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Utopian   /jutˈoʊpiən/   Listen
Utopian

adjective
1.
Of or pertaining to or resembling a utopia.
2.
Characterized by or aspiring to impracticable perfection.  "Utopian idealists" , "Recognized the utopian nature of his hopes"



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"Utopian" Quotes from Famous Books



... comfort and 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 ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... a beginning by men whose names are familiar to the Canadians. These were some of the pioneers of improvement, and some of them yet living have to combat the vulgar or interested reproach of being possessed with ideas of utopian schemes. But it is time to turn again to the baser things of Lower Canada. Lord Dalhousie, who had paid a visit to Nova Scotia, immediately after the prorogation of the parliament of Lower Canada, returned to Quebec in August. In October he established a new official Gazette. The commission of ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... of the fact that the views here expressed, may sound rather Utopian. But in this age of rush and bustle for place, preferment and national gain, by individuals and the nation; and in an age when anarchists, lynchers and murderers set at defiance all law and government; ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... in earnest, especially against his late master; all he has to do is to give him a thrust with his pike. Until he acts out the part he spouts it, and grows excited over his own tirades; his common sense gives way to the bombastic jargon of the revolution and to declamation, which completes the Utopian performance and eases his brain of its last modicum ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... extemporaneous work of fiction, got up to gratify the Hibernian anger at Ann, and that it wasn't in the least worth while to believe one thing more than another from the fact that any of the tribe said it. But she refuses to be comforted, and is so Utopian as to lie there, crying,—'Oh, if I only could get one that I could trust,—one that really would speak the truth to me,—one that I might know really went where she said she went, and really did as she said she did!' To have to live so, she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... wished that California would strike off a series of medals symbolic of some of the Utopian conditions which prevail there. I would like to suggest a model for one. I was walking once in the vicinity of the Ferry with a woman who knows the labor movement of California as well as an outsider may. Suddenly she whispered ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin

... strange times," returned Erasmus. "Methinks yonder phantom, be he skeleton or angel, will have snatched both of us away ere we behold the full issue either of thy preachings, or my Greek Testament, or of our More's Utopian images. Dost thou not feel as though we were like children who have set some mighty engine in motion, like the great water-wheels in my native home, which, whirled by the flowing streams of time and ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... Baltimore, Maryland, went early in 1915 with a message of fellowship from English people to German people. There was some surprise, some tendency to view the message as Utopian, but always a cordial acknowledgment and a real goodwill. Dr. Siegmund Schulze was most heartily in sympathy. "He feels that the ultimate hope of peace lies in the increasing use of arbitration." "One very sweet-spirited elderly gentleman in Berlin said that when he prayed things ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton

... 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 and suffocation of ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... eight hundred talents towards perfecting his history of animals. Surely it is not too much to say that this close friendship between the natural philosopher and the soldier has changed the whole course of civilisation to this very day. Do not consider me Utopian when I tell you, that I should like to see the study of physical science an integral part of the curriculum of every military school. I would train the mind of the lad who was to become hereafter ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley

... crowds; if he had nevertheless to have manufactures, he wanted protection in the interest of self-sufficiency. When he could not find these conditions in the real world, he went passionately into the wilderness, and founded Utopian communities far from foreign contacts. His slogans reveal his prejudice. He is for Self-Government, Self-Determination, Independence. Not one of these ideas carries with it any notion of consent or community beyond the frontiers of the self-governing groups. ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... 414 B.C. Euelpides and Pisthetaerus, disgusted with the state of things at Athens, build a new and improved city, Cloud-cuckoo-town, in the kingdom of the birds. Some see an allusion to the Sicilian expedition, and Alcibiades' Utopian schemes. ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... with Fanny's pearl," he replied placidly; "I was afraid they had been a legacy from your mother. I much prefer them to have been William's—it will give them such a Utopian sparkle." ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... Only one dirty thing is safe from this all-powerful corporation, and that is the legisiative delegation from the city. If the refuse matter were taken from that, there would be nothing left. It has been proposed that the Legislature itself should be purified; but this idea is Utopian, PUNCHINELLO fears. If Niagara were squirted through its halls, the water would be dirtied, but the halls would not be cleansed. Alas, poor city! Trampled under the heels of the aristocratic HONG and PENNY BUNN, what is there to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various

