He possesses the power of transmuting the commonplace into the idyllic, by merely clapping on his cap and turning his back on the haunts of men. He has retained a singular—an almost ideal sensitiveness, of mental cuticle—such acuteness of sensation, that a journey to a field will oftentimes yield him all the flavor of a long voyage, and a sudden introduction to a forest, the rapture that commonly comes only with some unwonted aspect ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... not hate work, but he loved freedom. To be alone, to live with nature, to feel the elements, to labor and dream and idle and climb and sleep unhampered by duty, by worry, by restriction, by the petty interests of men—this had always been his ideal of living. Cowboys, riders, sheep-herders, farmers—these toiled on from one place and one job to another for the little money doled out to them. Nothing beautiful, nothing significant had ever existed in that for him. He had worked as a boy ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... should take them between the cantaloupe and the broiled chicken, or wait till they had come to the corn griddle-cakes, which St. John's cook served of a filigree perfection in homage to the good old American breakfast ideal. There would be more women, if he waited, and he should need the sympathy and countenance of women; his story would be wanting in something of its supreme effect without the electrical response of ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... consent made by Faustina to her mother, freed her from parental authority and brotherly interference. She and her husband passed through some very lean years in the beginning, but fortune has smiled upon them since that. Anastase is very famous. His character has changed little. With the love of the ideal republic in his heart, he shed his blood at Mentana for the great conservative principle, he fired his last shot for the same cause at the Porta Pia on the twentieth of September 1870; a month later he was fighting for France under ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... create an impossible or purely ideal landscape is made in the Japanese garden. Its artistic purpose is to copy faithfully the attractions of a veritable landscape, and to convey the real impression that a real landscape communicates. It is therefore at once a picture and a poem; ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... feast, he discovered, to his intense horror and dismay, that the bride he had taken was not the woman of his choice—in short, he was the victim of a cheat. Indignant at this cruel imposture, he ascertained that the plot emanated from the woman who, till then, had been the ideal of his soul, and that she had substituted her veiled sister Anne for herself at the altar. The remainder of this strange affair is briefly told:—George Evans had one, and only one, interview with his wife, and thus addressed her ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... foreign things. She was never foreign, else he could not have had that intuitive sense of intimateness with her which makes each new trait which she reveals, while a sweet surprise, yet seem in a deeper sense familiar, as if answering to some pre-existing ideal pattern in his own heart, as if it were something that could not have been different. In after years he may grow rich in land and gold, but he never again will have such sense of absolute right and eternally foreordained ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... the heart that I think it quite unmeaning. I have met with it everywhere, in books, at the theatre, in society,—yes, everywhere, and never have I found in it even a semblance of its magnificent ideal." ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... is a thing unto itself. It has no parallel in America. Of substantial character and possessed of rare local color, it combines with picturesque appearance those highly desirable qualities of permanence and non-inflammability. It is the ideal construction for suburban Philadelphia where the necessary building material abounds and new homes can live in ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... Hebrew Stoics would justly charge the Founder of Christianity with preaching a more popular and practical doctrine, but a degradation from their own far higher and more ideal standard. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... Franciscan Order, Mr. Adderley opens his narrative with an admirable sketch of the history of Monasticism in Europe, which is certainly the best thing in the book. He distinguishes clearly and fairly between the Manichaean ideal that underlies so much of Eastern Monasticism and the ideal of self-discipline which never wholly vanished from the Christian form. But he does not throw any light on what must be for the outsider the absorbing problem of this Catholic asceticism, for the excellent ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... do all I can. Here, behind this forehead, good ideas are seething; what I have succeeded in carrying out by myself, has at any rate brought credit and fame to others, although it is all far from resembling the ideal of beauty that here—here—I seem to see far away and behind a cloud; still I feel that if, in a moment of kindness, Fortune will but shed a few fresh drops of dew on it all I shall, at any rate, turn ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... along the wide hall, to usher the boys into the commodious library. Bookcases lined the walls, and it seemed to be an ideal place, where a student might enjoy himself very much indeed. Just then, however, there were several sewing machines shoved aside, and much evidence to the effect that on weekdays this same library might be a beehive of industry, ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... years done for him? He was a fool. Why had he not taken what was possible, since the ideal was ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... up, crept in and touched the brow of an ideal bust of Mithras which she had invested with her faintly-faded wreath of heliotropes; their fragrance falling through the place already made the atmosphere more rich than that of chest of almond-wood,—this perfume that is like the soul of the earth itself ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... vogue; and he tried to be sedulously English in every respect. But in spite of his wonderfully fluent speech and almost perfect accent, there lingered about him something which would not harmonise with that ideal of an English gentleman which is latent in most minds. Something he lacked, something he possessed, which interfered with the part he desired to play. The something lacking showed itself in his ineradicable love of jewellery and in a transparent habit of fibbing; the something possessed ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... the very existence (esse), and not the mere welfare (bene esse), of the Church was universally accepted. His theory of the equality of all bishops was a survival of an earlier period, and represented little more than his personal ideal. The following sections should also be ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... abandon themselves to low instincts, they also set the example at times of acts of lofty morality. If disinterestedness, resignation, and absolute devotion to a real or chimerical ideal are moral virtues, it may be said that crowds often possess these virtues to a degree rarely attained by the wisest philosophers. Doubtless they practice them unconsciously, but that is of small import. We ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... palms of her hands were hard. Her legs were like her arms in their degree of muscular development and hairy adornment. She had beautiful feet. It is to be admitted that her heels projected a trifle more than is counted the ideal thing at the present day, and that her big toe and all the other toes were very much in evidence, but there is not one woman in ten thousand now who could as handily pick up objects with her toes ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... same as saved my life twice. And then his leap into the sinking boat, and the almost giant strength with which he flung papa into his own!