The attainment of an ideal is often the beginning of a disillusion.

The actual well seen is ideal.

Nearly all the Escapists in the long past have managed their own budget and their social relations so unsuccessfully that I wouldn't want them for my landlords, or my bankers, or my neighbors. They were valuable, like powerful stimulants, only when they were left out of the social and industrial routine.

I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.

When your dreams tire, they go underground and out of kindness that's where they stay.

Idealist: a cynic in the making.

If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards.

Ideals are like the stars: we never reach them, but like the mariners of the sea, we chart our course by them.

A man gazing on the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the road.

When they come downstairs from their Ivory Towers, idealists are very apt to walk straight into the gutter.

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.