Ideal Quotes

“Supererogation”

“High ideals make a people strong. … decay comes when ideals wane.”

“Ideal (ethics)”

“The further you progress, the higher the ideal of perfection toward which you strive rises.”

“As soon as the higher ideal is put before us, all false ideals will fade away as the stars fade away when they meet the sun.”

“Let the will embrace the highest ideals freely and with infinite strength, but let action first take hold of what lies closest.”

“The tradesman scarcely ever gives an ideal worth to his work, but is ridden by the routine of his craft, and the soul is subject to dollars.”

“Let the young lovers know that the ideal is the only safe bond. In the difficult night the youth knows his beloved by the light she carries and she him.”

“A great affliction of all Philistines is that idealities afford them no entertainment, but to escape from boredom they are always in need of realities.”

“Obviousley, it will not do to take our ideal from the principle of nature; for the simple reason that (except for some human or divine theory), there is no principle in nature.”

“Place before thyself the ideal of perfection, not that of happiness, for by doing what makes thee wiser and better, thou shalt find the peace and joy in which happiness consists.”

““Nothing but ambition, nothing but the desire to get on, that's all there is in his soul,” she thought; “as for these lofty ideals, love of culture, religion, they are only so many tools for getting on.””

“The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle.”

“The Real and the Ideal! What harm has been done by this senseless antithesis! The Ideal is by far the realest thing on earth, as political economists and statesmen are beginning to find out through their mistakes.”

“The development of an individual will invariably be in the direction of his ideal, and will partake largely of the nature and character of that ideal. ... Is the object of his thought lofty in its character, so is he. Is it low, so is he. We rise or fall, we ascend or descend, according to our ideals.”

“There are as many gods as there are ideals. And further, the relation of the true artist and the true human being to his ideals is absolutely religious. The man for whom this inner divine service is the end and occupation of all his life is a priest, and this is how everyone can and should become a priest.”

“When men of the better class form a society for promoting some noble or ideal aim, the result almost always is that the innumerable mob of humanity comes crowding in too. ... Some of them will slip into that society, or push themselves in, and then either soon destroy it altogether, or alter it so much that in the end it comes to have a purpose the exact opposite of that which it had at first.”

“How strong that desire of improvement in the human mind, which is the companion, if it be not the condition, of genius! — that ideality, I mean, that always runs ahead of actuality. Achievement is only the eminence whence we survey something better to be achieved. Ideality is only the avant-courier of the mind, and where that, in a healthy and normal state, goes, I hold it to be a prophecy that realization can follow.”

“It is in this realm of ideas that humanity is not a free agent. . . . Once an idea becomes an ideal, humanity can freely reject or accept it, but ideas come from a higher source and are imposed... whether men want them or not. Upon the use made of these ideas (which are in the nature of divine emanations, embodying the divine plan for planetary progress) will depend the rapidity of humanity's progress, or its retardation for lack of understanding.”

“There are those who see a great mystery in the presence of eternal values in a moving and animal world, and think to solve that dualism, as they call it, by denying that nature can have spiritual functions and spirit a natural cause; but nothing can be simpler if we make, as we should, existence the test of possibility. Ab esse ad posse valet illatio. Nature is a perfect garden of ideals, and passion is the perpetual and fertile soil for poetry, myth, and speculation.”