—oh, I see it all so often, and my heart always seems to go down with him when, in fancy, I see him sink. It was all so heroic, so in accord with my ideal of a man! Why, Cousin Sophy, he was so sensible about it all! He did just the right thing and the only thing that could be done, except that horrid sinking. I can't help feeling that if he had got into the boat with us all would have come about right. Oh, that stupid, cowardly ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... giant genius at command, Forever at thy stamp, To fill thy treasury from Fairy Land, When haply thou might'st ask the pearly hand Of some great British Vizier's eldest daughter, Tho' princes sought her, And lead her in procession hymeneal, Oh, why dost thou remain a Beau Ideal! Why stay, a ghost, on the Lethean Wharf, Envelop'd in Scotch mist and gloomy fogs? Why, but because thou art some puny Dwarf, Some hopeless Imp, like Biquet with the Tuft, Fearing, for all thy wit, to be rebuff'd, Or bullied ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... which in these respects also the two peoples rested, has been so overgrown as to be almost concealed from our view. That Hellenic character, which sacrificed the whole to its individual elements, the nation to the township, and the township to the citizen; which sought its ideal of life in the beautiful and the good, and, but too often, in the enjoyment of idleness; which attained its political development by intensifying the original individuality of the several cantons, and at length produced the internal dissolution of ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... The nobler ideal, as it seems to some of us, is to labour for God-fearing, self-respecting Indians rather than imitation white men and white women. An Indian who is honest, healthy and kindly, skilled in hunting and trapping, versed in his native Bible and liturgy, even though he be entirely ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... that is all reversible engines, will do exactly the same amount of work with the same amount of heat, the amount of work being strictly proportionate to the amount of heat consumed. I need hardly point out that the reversible engine, or the perfect engine of Carnot, is only the ideal one, as there is no engine in which all the heat is converted into work, as a great deal of the heat is radiated away and not converted into work at all. Again, working from the standpoint that heat is matter, Carnot reasoned that in the heat-engine the work is ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... noteworthy phenomenon in a persecuted tribe. "How pure and strong its ethical principles were is shown by its religious poetry as well as by its practical Law. What pervades the poetry as a high ideal, in the application of the Law becomes demonstrable reality. The wrapt enthusiasm in the hymns of Samuel the Pious and other poets is embodied, lives, in the rulings of Yehuda Hakohen, Solomon Yitschaki, and Jacob ben Meir; in the legal ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... ancient Italy, how much the cultivation of corn degenerated, how unprofitable it became to the master, when it fell under the management of slaves, is remarked both by Pliny and Columella. In the time of Aristotle, it had not been much better in ancient Greece. Speaking of the ideal republic described in the laws of Plato, to maintain 5000 idle men (the number of warriors supposed necessary for its defence), together with their women and servants, would require, he says, a territory of boundless extent and fertility, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... interest, and often of delight. He trusts that these fruits of his labor will be useful, in imparting, especially to his youthful readers, not only an acquaintance with the best of our national authors, but a taste for literature, and a good ideal of literary excellence, than which few things in intellectual education are more to be esteemed. If successful in these respects, he will be abundantly satisfied; and in this hope, he submits his work to the ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... group of people have presented material for the study of the interstitial glands. These are the Skoptzi of Russia and the Lipowaner of Roumania. Among them castration is a religious ritual. Mankind has always been most brutal to itself in the name of the ideal. These sects were founded because in the eighteenth century an antipode of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young discovered this passage in Matthew ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... they who are building a perennial monument to Washington. It is they who give him a million-tongued fame. They make him live again in the young hearts of successive generations, and fix his image there as the American ideal of a public servant. It is through the schools and colleges and the national literature that the heroes of any people win lasting renown; and it is through these same agencies that a nation is molded into the likeness of ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... in praise of the good man to set beside Solomon's picture of the virtuous woman. Bartholomew has certainly endeavoured in the two chapters quoted here, "Of a Man," and "Of a Good Lord," to picture the ideal good man of chivalrous times. It may, however, be permitted those of us who look at the system from underneath, to sympathise with our fellows who struggled to free themselves from bondage under Tyler and John Ball at least as much as with their splendid oppressors, ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... call illusions are ideal images and aspirations, which originate in the sphere of our impulses and feelings, not in our sensible reasoning. But the impulses and feelings are more elementary and more deeply rooted, thought comes later and ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... character makes me think it was the chin's doing; that "common mortal" touch which stands in such good stead to some women. Because men, I mean really masculine men, those whose generations have evolved an ideal woman, are often very timid. Who wouldn't be before the ideal? It's your sentimental trifler, who has just missed being nothing at all, who is enterprising, simply because it is easy to appear enterprising when one does not mean to put one's belief ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... school working under the impulse of a great idea and spurred by the memory of a great teacher. As such they afford a parallel to much scientific work of our own day, produced by men without genius save that provided by a vision and a hope and an ideal. Of such men it is impossible to write as of Aristotle. Their lives are summed up by their actual achievement, and since Theophrastus is an orderly writer whose works have descended to us in good state, he ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... try. Who knows but you may grow into that ideal I cherish? I shall attend you constantly, pay court to you, take counsel with you, defer to ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... was a reply. "Oh! tol, lol!" And that in anything but a melodious voice. "Oh! tol, lol!" What a bathos! The beautiful Maria, whom in my imagination I had clothed with all the attributes of sentiment and delicacy, whom I had conjured up as a beau ideal of perfection, replies in a hoarse voice with, "Oh! tol, lol!" Down she went, like the English funds in a panic—down she went to the zero of a Doll Tearsheet, and down I went again into the cabin. Surely this is a world ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... education had been wisely bestowed and in most ways he was a very bright little dog with a future before him, Yet he never learned to despise that addlepated Robin. The old shepherd, with all his faults, his continual striving after his ideal state—intoxication—and his mind-shrivelling life in general was rarely brutal to Wully, and Wully repaid him with an exaggerated worship that the greatest and wisest in the land would ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... said he, "is not good unless indulged in in great moderation. Now, what I like about this is the way in which ultra-colonialism is held in check, and modified in the direction of the Greek ideal. Those columns, supporting the broad portico, hark back to the Parthenon, don't they? I like that taste ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... is amazing to think how soon he began to look back upon his former fascination with a kind of wondering unbelief. This bespoke the strength of Hugh's ideal sense, as well as the weakness of his actual love. He could hardly even recall the feelings with which, on some well-remembered occasion, he had regarded her, and which then it had seemed impossible he should ever forget. Had he discovered the cloven ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... candles for light and the rest of the room in a darkness from which the butler emerged at stated intervals and retreated again, when he felt the oppression of it. For a dinner party, with the brilliant colors of the women's gowns, it was ideal. For Natalie and himself alone, with the long silences between them that seemed to grow longer as the years went on, it ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... our revenge for this irritating incapacity by saying that neither can women create ideal men at all resembling reality. But halte la! Was it not said at first that Rochester must be a man's man? Is not the little Professor Paul Emanuel an actual masculine creature? Heathcliff was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... Wisdom which is proper to this time; the beautiful, the religious Wisdom, which may still, with something of its old impressiveness, speak to the whole soul; still, in these hard, unbelieving utilitarian days, reveal to us glimpses of the Unseen but not unreal World, that so the Actual and the Ideal may again meet together, and clear Knowledge be again wedded to Religion, in the life and business ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... vision—the achieving of justice; we shall not grow weary till that vision has become a reality. When one has faced up to an ultimate self-denial, giving becomes a habit. One becomes eager to be allowed to give all—to keep none of life's small change. The fury of an ideal enfevers us. We become fanatical to outdo our own best record in self-surrender. Many of us, if we are alive when peace is declared, will feel an uneasy reproach that perhaps ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... chivalry, and the enthusiasm of the Crusades, he has not left a poem which has taken, or ever can take, the general hold of the minds of men, which the Iliad has done. The reason is, it is not founded in nature—it is the ideal—but it is not the ideal based on the real. Considered as a work of imagination, the Gerusalemme Liberata is one of the most exquisite conceptions of human fancy, and will for ever command the admiration of romantic and elevated minds. ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... embodied the heroine of his youthful dreams. He proposed and was refused, and went away despairing. It would have been a good match, undoubtedly—a truth which Lord and Lady Lodway urged with some iteration upon their daughter—but it would have been a terrible descent from the ideal marriage which Lady Jane had set up in her own mind, as the proper prize for so fair a runner in life's race. She had imagined herself a marchioness, with a vast territory of mountain, vale, and lake, and an influence in the sister island second only to that of royalty, She could not descend ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... creatures, until the beauty of the world is befouled and the glory of the Heavens bedimmed. To stem back that tide is the task now imposed on our heroism, to elevate and purify and refine the race, to introduce the ideal of quality in place of the ideal of quantity which has run riot so long, with the results we see. "As the Northern Saga tells that Odin must sacrifice his eye to attain the higher wisdom," concludes Fahlbeck, "so Man also, ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... though vehemently maintained and reasserted, was gradually weakening. In reviewing long series of fossils, relations were observed which pointed to genetic connections and yet were interpreted as purely ideal. Agassiz, for example, who never accepted the evolutionary theory, drew attention to facts which could be satisfactorily interpreted only in terms of that theory. Among the fossils he indicated "progressive," ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... worth noting that this image of purity and excellence was no monkish vision of the purity of the cloister, but that more complete and at the same time more humble ideal of the true wife, mother, and mistress, whose work was in and for the world and the people, not withdrawn to any exceptional refuge or shelter—which has always been most dear to the Anglo-Saxon race. The influence of such an ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... men were supposed to have lived in a state of happiness and perfection. To the Egyptians the times of Ra, the times of the god—that is to say, the centuries immediately following on the creation—-were the ideal age, and no good thing had appeared upon ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... empty but shining casque of Chivalry, the breath-catching though safe-guarded dip and flight of Adventure, the magic carpet that transports you to the realms of fairyland, though its journey be trough but a few poor yards of space. He no longer saw a rabble, but his brothers seeking the ideal. There was no magic of poesy here or of art; but the glamour of their imagination turned yellow calico into cloth of gold and the megaphones into the silver trumpets of ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... instinct which drove St. Francis of Assist to the practical experience of that poverty which he recognised as the highest wisdom; St. Catherine of Siena from contemplation to politics; Joan of Arc to the salvation of France; St. Teresa to the formation of an ideal religious family; Fox to the proclaiming of a world-religion in which all men should be guided by the Inner Light; Florence Nightingale to battle with officials, vermin, dirt, and disease in the soldiers' hospitals; Octavia Hill to make in London slums something ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... "I'll drive you to the station myself in Mummy's car to catch the first train next morning, if you'll come. And I'll make Reggie come too. You'll just love Reggie, cherie. He's my exact ideal of what a man ought to be—the best friend I have, next to you. Well, it's a bargain then, isn't it? You'll come and help dance with the kids—you promise? That's my own sweet cherie! And now you mustn't grizzle here in the dark any longer. I believe my cab is at the door. Come ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... speak plainly. You must know what life is. One can do no good by shutting one's eyes to everything that doesn't square with a shoddy, false ideal. On one side I must break my word, on the other I must prostitute myself. There is no middle way. You live here surrounded by all sorts of impossible ways of looking at life. How can your outlook be sane when it is founded on a sham morality? You think the body is indecent and ugly, and