... been imported from Germany. Marx, Engels, Lassalle, Rodbertus, and various other Germans are the fathers of modern scientific Socialism. "To German scholars is largely due the development of Socialism from the Utopian stage to the scientific. Universality is its distinguishing feature."[264] "Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in 1847 laid, through the 'Communist Manifesto,' the scientific foundation of modern Socialism."[265] "And 'Capital,' Karl Marx's great work, ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... land, and Fairies of Spenser, have no connection with popular superstition, being only words used to denote an Utopian scene of action, and imaginary or allegorical characters; and the title of the "Fairy Queen" being probably suggested by the elfin mistress of Chaucer's Sir Thopas. The stealing of the Red Cross Knight, while a child, is the only incident in the poem which approaches ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott

... 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 ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... no contribution To discuss the Constitution And the Spanish war's forgot For a new Utopian spot; And the very latest phase Is ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson

... 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 ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... 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

... of parish magazines always be written by the clergy? Is it Utopian to hope that a day will dawn when it will be perceived even by clerical editors that Apostolic Succession does not invariably confer literary talent? What can an intelligent artisan think when he reads—what he reads—in his parish ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley

... George Sand's French critics, M. Caro, a member of the Academy, who deals somewhat austerely with her religiose enthusiasms and with her Utopian projects for social reformation, remarks gravely ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... one to which the political architect should give heed. An equality of conditions, of political powers and privileges, which has no solid basis in an equality of capacity or fitness, is one of the wildest and most impracticable of all Utopian dreams. If in the divine government such an equality should prevail, it is evident that all order would be overthrown, all justice extinguished, and utter confusion would reign. In like manner, if in human government such equality should exist, it would be only for a moment Indeed, to aim at an equality ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... great ideal Latin union. Wonderful is his optimism. Some of the Felibres about him are somewhat discouraged, many of them have never set their aspirations as high as he has done, and some look upon his dreams as Utopian. Whatever be the future of the movement he has founded, Mistral's life in its simple oneness, and in its astonishing success, is indeed most remarkable. Provence, the land that first gave the world a literature after the decay of the classic tongues, has awakened again under his ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer

... cults. In the parlor of her home she had listened to frank, fantastic discussions; to lawless theories. These discussions, beginning anywhere, ended always with the reform of the marriage relation. Anarchist, socialist, nihilist, atheist, Utopian, altruist—all tinkered with the family group, as if they recognized that the civilization they were at war with rested upon this and ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... d'Orleans is named Lieutenant-general of France. It is asserted, that this appointment has been effected by the influence of General Lafayette over the provisional government; but how little in accordance is this measure with the well-known Utopian scheme of a republic, which has for years been the favourite dream of ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... be logical,' he said next morning. 'Let's be logical and hopeful—yet not too hopeful, not utopian. Let's look the matter courageously in the face. Since she rode there once, why may she not ride again in the Sentier des Contrebandiers? Why mayn't she ride there often—even daily? I think that's logical. Don't you think ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... (King of Utopia) Scaphio and Phantis (Judges of the Utopian Supreme Court) Tarara (The Public ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... territory nearly equal in area to the whole of Europe, carried on by a republican government elected by universal suffrage, and guaranteeing to every tiniest village its full meed of local independence,—the very idea of all this would have been scouted as a thoroughly impracticable Utopian dream. And such scepticism would have been quite justifiable, for European history did not seem to afford any precedents upon which such a forecast of the future could be logically based. Between the various nations of Europe there has certainly ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske

... 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 of an evil weed, it ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... of the Girondins, and of the pure, altruistic, Utopian Republicanism for which they stood; and whilst he lived and laboured, their own endeavours to influence the people were all in vain. From his vile lodging in the Rue de l'Ecole de Medecine in Paris he span with his clever, wicked pen a web that ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... importance of New Orleans as a commercial city, and commenced to identify himself with the American population, and to make this his future home. His ideas on this subject were in advance of those of many whose business had always been commerce, and they were generally deemed Utopian and extravagant; but his self-reliance was too great to heed any ridicule thrown upon any thought or enterprise of his. He invested his limited means in property in the second municipality, and lent himself, heart and soul, in connection ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... sir; I am exceedingly prosaic in my views, and cherish no Utopian dreams and theories. I do indeed take the old matter-of-fact world as I find it, and try to make the ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... People think that dreamers do no harm. They are mistaken: dreamers do a great heal of harm. Even apparently inoffensive utopian ideas really exercise a noxious influence. They tend to inspire disgust ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... his schemes, wishes, and anticipations. To her he would unfold the various plans he was continually cogitating. Agnes would listen, sympathizingly sometimes, but reverently always. She never called or thought him a Visionary. If his plans for the regeneration of the world were Utopian and impracticable, it was the world that was in fault, not he. To her he was the dearest of brothers, who would one day be acknowledged the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... of the school will arrest his attention is almost certain. Utopia belongs to a county which is proverbial for the dullness of its rustics, but there is no sign of dullness on the face of any Utopian child. On the contrary, so radiantly bright are the faces of the children that something akin to sunshine seems always to fill the school. When he gets to know the school, the visitor will realise that the brightness ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... left is the ideal upheld by Socialism, the ideal of the Co-operative Commonwealth in which the economic conditions will give birth to the highest, purest, most altruistic ethics the world has yet seen. It is true the co-operative commonwealth is far more than a Utopian ideal, it is a scientific prediction, but at this point I wish to emphasize its function as ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte

... any utopian dreams as to the possibility of inaugurating an era of universal peace, it may, I think, be held that, in spite of the wars which have occurred during the last half century, not merely an ardent desire for peace, but also a dislike—I may almost say a genuine horror—of ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... 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

... parish and state of society Arthur's father had been thrown at the age of twenty-five—a young married parson, full of faith, hope, and love. He had battled with it like a man, and had lots of fine Utopian ideas about the perfectibility of mankind, glorious humanity, and such-like, knocked out of his head, and a real, wholesome Christian love for the poor, struggling, sinning men, of whom he felt himself one, and with and for whom he spent fortune, and strength, and life, driven into his heart. ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... Wilson were very loyal to the old "Discovery" men we had with us and Scott was impressed with my man, Cheetham, the Merchant Service boatswain, and could not quite make out how "Alf," as the sailors called him, got so much out of the hands—this little squeaky-voiced man—I think we hit on Utopian conditions for working the ship. There were no wasters, and our seamen were the pick of the British Navy and Mercantile Marine. Most of the Naval men were intelligent petty officers and were as fully alive as the merchantmen ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans

... celebrated—of Rabelais's imaginations is that of the Abbey of Theleme [Thelema]. This constitutes a kind of Rabelaisian Utopia. It was proper of the released monk to give his Utopian dream the form of an abbey, but an abbey in which the opposite should obtain of all that he had so heartily hated in his own monastic experience. A humorously impossible place and state was the Abbey of Theleme,—a kind of sportive Brook Farm set far away in a ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... 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 some more ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various

... process which the learned describe as an attempt to produce the present curve of evolution into the future. First, then, as to the temper of mind in which an autonomous Ireland will face the world. The one clear certainty is that it will not be rhetorical or Utopian. Of all the libels with which we are pelted the most injurious to our repute is a kindly libel, that which represents us as a nation of orators. To the primitive Tory the Nationalist "agitator" appears ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... the Powers to her House at the Hague With promises specious and welcome though vague Of a time when the terrors of war should lie hid And the leopard fall headlong in love with the kid, She drew up a set of Utopian rules For the guidance of all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various

... more recent experiments in regard to the school and its kindred institutions are co-operative in principle and in method, but it is probably Utopian to conceive an educational method which shall achieve the highest success without having included within it the element of competition. If competition is a method obtaining outside the school it is bound ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various

... quantities of other grain, with beef, mutton, pork, butter, cheese, and wool in 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 half-dozen years ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various

... 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 ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... the Jagellon dynasty, Sigismund I. and II., and that of their predecessor, John Sobieski, the principles of these seminaries might be considered sound. But soon after the death of the last-named monarch, when the latent mischief contained in the Utopian idea of the perfection of an always elective monarchy began to shake the stability of even the monarchy itself, certain of the public teachers evinced correspondent signs of this destructive species of freemasonry; and about the same period the Voltaire venom of infidelity against all ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... you do not know them—and how could you?—you, a man who lived the greater part of your life in a monastery apart from your fellows, apart from the problems, apart from the battle against conditions that make men—men. You, in the seclusion of your own kind, conceived dreams of Utopian madness and you came forth and cast your foolish fancies like a net upon the ignorant. And now you find your failings; you see the petty smallness of your ideals and you retreat—back into your abbey like a frightened crab creeping ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor

... capital invested. He has the best of men in his employ and they are all well paid and industrious; all well-to-do, able to live well, educate their children well, and have time for some culture and recreation for themselves and their families. I told him that his ideas were Utopian, but he says they have succeeded even better than he expected they would. But there will come a crash some time, I am sure. There must be rich and there must be poor in this world, or the Scriptures ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... sons it 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 ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... affairs, the busy politician, the rhetorician, the eulogist of society as it is, the believer in material progress, in the ultimate triumph of all that is practical and commonplace, and in the final discomfiture of all that is visionary and Utopian. The Teufelsdroeckhian dialect is obscure even to its select students: the Macaulay sentence is plain as that of Swift himself. Carlyle's gospel is full of passion, novelty, suggestion, theory, and social problems. Macaulay turned his back on social problems and disdained any kind of gospel. ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison

... unexplored regions, covered by interminable forests, where savages lay in wait, athirst for blood. We hear without surprise that wise and prudent men looked upon the early attempts to take possession of America as not less wild and visionary than the legendary exploits of Amadis de Gaul; but what Utopian dreamer, what poet soaring in the high regions of his fancy, could have imagined two centuries and a half ago the beauty, the power, the free and majestic sweep of the stream of human life which has poured across this continent? Who could have dared ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding

... strengthened the hands of the conservative party, opposed and prevented the formation of a body of reformers who, like Gizzi and Pius IX., would have labored intelligently to forward the cause of reform, never losing sight of the great principles of humanity and justice, never sacrificing to Utopian theories inalienable rights, above all the rights of property—the very groundwork of the social fabric. Without the aid and countenance of a body of reformers, the able ministry that now surrounded the Pope found it difficult to proceed. They could not determine for any important constitutional ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... you could have heard what my father was reading to us this morning out of Stewart's "North America;" not Utopian dreams of some imaginary land of plenty and fertility, but sober statements of authentic fact, telling of the existence of unnumbered leagues of the richest soil that ever rewarded human industry an hundredfold; ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... reader, 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 them to become soldiers, and take chance of a bullet ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... the Roman world. The mind of the East was best adapted to it, and those who taught it were, consequently, nearly all Greeks. Cicero had made it fashionable among many of his countrymen; and although the Latin mind, always practical to the verge of utilitarianism, was not congenial to utopian speculations, still, as it was the fashion, all intellectual men felt the need of becoming sufficiently acquainted with it to be able to speak of it and even to embrace some particular school. Those patricians, who remained attached to the stern principles of the old republic, became Stoics; while ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... that even an equilibrium between sexuality and love cannot always be established, while a genuine and complete unification is very unusual and may, perhaps, be called utopian. In the previous chapters I have dealt with the blending of both elements in the highest form of eroticism; in the following I will attempt to throw light on some of the principal phenomena resulting from a defective union of ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... HAROLD. Utopian idiotcies. They did not last three Junes. Such rampant weeds Strangle each other, die, and make the soil For Caesars, Cromwells, and Napoleons To root their power in. I have freed myself From all such dreams, and some will say because I have inherited my Uncle. Let them. But—shamed of you, my ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... they said it really did not matter. What they wanted was, free poaching, free private whiskey-stills, free land, and a large head of game, to be kept up by the proprietor, for the benefit of the glen, as in old times. I said that these seemed to me to be Utopian demands. If you all fish, and shoot, and drown the keepers in the linn, I urged, there will soon be no game left for any of you. No Game-laws, I observed, and you will obviously have no poaching. There will ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 30, 1892 • Various

... able to bring about that Utopian form of government which we all desire, but we can at least make an effort. Under our form of government the ballot is our right; it is just and proper. When you debate about the expediency of any matter you have no right to say that it is inexpedient to do right. Do right and ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.

