IDEALISM • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Idealism

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/aɪdˈilɪzəm/ Listen

Idealism

noun

(philosophy) the philosophical theory that ideas are the only reality.

Impracticality by virtue of thinking of things in their ideal form rather than as they really are.

Elevated ideals or conduct; the quality of believing that ideals should be pursued. Synonyms: high-mindedness, noble-mindedness.

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"Idealism" Quotes from Famous Books

... resumed their watch of Harietta. Denzil looked at him and did not speak for a while. He had always been drawn to Stepan, from a couple of terms at Oxford before the Russian was sent down for a mad freak, and did not return. He was such a mixture of idealism and brutal commonsense, a brain so alert and the warm heart of a generous child—capable of every frenzy and of every sacrifice. They had planned great things for their afterlives before the one joined his regiment, and learned discipline, and the other wandered over many lands—and as they sat ...

— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn

... other is at the very bottom of all marital unhappiness. The practical man despises his wife's impulsive idealism and tries to make her over. The wife despises his "cold and calculating" tendencies and tries to make him over. That means war, for it is impossible to make over ...

— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne

... reaction against all this in the romantic movement, the neo-Gothic monument of Scott is the most characteristic possible representative. Again, just as in the Oxford movement we had the (appropriately regional) renascence of the idealism of the Cavaliers, so in Edinburgh we have naturally the simultaneous renascence of the Puritan ideal, e.g., in the Free Church, whose monument accordingly rises to dominate the city in its turn. The later period of prosperous Liberalism, the heroic enthusiasms ...

— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes

... she chose that motto for herself. If the modern man were as much dominated by economic motives as is sometimes supposed, the suicidal results of such a conflict would have been apparent to all; but the poetry and idealism of human nature, no longer centred, as formerly, in religion, had gathered round a romantic patriotism, for which the belligerents were willing to sacrifice their all without counting the cost. Like other idealisms, patriotism varies from a noble devotion to ...

— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... announcing that if he got well he "would attend to that little matter himself." Much of the romance surrounding crime and criminals, on examination, "fades into the light of common day"—the obvious product not of idealism, but of well-calculated self-interest. ...

— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

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