that the ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... its maximum efficiency until every public function is discharged by the man best able to perform it, and that no Commonweal can be near efficiency until it is endeavouring very earnestly to bring that ideal condition of affairs about. And when they have got round that corner they will have to face the fact that an Hereditary Monarchy is a state in which this principle is repudiated at a cardinal point, a state in which one position, which no amount of sophistication will ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... a detailed table of the bureaucracy of the country. However, we know now from inscriptions that the bureaucracy at the beginning of the Chou period was not much more developed than in late Shang time. The Chou-li gave an ideal picture of a bureaucratic state, probably abstracted from actual conditions in feudal states several ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... and no farther; there we stop; but we may still look across the boundary to Assisi for a specimen of Italian Gothic architecture, a scheme of colour decoration, or still better for a mystic to compare with the Bernadines and Victorians. Every one who knows anything of religion knows that the ideal mystic saint of western Europe was Francis of Assisi, and that Francis, though he loved France, was as far as possible from being French; though not in the least French, he was still the finest flower from the French mediaeval garden; and though the French mystics could never have understood ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... love, each man should deem himself called by a divine vocation, by the appointment of nature; and otherwise living, should judge himself to be an abortion, a mistake, without signification or use in a world like ours. And the beauty, the glory of such a life, is not to be reckoned among ideal things heard out of heaven but never encountered by the eye. This world has had its CHRIST, its FENELONS, its HOWARDS, as well as its CALIGULAS and NEROS. Love hath been at times a manifestation as well as a principle; and the train of its glory swept far below the stars, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... hope of ever winning her for his own, of ever even seeing her again, yet the memory of her was to abide in his soul as a bitter-sweet, purifying influence. The love that is never to be realized will often remain a man's guiding ideal. The resolve being taken, he went actively to work. Ogeron, most accommodating of governors, advanced him money for the proper equipment of his ship the Cinco Llagas, which he renamed the Arabella. This after some little hesitation, fearful of thus setting his heart upon his sleeve. But ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... this business," he confessed, as we paused to compare experiences. "I've been thinking of that Mexican business you hinted at, Kennedy. You know the islands would be an ideal out-of-the-way spot from which to start gun-running expeditions to Mexico. I don't like this Leontine and Burleigh. They want to make money ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... Desmond nodded his head. "I knew him well." He poured out anecdote after anecdote illustrating the character and temperament of the statesman-philanthropist: his self-sacrifice, his devotion to an ideal, his curious exclusiveness, his refinement, his faith in an aristocracy never diminished by the indefatigable zeal wherein he laboured to better the condition of the poor. "If every rich man were animated by Shaftesbury's spirit," said Mr. Desmond, ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... for such a man, emotional, and with a need, now and again, to exercise parsimony in emotions not strictly needful, something a little mechanical, something hard and fast and clearly understood, would enter into his ideal of a home. There were storms enough without, and equability was to be desired at the fireside even at a sacrifice of deeper pleasures. So, from a wife, of all women, he would not ask much. One letter to her which has ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... observed Bundy, and during the laughter that greeted this definition Slyme was heard to say that Socialism meant Materialism, Atheism and Free Love, and if it were ever to come about it would degrade men and women to the level of brute beasts. Harlow said Socialism was a beautiful ideal, which he for one would be very glad to see realized, and he was afraid it was altogether too good to be practical, because human nature is too mean and selfish. Sawkins said that Socialism was a lot of bloody rot, and Crass ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... the fleeting expressions of the face, in short imprint on the whole person such an attitude as to make it appear immersed and absorbed in the materiality of some mechanical occupation instead of ceaselessly renewing its vitality by keeping in touch with a living ideal. Where matter thus succeeds in dulling the outward life of the soul, in petrifying its movements and thwarting its gracefulness, it achieves, at the expense of the body, an effect that is comic. If, then, ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... light-carriers and lamps may be sterilized by immersion in 95 per cent alcohol or by prolonged exposure to formaldehyde gas. Continuous sterilization by keeping them put away in a metal box with formalin pastilles or other source of formaldehyde gas is an ideal method. Knives and scissors are immersed in 95 per cent alcohol, and the rubber covered conducting cords are wiped with ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... must have compelled to acknowledge the manager's trouble and expense on their behalf; but what was the degree of satisfaction felt by students of the Athenian [4] tragedy, in relation to their long-cherished ideal? Did the representation succeed in realizing, for a moment, the awful pageant of the Athenian stage? Did Tragedy, in Milton's ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... hills, it looked like something very different to those who approached the front, for upon that side was a portico with massive Doric columns, which were nothing more nor less than maple logs. Andrew maintained that the natural form of the trunk of a tree was the ideal and ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... child-like love was turning into the womanly affection for a father; she who was complete in herself, as every good child is, not suggesting to your thoughts what you would have a child be, but filling out the orb of your ideal beauty, still partly in outline; her seat, her place at the table, at prayers, at the piano, at church; the sight of her going out and coming in; her tones of speech, her helpful spirit and hands, and all the unfinished creations of her skill, every thing that made her that which the growing ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... probably have heard, he met with a severe accident last summer, and lost the use of his right arm for many months. I believe they thought at one time he had lost it forever. But it's all right now, and he has several commissions for portraits. Alice says he's doing ideal heads again, too." ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... she said. "That the reality should excel the poet's ideal! That the cloud-capped towers which looked splendid from afar, with all the glamour of distance, should prove to be more splendid still, on close inspection! It's dead against the accepted theory of things. And that ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... way constitute an ideal diet. All the valuable salts are retained instead of being thrown away in the water, as when peeled before cooking, whilst the butter and milk supply the fatty elements in which the potato is lacking. The colour also is good, which is not the case when they are boiled ...