... and popular both with girls and parents, had clung to old-fashioned methods, and had been very difficult to move in the matter of modern innovations. She had always put on the curb when the second mistress's fertile imagination had pranced away on Utopian lines. To an ardent spirit, steeped in new race-ideals, and longing for an opportunity of serving her generation, it was a proud moment when she suddenly found herself in a position to carry out her pet schemes unchecked. On this first day of the new term she moved ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... first his criminal tendencies, because he 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, ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... his son replied carelessly. "I don't remember Uncle Phil much. Jeff's a queer fellow, full of Utopian notions about brotherhood and that sort of thing. But he's practical in a way. He gets things done in spite of ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine

... of Bacon are seldom read, and may be passed over lightly. We mention only, as indicative of his wide range, his History of Henry VII, his Utopian romance The New Atlantis, his Advancement of Learning and his Novum Organum. The last two works, one in English, the other in Latin, were parts of the Instauratio Magna, or The Great Institution of True Philosophy, a colossal work which Bacon did not ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... story, of course, to Peter, who had the easy-chair beside me, and so it was to Morris, who had helped Miss Felicia carry out so Utopian a scheme, but it had come to me as a complete surprise, and I ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith

... 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 drift of your ...
— 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

... homeward, musing thoughtfully: "This is a strange world," she soliloquized. "Let philosophers air their utopian theories about its containing the elements of universal happiness. I know that human nature, as it is now constituted, is too selfish and mean to arrive at a state of absolute perfection. Truly, 'men are a little breed.' 'But, in the future, when that ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock

... of lapses and defects, it is an undeniable historical fact that these are the principles which have been wrought out and applied in the administration of the British Empire during the nineteenth century. They are not vague and Utopian dreams; they are a matter of daily practice. If they can be applied by one of the world-states, and that the greatest, why should they not be applied by the rest? But if these principles became universal, is it not apparent that all danger of a catastrophic war between these powers would be ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir

... that Shelley was in no sense an inflammatory demagogue; however visionary may have been the hopes he indulged, he based those hopes upon the still more Utopian foundation of a sudden ethical reform, and preached a revolution without bloodshed. We find in them, moreover, the germs of "The Revolt of Islam", where the hero plays the part successfully in fiction, which the poet had attempted ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... begun to enumerate them. Take, for instance, that old pacifist gag, that Utopian dream that is crystallized in the words: 'The road to universal peace.' All the long years when we were not bothered by wars or rumors of wars, other nations were whittling each other to pieces. And these agonized ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... taken a keen interest in this momentous question, this dream of a regenerated mankind. He had read Karl Marx and other socialistic writers, and while his essentially practical mind could hardly approve all their programme for reorganizing the State, some of which seemed to him utopian, extravagant and even undesirable, he realised that the socialistic movement was growing rapidly all over the world and the day was not far distant when in America, as to-day in Germany and France, it would be a formidable factor to ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein

... the ancient order of things, had viewed with satisfaction the substitution of the Consular for the Directorial government, and entertained no personal dislike to the First Consul. Among the Chateaux, more than anywhere else, it had always been the custom to cherish Utopian ideas respecting the management of public affairs, and to criticise the acts of the Government. It is well known that at this time there was not in all France a single old mansion surmounted by its two weathercocks which had not a systems of policy peculiar to itself, and in which the question ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... of Wilson and Hogg. The former came to Edinburgh in 1815, with the view of practising at the Scottish bar, so that Bell had no opportunities of visiting him at his beautiful residence at Elleray, on the banks of Lake Windermere, where for years previously he had lived in Utopian health and happiness, "surrounded by the finest of scenery, and varying his poem-writing and halcyon peace, with walking excursions and jovial visits from friends that, like himself, entered with zest into the hearty enjoyment of ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans

... 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

... Such a pretension seems Utopian, and one asks oneself curiously what sort of balance the astronomers must have adopted in order to calculate the weight of Sun, ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion

... Cyril never wanted to be different from Guy, his was by far the stronger nature of the two: he was content to be himself without regard to his brother. But Nevitt didn't say so. Indeed, why should he? He merely went on playing a few disconnected bars of a very lively, hopeful utopian sort of a tune—a tune all youth and health, and go and gaiety—as he interjected from time to time some brief financial remarks on the numerous good strokes he'd pulled off of late in his transactions ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen

... forbearance for which our countrymen were once distinguished, continue to be cherished. If this continues to be the ruling passion of our souls, the weaker feeling of the mistaken enthusiast will be corrected, the Utopian dreams of the scheming politician dissipated, and the complicated intrigues of the demagogue rendered harmless. The spirit of liberty is the sovereign balm for every injury which our institutions may receive. On the contrary, no care that can be used in the construction of our Government, no ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... degrade the dignity of man, as to treat this proposition as an impossible and Utopian dream? We ask, how many prisoners of war have ever broken their parole, and if officers and soldiers are ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... parts would feel inwardly, and what physical and moral effects a battle would have upon those civilians who inhabited and owned the battlefield. Whether or no the future will prove the truth of the author's somewhat Utopian conclusions, he certainly founds them upon a most exciting and convincing story, in which the "love interest" is as powerful as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various