— New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich
... were a sculptor, I would chisel from the marble my ideal of the monumental fool. I would make it the figure of a man, with knitted brow and clinched teeth, beating and bruising his barefooted boy, in the cruel endeavor to drive him from the paradise of his childish fun and folly. If your boy will be a boy, let him ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... triumph for our enemies to verify their predictions!—what a triumph for the advocates of despotism to find that we are incapable of governing ourselves, and that systems founded on the basis of equal liberty are merely ideal and fallacious! Would to God that wise measures may be taken in time to avert the consequences we have but too much ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... her ladyship, in a tremulous and low tone, "why should we seek ideal sorrows, when those of our own hearts are beyond alleviation? Happy Rose!" sighed her ladyship. "Mr. Constantine," continued she, "do not you think that Adelbert is consoled, at least, by the affection of ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... gifted wife. She must be of different temperament from his own and an economical housekeeper. So when he found the age of twenty-five approaching, he began to look about. There was no one in Wallace who satisfied the requirements. He therefore set out afoot to discover his ideal. In those days and regions the professional tramp and mendicant were unknown, and every farmhouse dispensed its hospitality with an Arcadian simplicity little known in our times. Wherever he stopped overnight he made a critical investigation of the housekeeping, perhaps rising before the ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... the chiefest archangel, singing after this soule-ravishing manner," yet leaving but "five pounds lying by him at his death, which was satis viatici ad coelum"—is not this the panorama of a poetic career? But above all, to complete the picture of the ideal poet, he worshipped, and hopelessly, from youth to age the image of one, woman. He never married, and while many patronesses were honoured with his poetic addresses, there was one fair dame to whom ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... appearance of savage animals. In the faint light from the stars their shadows spread over the ground in all directions. On the right was the confused, looming mass of a mountain, the Atlas perhaps, to the left could be heard the dull surge of the invisible sea. An ideal spot ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... stop him!" grinned Dex. "And try and stop me, too! From what I know now of the way they grow 'em on your satellite"—his eyes rested on Greca's beauty with an admiration that turned her to rosy confusion—"I'd say I'd found the ideal spot to settle ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... mystics maintained, to renounce one's personality and retire altogether from the world and things temporal: a purely passive attitude towards God, and a blessedness consisting in such an attitude, was not his highest or ultimate ideal. A man's personality, he held, should only be destroyed so far as it resists the will of God, and dares to assert its self-righteousness and merits before Him. The road to real communion with God was always that 'short road' ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... affection. The pleasures of female society are almost denied the Chinaman; he cannot fall in love before marriage because of the absence of an object for his love. "The faculty of love produces a subjective ideal; and craves for a corresponding objective reality. And the longer the absence of the objective reality, the higher the ideal becomes; as in the mind of the hungry man ideal foods ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... cargo of forty thousand beside our own, which would be twelve or fifteen thousand; and hides were said to be growing scarcer. Then, too, this ship, which had been to us a worse phantom than any flying Dutchman, was no phantom, or ideal thing, but had been reduced to a certainty; so much so that a name was given her, and it was said that she was to be the Alert, a well-known India-man, which was expected in Boston in a few months, when we sailed. There could be no doubt, and ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... preparation of wheat grits, much of the bran is allowed to remain, but neither cream of wheat nor farina contains cellulose in any appreciable quantity. As the addition of bran, however, serves to give these foods bulk, a much more ideal breakfast cereal will result if, before cooking, equal portions of the cereal and the bran are mixed. In preparing ready-to-eat wheat cereals for the market, the manufacturers subject the grains to such elaborate methods of cooking, rolling, and toasting that these foods require but very ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... her keenly and with the shadow of distrust still upon him. It seemed to be quite impossible, even with what he knew of her calmly cold nature, that she should be equally uninfluenced by Grant or Shipley. Had she some steadfast, lofty ideal, or perhaps some already absorbing passion of which he knew nothing? She was not a girl to betray it—they would only know it when it was too late. Could it be possible that there was still something between her and 'Lige that ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... establish themselves. This tended to produce a Western flavor in the towns on the frontier. But it was not until the original ideals of the land system began to change, that the opportunity to make new settlements for such reasons became common. As the economic and political ideal replaced the religious and social ideal, in the conditions under which new towns could be established, ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... was beginning to regard all other suffering which might be in store for her as a negligible quantity. With her healthy body, and wholesome memories of a great and perfect human love, it was almost impossible that she should adopt a morbid and self-torturing attitude. Yet any religious ideal, worth the name, will always have in it an ascetic element. And that element was so far present with her that personal suffering had come to bear a not wholly unlovely aspect. She had ceased to gird against it. So long as Richard was amused and fairly content, so long as the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... she walked, and recast the interview just past in another form more suited to her vague ideal, and again in another. She had a sense of power within her, that sense which powerful natures have, without in the least knowing in what direction the power may go forth, or when they will be as powerless—as Samson shaven. She only felt the power and its accompanying impulses; ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... and Spectator adjusted, like Casa, the unsettled practice of daily intercourse by propriety and politeness; and, like La Bruyere, exhibited the "Characters and Manners of the Age." The personages introduced in these papers were not merely ideal; they were then known, and conspicuous in various stations. Of the Tatler this is told by Steele in his last paper; and of the Spectator by Budgell in the preface to "Theophrastus," a book which Addison has recommended, and which he was suspected to have revised, if he did ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... Idea and ideal meant nothing to the author of "The Prince." What we know as "moral forces" this Italian ignored. He judged humanity by its lowest average of motive or intelligence. There was but one general law, for him, and that was that it was right to deceive, if force were of dubious effect, in ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... of amusement and a wide and generous tolerance—the look of a loving woman to whom her husband and her husband's ways are better than a stage play. Such a look is a certificate of happy home and an ideal life, far more than all heroics. The love of the after-years depends chiefly on the capacity of a wife to be amused by her husband's peculiarities—and not to ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... in stone and landscape gardening the ideal of the great American spa, which this spot is in fact, ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... a table; "I hope we shall find them cold." "Do you know," said Deepwaters to Ayrault, while rapidly making his cocktail disappear, "the Callisto's cost with its outfit will be very great, especially if you use glucinum, which, though the ideal metal for the purpose, comes pretty high? I suggest that you apply to Congress for an appropriation. This experiment comes under the 'Promotion of Science Act,' and any bill for it would certainly pass." "No, indeed," replied Ayrault; "the Callisto trip will be a privilege and glory I would ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... some one singing above her. The voices must be divided carefully for this work—some teachers prefer to get the balance on the side of the under parts, in order to avoid the feeling that it is necessary to shout in order to be heard! The ideal plan is to interchange the parts ...
— Music As A Language - Lectures to Music Students • Ethel Home
... treasures were, Mrs. Sparsit knew as little as they did. Gold and silver coin, precious paper, secrets that if divulged would bring vague destruction upon vague persons (generally, however, people whom she disliked), were the chief items in her ideal catalogue thereof. For the rest, she knew that after office- hours, she reigned supreme over all the office furniture, and over a locked-up iron room with three locks, against the door of which strong chamber the light porter laid his head every night, on a truckle bed, that disappeared at ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... child in a daze as she went by. Hanny had a secret, exultant consciousness that she had seen her ideal poet; then she smiled and wondered if she could write poems. Dolly was quite as pretty, but she couldn't; and Margaret was handsomer. She could not quite associate the sad, abstracted man up the road with "Annabel Lee." What ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... unknowable as this pretended object of knowledge? The sensations which reason treats so cavalierly were at least something actual while they lasted and made good their momentary claim to our interest; but what is this new ideal figment, unseizable yet ever present, invisible but indispensable, unknowable yet alone interesting or important? Strange that the only possible object or theme of our knowledge should be something ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... possessed the masculine trait of protectiveness, the universe never bothered her, she was one of those persons—called fortunate—to whom the orthodox Christian virtues come as naturally as sun or air. Passion, when sanctified by matrimony, was her ideal, and now it was always in terms of Janet she dreamed of it, having read about it in volumes her friend would not touch, and never having experienced deeply its discomforts. Sanctified or unsanctified, Janet regarded it with terror, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Kathie said that she was plain. I said, "Well, not plain exactly, but queer!" At dinner the same night, we amended the verdict, and voted her "rather nice". Twenty-four hours later she represented our ideal of female charm, and we figuratively wept and rent our garments because she exhibited no interest in our charming selves. An inspection of the visitors' book proved that her name was "Mrs Fane," but that was not particularly ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... men of the colonies for some years previously had been burdened with arguments to convince them that a mere league of States would not suffice to create a stable nation. To George Washington, soldier and statesman, is due above all men the ideal of a federated union, for without his influence—that of a noble and unselfish leader—the great result would probably never have been secured. While still waiting for the convention, to meet, and while discussing what was expedient and practicable when they did meet, Washington ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... barbaric lands, by a nomad feeling that was almost irresistible. This road was a track of fate to her. When she was on it she had a strange sensation as if she changed, developed, drew near to some ideal. It influenced her as one person may influence another. Now for the first time she was on it in the night, riding on the crowded shadows of its palms. She drew rein and went more slowly. She had a desire ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... clinging to his arm. "Carder is going to have ample leisure to think over the game he has played. Isn't it a strange satire of fate that should make insignificant little Pete the boomerang to turn back and floor him? Pete's an ideal witness. He sees what he sees and he knows what he knows, and nothing can shake him because he doesn't know anything else. Great Scott! when I located the facts at that hospital and linked them together and brought an accusation ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... general terms against all the poetry "of the school of Pope," well-nigh the whole of which is iambic. The defect is probably in either case, at least half imaginary; and, as for the inherent joyousness of anapestics, that is perhaps not less ideal. Father Humphrey says, "Anapaestic and amphibrachic verse, being similar in measure and movement, are pleasing to the ear, and well adapted to cheerful and humourous compositions; and sometimes to elegiac compositions, and subjects important and solemn."—Humphrey's ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... from the camera called sorrow, pictured on the delicate plate of the human soul or focused in the face. There is the crushed look when Death takes the loved one, the hardened look when an ideal is shattered, the look of dismay from wrecked hopes and the cynical look from wrecked happiness—but none of these is the numbed and dumb look of despair which confronts humanity when the ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... continuously, and I could have remained here the live-long day, watching the gradual disentombment of the beautiful columns, statuary, and other long-buried mementoes of Rome's past greatness—and, as her foundations were laid bare, rebuilding and repeopling, according to my own ideal fancies, this great temple of eloquence. "What men have crossed the shadows of these very columns! What thoughts that have moved the world were born beneath them!" Scene after scene rose to my ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... time South Africa was an ideal place for the pioneer. The scenery was magnificent. There were mountain gorges or kloofs, roaring cataracts, vast plains, and verdant tracts of succulent grasses. There was big game enough to delight the heart of a race of Nimrods. Lions, elephants, hippopotami, rhinoceroses, antelopes, and birds ...
— 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
... same philosophy, or lack of it, that had always made life full of merry hope when their stomachs were filled, taking no thought of the morrow, animated them now. Fate had given Mayo and his associate an ideal crew for that parlous job. It was not a question of union hours and stated wages; they worked all night just as cheerily as ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... W. Roberts, of the Forty-Second Illinois Infantry, also came to me in the reorganization. He was an ideal soldier both in mind and body. He was young, tall, handsome, brave, and dashing, and possessed a balance-wheel of such good judgment that in his sphere of action no occasion could arise from which he would not reap the best results. But he too was destined to lay, down his life within a few days, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... reply. "No one in Norfolk Street knows it better; and if I were rich I should certainly employ the best models in London; but, being poor, I have taught myself to do without them. An occasional model would only disturb my ideal conception of the figure, and be a positive impediment in my career. As for painting by an artificial light," he would continue, "that is simply a knack I have found it necessary to acquire, my days being engrossed in the work ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... who