... Priam Farll to approach the Utopian. It seemed to breathe of romance—the romance of common sense and kindliness and simplicity. It made his own existence to that day appear a futile and unhappy striving after the impossible. Art? What was it? What did it lead to? He was sick of art, and sick of all the forms of activity ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett

... "The idea is Utopian, but I have often thought how pleasant life would be were there no rents ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn

... 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

... police 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 for the ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee

... utilise the secular arm as a means for giving to themselves a place of sovereignty; and still less could they have succeeded WITHOUT the king on whom they were so completely dependent. In short, the claims they make in the Law would in the pre-exilic period have been regarded as utopian in the strict sense of that word; they allow of explanation only by the circumstances which from the beginning of the Chaldaean rule, and still more that of the Persians, lent themselves to the formation of a hierocracy, to which, as to the truly national and moreover divine authority, the people ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... reduction in the army and navy establishments was necessary. This Gallatin soon found to be too radical a measure for success, either in the cabinet or Congress, however well it may have accorded with Jefferson's utopian views. In the budget of 1802 the internal revenue, $650,000, was, therefore, a necessary item. The expenditures ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... haphazard, but it is not so careless as it seems. I believe it to be—even now that I am through with the book—the best way to a sort of lucid vagueness which has always been my intention in this matter. I tried over several beginnings of a Utopian book before I adopted this. I rejected from the outset the form of the argumentative essay, the form which appeals most readily to what is called the "serious" reader, the reader who is often no more than the solemnly impatient parasite of great ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... Prince Bismarck immediately realized the Utopian character of the scheme, saw its impracticability, and proceeded to condemn it with more than his ordinary irritability and brusquerie. Finding, however, that the emperor was not to be argued out of the idea of holding a labor ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy

... to a time when the workers of the community may be grouped in co-operative bodies, either competing with one another, or related by some bond which shall minimize the friction of competition, while not impairing the freedom and integrity of each several group, is not perhaps a wild utopian vision. To students of English industrial history the transition to such a state will not appear more marked than the transition through which industry passed under the Industrial Revolution to the present capitalist system. ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson

... chef, had two years previously been put into a laboratory to devote his soul to the enlargement of his art; and he and that tenor lived in suites of the Boodah such as most princes would consider Utopian. ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... be taken at once," insisted Gorham. "I told you, gentlemen, that I had awakened from my Utopian dream. I shall make no more promises until I am absolutely certain that they will be ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt

... believe that you are not wrong," murmured Crisostomo in a low voice, "when you say that justice should seek to do good by rewarding virtue and educating the criminals. Only, it's impossible, Utopian! And where could be secured so much money, so many ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... objected to by some of the most highly developed Negro thought of the present day, the increasing tendency towards retaliation should be attributed partly to the American Negro's metamorphosis since the colossal struggle for that Utopian dream—a World's Democracy. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... the cock-pit for 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 on such ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... you have Mr. B. Some day, perhaps, he may read this letter and realise how extremely awkward an inflexible standard of morality can make things for one's neighbours. The last sentence of all has a pathetic ring, as of a Utopian throwing up the sponge: "I think much better to add little serpent-like wisdom to upright manhood and thus found good ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various

... defend the country; and he does not perceive that these riches would have fallen principally into the hands of turbulent and grasping courtiers, as happened in the sixteenth century.[737] He is carried away by his own reasonings, so that the Utopian or paradoxical character of his statements escape him. Wanting to minimise the power of the popes, he protests against the rules followed for their election, and goes on to say concerning the vote by ballot: "Sith ther ben fewe wise men, and foolis ben without ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... thing, "Co-operation," while utterly lacking in the Utopian qualities with which the word artist paints it, is a decidedly bigger factor in American affairs than ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings

... also 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 to be re-absorbed into some form of 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 dangerous or ludicrous sides of transcendentalism ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... keep on doing it, who can tell what an influence would come from some hundreds of new workers for Christ? And why should the existence of a church in which the workers are as numerous as the Christians be an Utopian dream? It is simply the dream that perhaps a church might be conceived to exist, all the members of which had found out their plainest, most imperative duty, and were ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... found it difficult to carry out the scheme described in the last chapter. They indeed who know anything of such matters will be inclined to call it Utopian, and to say that one so wise in worldly matters as our schoolmaster should not have attempted to combine so many things. He wanted a gentleman, a schoolmaster, a curate, a matron, and a lady,—we ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope

... Elliston's plan. Lapierre, however, had his own eminently more practical, if less Utopian, ideas concerning the erection of a trading-post; for in the quarter-breed's mind the planting of an independent trading-post upon the very threshold of MacNair's wilderness empire was of far greater importance than the establishment of a school, or mission, or any other institution—especially ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx

... 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 ...
— The Venus Trap • Evelyn E. Smith

... Fowler, the Oxford Professor of Logic, which treat of the department of Fallacies. Perhaps Bentham's Book of Fallacies is too political for me to commend it to you here. But if there happens to be any one in Birmingham who is fond of meeting proposed changes by saying that they are Utopian; that they are good in theory, but bad in practice; that they are too good to be realised, and so forth, then I can promise him that he will in that book hear of something very much to ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 1: On Popular Culture • John Morley

... men that profess a wish to do away with all State organizations, for the sake of a morbid Individualism. Others there are who, in the semi-revolutionary vein of Comte, incline towards a socialist Collectivism in a rather utopian, not to say hierarchic, form. To them the word "Nihilist" is ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... himself by smelling the roast beef he cannot hope to taste. But there was still a third class who visited the German theatre, not in derision, not from curiosity, not from a desire to imitate the nobles in their amusements, but with the seemingly Utopian hope of building up the German drama. Amongst these were the scholars, who pronounced the dramas of Gottsched far superior to those of Corneille and Racine; there were the German patriots, who would ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... 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. The wit has become for him the mere fop, ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... is certainly the most marvellous that has ever been imagined—quite a town, with its forts, ramparts, cannon, boulevards, and galleries. One can understand the many squibs and satires which so Utopian ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion

... 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 ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme

... long as it is adopted quietly, and if suspicions are awakened a few heart-stirring speeches in the old orthodox vein suffice to allay them. A formal repudiation of old ideas is quite another thing. Just as Utopian is the project of defending Tory institutions on Democratic principles. There are two arsenals from which political combatants may choose their weapons, the historical and the scientific. It is from the former that the champion equips himself who offers battle on behalf of ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... name certain curious theories which have been put forth to account for the origin of Masonry in general, and of the organization of the Grand Lodge in particular. They are as follows: First, that it was all due to an imaginary Temple of Solomon described by Lord Bacon in a Utopian romance called the New Atlantis; and this despite the fact that the temple in the Bacon story was not a house at all, but the name of an ideal state. Second, that the object of Freemasonry and the origin of the Third Degree was the restoration of Charles II to the throne of ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton

... all Utopian thoughts: I have dallied long enough with life; 'tis time to be in earnest. I have a fond, an aged mother to care for: and some other bosom ties perhaps equally tender. Where the individual only suffers by the consequences of his own thoughtlessness, indolence, or folly, ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... the 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 ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... it was likely to get out of control, and scarcely likely to obey the slight lever which worked it. There were many shakings of the engineering heads, and some smiles, with many an 'I told you so.' Even to the outsiders it seemed Utopian. ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald

... 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

... not easy. But its objective possibility with witness and accused is at least a fact. It is excluded only where it is most obviously necessary— in the case of the jury, and the impossibility in this case turns the institution of trial by jury into a Utopian dream. The presiding officer of a jury court is in the best instances acquainted with a few of the jurymen, but never so far as to have been entrusted with their "funded thought.'' Now and then, when a juryman asks a question, one gets a glimpse of it, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... sustained, and saved her. Perhaps this morality will be found light, easy, and joyous; but what matters the cause, provided the effect subsists? What matters the direction of the roots, if the flower blooms brilliant and perfumed. But let us descend from our Utopian sphere, and return to the cause ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... of his time, if not the moralists of all time, when he proposed to accept human nature as it is as a basis for political science. Herbert Spencer insisted upon the futility of expecting "golden conduct from leaden instincts." To the utopian social reformers of his day he pointed out a series of welfare measures in England in which the outcome was the direct opposite of the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... to lay the broadest possible basis of evolutionary science, of geographic and historic fact, for what would otherwise be open to ridicule as a Utopian hope, that of Civics as Applied Social Art, that I have insisted at such length above upon Civics ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes

... Utopian dreams," said the king. "Whence should this voice come? Who would be so audacious ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach

... upon the historical character of every miraculous account, while we are indignant if any one demands an equally literal rendering of the precepts concerning human conduct? He that hath two coats is not to give to him that hath none: this would be 'visionary,' 'utopian,' 'wholly unpractical,' and so forth. Or, again, he that is smitten on the one cheek is not to turn the other to the smiter, but to hand the offender over to the law; nor are the commands relative to indifference as to the morrow and a neglect of ordinary prudence ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler

... he can't relax a little, just among us 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 ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill

... 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 ...
— Some Cities and San Francisco and Resurgam • Hubert Howe Bancroft

... the book has given an adjective to our language—we call an impracticable scheme Utopian. Yet, under the veil of a playful fiction, the talk is intensely earnest, and abounds in practical suggestion. It is the work of a scholarly and witty Englishman, who attacks in his own way the chief political and social evils of his time. Beginning ...
— Utopia • Thomas More

... not proposing a remedy for our present social and economic condition. Looking backward, we see this. The scheme may not be practical, any more than the Utopian plans that have been put forward, but it is radical and interesting, and requires, as the other schemes do, a total change in human nature (which may be a good thing to bring about), and a general recasting of the conditions of life. This is and should be no objection to a socialistic ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... nodded. "With a number on it perhaps—a number on a large disk of metal strapped round the left arm? D. K. F. 78,910—that sort of thing?" It was even so. "And all of them, men and women alike, looking very well cared for? Very Utopian, and smelling rather strongly of carbolic, and all of them quite hairless?" I was right every time. Soames was only not sure whether the men and women were hairless or shorn. "I hadn't time to look at them very ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm

... more vehement 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

... Panormitan or Tudeschis (Commentar. in Quinque Libros Decretalium) apply the term nullatenenses to titular and utopian bishops? See ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various

... group of children. Personally, I should like, while the child is very young, I mean in main, not in years, to exclude the element of dramatic excitement, but though this may be possible for the individual child, it is quite Utopian to hope that we can keep the average child free from what is in the atmosphere. Children crave for excitement, and unless we give it to them in legitimate form, they will take it in any riotous form it presents itself, and if from our experience we can control their mental digestion ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock

... 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 ("Les Paysans") and Zola ("La Terre"), as Paradise ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... army corps every day for lunch, with 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 in ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... is 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

... 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 ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... of a commonwealth or weal-publique," quoth he. But, in the meantime, I, Thomas More, as I cannot agree and consent to all things that he said, so must I needs confess and grant that many things be in the Utopian weal-publique which in our cities I may rather wish for ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... radical revolution which is a utopian dream for Germany, not the general human emancipation, but rather the partial, the merely political revolution, the revolution which leaves the pillars of the house standing. Upon what can a partial, ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx

... and that we need not be troubled with its immediate fulfilment. The visionary who believes in his own most frantic vision is always noble and useful. It is the visionary who does not believe in his vision who is the dreamer, the idler, the Utopian. This then is the second moral virtue of the older school, an immense direct sincerity of action, a cleansing away, by the sweats of hard work, of all those subtle and perilous instincts of mere ethical castle-building which have been woven like the spells of an enchantress, ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... marches and parades and great cleansings of implements and of streets, with regulations of the strictest, anticipating all the different occasions for punishment, a thousand fatigues, each with as many harsh knocks, the litany of optimist phrases, abstruse and utopian, in the orders of the day, and a captain who chiefly concerned himself with the two hundred cartridges and the reserve rations. The regiment had no losses, or almost none; a few wounds during reliefs, and sometimes one or two deaths which were announced like accidents. ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... artistic activity should seem, to my contemporaries, Utopian, I would point out that it has existed throughout the past, and in states of society infinitely worse than are ever likely to recur. For even slaves and serfs could make unto themselves some kind of art befitting their conditions; and even the most despotic ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... true that one may imagine possible worlds without sin and without unhappiness, and one could make some like Utopian or Sevarambian romances: but these same worlds again would be very inferior to ours in goodness. I cannot show you this in detail. For can I know and can I present infinities to you and compare them together? But you must judge ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz



Words linked to "Utopian" :   utopia, visionary, airy, Laputan, meliorist, perfect, windy, crusader, social reformer, reformist, dystopian, impractical, reformer, utopian socialism



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