was own aunt to Dutch William, and liked the scheme. He besieged Namur; fought and besieged up and down,—with insatiable appetite for fighting and sieging; with great honor, too, and ambitions awakening in him;—campaign after campaign: but along with the flamy-thundery ideal bride, figuratively called Bellona, there was always a soft real one, Mamsell Fos of Dessau, to whom he continued constant. The Government of his Dominions he left cheerfully to his Mother, even when he came of age: "I am for learning War, as the one right trade; ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... inclination among non-Catholic parents who have had experience of other systems to place their children under the care of religious. And it was strange to hear one of His Majesty's Inspectors express his conviction that "it would be ideal if all England could be taught by nuns!" Thus indirect testimony comes from friendly or hostile sources to the fact that the Church holds the secret of education, and every Catholic teacher may gain courage from the knowledge of having that which is beyond all price in ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... motor once more and were soon on the slopes a little lower down where several flying figures could already be seen. It was an ideal place for the thrilling sport—for there were a number of high places where experts could take high jumps, and lower slopes in plenty for the learners and the more timid, and great snowy fields beyond where the whiteness was broken by the gay-coloured caps and scarves ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... surrounding it, the maid conducted us through an underground passage leading beneath the road, to the plot of shrubbery which lay opposite the mansion. In this secluded thicket, Dickens had built a little house, to which in the summer time he was often accustomed to retire when writing. It was an ideal English June day, and everything about the place showed to the best possible advantage. We all agreed that Gad's Hill alone would be well worth a trip from London. The country around is surpassingly beautiful and it is said that Dickens liked nothing better than to show his friends about the ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... less local than the residence of man. It is placed in some distant part of space, separated from the regions of harmony and order by a chaotick waste and an unoccupied vacuity; but sin and death worked up "a mole of aggravated soil," cemented with "asphaltus;" a work too bulky for ideal architects. ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... between. About the third week of September the rains often cease quite suddenly, the end being usually proclaimed by a thunderstorm. Next morning one wakes to a new heaven and a new earth, a perfectly cloudless sky, and clean, crisp, cool air. This ideal weather lasts for the next three months. Even in December the days are made pleasant by bright sunshine, and the range of temperature is much less than in the plains. In the end of December or beginning of January the night thermometer often falls lower ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... [FN374] Although the Arab's ideal-of beauty, as has been seen and said, corresponds with ours the Egyptians (Modern) the Maroccans and other negrofied races like "walking tun-butts" as Clapperton called ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... note: second-smallest South American country (after Suriname); most of the low-lying landscape (three-quarters of the country) is grassland, ideal for cattle ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... the pleased attention not only of the official, but his wife and daughter and a customer. Possibly the good looks of the stranger had something to do with it. Jackson Potter was a singularly handsome young fellow, with one of those ideal faces and figures sometimes seen in Western frontier villages, attributable to no ancestor, but evolved possibly from novels and books devoured by ancestresses in the long solitary winter evenings of their lonely cabins on the frontier. A beardless, classical head, covered by short flocculent ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... have changed of late, For "Arctics" are my daily wear, The skies are turned to cold grey slate, And zephyrs are but draughts of air; But you make up whate'er we lack, When we, too rarely, come together, More potent than the almanac, You bring the ideal April weather; When you are with us we defy The blustering air, the lowering sky; In spite of winter's icy darts, We've spring and sunshine ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... painted included foregrounds with beautiful children playing about the clearing, and graceful women, wives of the happy squatters, flitting in and out of log houses and sheds, clothed and occupied after the manner of our ideal grandmothers; with the health and strength of Amazons, the refinement of high-bred ladies, and wondrous skill in all domestic works, confections, and contrivances. The log-houses would also contain fascinating select libraries, continually ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... that I saw the cook book. It was lying on a shelf beside the clock, and while Mr. Harbison had his back turned I got it down. It was quite clear that the domestic type of woman was his ideal, and I did not care to outrage his belief in me. So I took the cook book into the pantry and read the recipe over three times. When I came back I knew it by heart, although I did ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... simply impure, but impure in varying and indefinite degrees. The factory and the workshop originally took their magneto-machines from the experimental laboratory; they have returned them remodelled beyond recognition as dynamos and motors of almost ideal effectiveness. ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... would never do as commander of the new ship—though he might perhaps make a very good chief officer. Having arrived at this point in his meditations, Jack suddenly bethought himself of Lieutenant Philip Milsom, R.N. (retired), who would make a perfectly ideal skipper for the new craft, and would probably be glad enough to get to sea again for a few months, and supplement his scanty income by drawing the handsome pay which the captain of a first-class modern steam-yacht can command. ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... attitude as he had stood there that the gloomier-minded had given him at least twenty minutes, and even the optimists had reckoned that they would be lucky if they got off with ten. As far as the bulk of the guests were concerned, there was no grumbling. Fillmore's, to their thinking, had been the ideal after-dinner speech. ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... and supplies. The selection of types of apparatus best fitted to the course, and the knowledge of where to buy are both necessary. Also judgement must be exercised in purchase for few are the places where funds are adequate for the ideal equipment of a laboratory. The money value of every piece of apparatus must be balanced against its relative usefulness in the successful culmination of the course. Besides this there must be a knowledge of the various uses to which ...
— Adequate Preparation for the Teacher of Biological Sciences in Secondary Schools • James Daley McDonald
... grossest form of religious superstition, and crudest form of ceremony and worship, up to the most refined idealism and beautiful symbolisms, runs the gamut of the Hindu Religions. Many people are unable to conceive of an abstract, ideal Universal Being, such as the Brahman of the Hindu Philosophy, and consequently that Being has been personified as an Anthropomorphic Deity, and human attributes bestowed upon him to suit the popular fancy. In India, as in all other countries, the priesthood have given the ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... his funeral—that is, both the high-schools and the seminary. Now when he was lying in his coffin his expression was mild, agreeable, even cheerful, as though he were glad that he had at last been put into a case which he would never leave again. Yes, he had attained his ideal! And, as though in his honour, it was dull, rainy weather on the day of his funeral, and we all wore goloshes and took our umbrellas. Varinka, too, was at the funeral, and when the coffin was lowered into the grave she burst into tears. I have ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... all that he described them. Luxurious, comfortable; and luxury and comfort do not always go hand in hand; tasteful, too. Nothing too much; nothing lacking—just the beau-ideal of a bachelor's parlor. Warm browns brightening here and there into bronze. Books, a great many and of the best. Pictures, a very few, and all rare and beautiful. Bronzes and statuettes in plenty. Bric-a-bric, not any, ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... at this ideal of Clementina's future with a contempt which was as little becoming to his cloth. He made his wife reflect that, with all her inherent grace and charm, Clementina was an ignorant little country girl, who had neither the hardness of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... wishing, like a child, to begin my task anew, at the very moment that my thundering appeal to my hearers seems to have forced my musical creed upon them, and thus to have exhausted the insatiable cravings of my soul after my 'beau ideal.' ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... from pity's warm excess, The aching spirit to caress; Profuse of her ideal wealth, And rich in happiness and health, An alien, class'd among the poor, Unheeded, from her precious store, Its best and dearest tribute brought; The zeal of high, adventurous thought, The tender awe in yielding aid, E'en of its own soft hand afraid! Stealing, through ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... Ruysbroeck said "Then only is our life a whole, when work and contemplation dwell in us side by side, and we are perfectly in both of them at once."[25] All Christian writers on the life of the Spirit point to the perfect achievement of this two-fold ideal in Christ; the pattern of that completed humanity towards which the indwelling Spirit is pressing the race. His deeds of power and mercy, His richly various responses to every level of human existence, His gift to others of new faith ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... knee. He was above all querulous discontent. From him, no less than from his parents, Percival caught, not only a spirit of honour worthy the antiqua fides of the poets, but that peculiar cleanliness of thought, if the expression may be used, which belongs to the ideal of youthful chivalry. In mere booklearning, Percival, as may be supposed, was not very extensively read; but his mind, if not largely stored, had a certain unity of culture, which gave it stability and individualized its operations. Travels, voyages, narratives of heroic ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... perhaps distressed her most in Thyrza's presence. Egremont's perishable love, her own prudential forecasts and schemings, were stamped poor, worldly, ignoble, in comparison with this sacred and extinguishable ardour. As a woman she felt herself rebuked by the ideal of womanly fidelity; she was made to feel the inferiority of her nature to that which fate had chosen for this supreme martyrdom. In her glances at Thyrza's face she felt, with new force, how spiritual was ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... composition of a fine murder than two blockheads to kill and be killed—a knife—a purse—and a dark lane. Design, gentlemen, grouping, light and shade, poetry, sentiment, are now deemed indispensable to attempts of this nature. Mr. Williams has exalted the ideal of murder to all of us; and to me, therefore, in particular, has deepened the arduousness of my task. Like AEschylus or Milton in poetry, like Michael Angelo in painting, he has carried his art to a point of colossal sublimity; and, as Mr. Wordsworth observes, has in a manner ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... were drawn from place to place, and lived in by Whig stump speakers. Great mass meetings were held, and the whole campaign became one of frolic, song, and torchlight processions. [19] The people wanted a change. Harrison was an ideal popular candidate, and "Tippecanoe [20] and Tyler too" and a Whig Congress ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... photograph one of the heads to-morrow, and you will find the photograph tell you the same tale. Neither imagine that this is an unusual example of modern work. Your banks and public offices are covered with ideal lions' heads in every direction, and you will find them all just as bad as this. And, farther, note that the admission of such barbarous types of sculpture is not merely ridiculous; it is seriously harmful to your powers of ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... heads of the fjords of the coast. The tribunal was an ad-)udication board and not an actual court of arbitration, since its function was not to decide the boundary but to settle the meaning of the Anglo-Russian treaty, which provided for an ideal (and not a physical) boundary. This boundary did not fit in with geographical facts; hence the adjudication was based upon the motive of the treaty and not upon the literal interpretation of such elastic ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the ocean heaved in mighty swells. Anna, on one of the most delightful mornings of this ideal voyage to America, found the port side of the ship unpleasant, because of the sun's brilliance. From every tiny facet of the water, which a brisk breeze crinkled, the light flashed at her eyes with the quick vividness of electric sparks, ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... battered three-cocked hat; and his shrewd puckered resolute face, in which the boy could read no promise of sympathy, showing so white and phantom-like in the moonlight, was, as he thought, the incarnate ideal ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... plaster. It is wonderfully picturesque, with its partial covering of ivy and beautiful background of fine old trees, and no one can view the scene at sunset without recalling Gray's immortal Elegy written in a Country Churchyard—those exquisite verses which breathe in every line the peace of an ideal country scene. To a lover of Nature there can be nothing ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... imperfect world is not tarred and tarnished by something that detracts from its ideal character? It is enough that a man should be the right man in the right place, and this Mr. Darwin pre-eminently was. If he had been more like the ideal character which Mr. Allen endeavours to represent him, it is not likely that he would have been able to do as much, or nearly ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... less during the years of girlhood. Caroline obeyed the injunction; she became a very well-read woman, and never wrote stories for publication. She was, however, an admirable talker: able to invest common things with a point and spirit peculiarly her own. She was also an ideal aunt, both to nieces and nephews, who all owe a great deal ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... It Is the Central Nursery of Character.—The inevitable outcome of the new freedom, education and economic opportunity of women gives us the problem of the modern family. The ideal of the democracy we are trying to achieve is higher personality in all the mass of the people. The method of democracy so far as we can see is education, perfected and universalized, by which all the children of each generation may be developed physically, mentally, morally, and vocationally to ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... understand each other. Our marriage is physical and nothing more. My love—what is my love? I do not love her mind, her intellectual part. If I did, this frightful jealousy from which I suffer would be impossible. My ideal of the wife perfectly suited to me is far liker that girl at the public-house bar than Monica. Monica's independence of thought is a perpetual irritation to me. I don't know what her thoughts really are, what her intellectual ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... afflicted. In the first place, Christianity was a religion. It was neither a merely speculative nor a merely moral system. It took hold of the supernatural. Secondly, it presented to a corrupt society a moral ideal of spotless perfection. Thirdly, it offered, in the doctrine of the cross, a welcome solace,—consolation in life, with a sense of reconciliation, and the hope of everlasting good. Other causes, such as Gibbon enumerates, were operative. But these are themselves ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... the content of history comes to be distinguished from that of art. The distinction is secondary. Its origin will be found in what has already been observed as to the ideal character of the intuition or first perception, in which all is real and therefore nothing is real. The mind forms the concepts of external and internal at a later stage, as it does those of what has happened and of what is desired, of object and subject, and the like. Thus it distinguishes historical ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce |
