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Ideals, Idealism The attainment of an ideal is often the beginning of a disillusion.    -- Stanley Baldwin Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality the cost becomes prohibitive.    -- William F. Buckley, Jr. Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem.    -- John Galsworthy An idealist believes the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.    -- Sidney J. Harris What we need most, is not so much to realize the ideal as to idealize the real.    -- H. F. Hedge When a man forgets his ideals, he may hope for happiness, but not till then.    -- John Oliver Hobbes Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.    -- Herbert Hoover Man is born a predestined idealist, for he is born to act. To act is to affirm the worth of an end, and to persist in affirming the worth of an end is to make an ideal.    -- Oliver Wendell Holmes The true ideal is not opposed to the real but lies in it; and blessed are the eyes that find it.    -- James Russell Lowell Do not use that foreign word 'ideals.' We have that excellent word 'lies.'    -- Henrik Ibsen An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.    -- H. L. Mencken The idealist is incorrigible. If he is turned out of his heaven, he makes an ideal out of his hell.    -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche Perfectionism is slow death.    -- Hugh Prather Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement.    -- Theodore Roosevelt In our ideals we unwittingly reveal our vices.    -- Jean Rostand Ideals are like the stars: we never reach them, but like the mariners of the sea, we chart our course by them.    -- Carl Schurz Ideals are thoughts. So long as they exist merely as thoughts, the power in them remains ineffective.    -- Albert Schweitzer We build statues out of snow, and weep to see them melt.    -- Walter Scott When they come downstairs from their Ivory Tower, idealists are apt to walk straight into the gutter.    -- Logan Pearsall Smith

Idleness Prolonged idleness paralyzes initiative.    -- Anon. Laziness grows on people; it begins in cobwebs and ends in iron chains.    -- Thomas Fowell Buxton Nine-tenths of the miseries and vices of mankind proceed from idleness.    -- Thomas Carlyle Idleness is the only refuge of weak minds, and the holiday of fools.    -- Lord Chesterfield We owe most of our great inventions and most of the achievements of genius to idleness--either enforced or voluntary. The human mind prefers to be spoon-fed with the thoughts of others, but deprived of such nourishment it will, reluctantly, begin to think for itself--and such thinking, remember, is original thinking and may have valuable results.    -- Agatha Christie Idleness is an inlet to disorder, and makes way for licentiousness. People who have nothing to do are quickly tired of their own company.    -- Jeremy Collier An idler is a watch that wants both hands, As useless if it goes as it stands.    -- William Cowper Absence of occupation is not rest; A mind quite vacant is a mind distress'd.    -- William Cowper That man is idle who can do something better.    -- Ralph Waldo Emerson An idle brain is the devil's workshop.    -- English Proverb Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears, while the used key is always bright.    -- Benjamin Franklin Purity of mind and idleness are incompatible.    -- Mahatma Gandhi Did nothing in particular, and did it very well.    -- William S. Gilbert Even if a farmer intends to loaf, he gets up in time to have an early start.    -- Edgar Watson Howe The way to be nothing is to do nothing.    -- Nathaniel Howe A loafer always has the correct time.    -- Kin (Frank McKinney) Hubbard Every man is, or hopes to be, an idler.    -- Samuel Johnson To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others and his idleness from himself.    -- Samuel Johnson It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.    -- Jerome K. Jerome Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.    -- Jerome K. Jerome If a soldier or labourer complains of the hardships of his lot, set him to do nothing.    -- Blaise Pascal There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is in having lots to do and not doing it.    -- J. Raper It is difficult to keep quiet if you have nothing to do.    -- Arthur Schopenhauer Idleness is the stupidity of the body, and stupidity is the idleness of the mind.    -- Johann G. Seume A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.    -- George Bernard Shaw What am I doing? Nothing. I am letting life rain upon me.    -- Rahel Varnhagen To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.    -- Oscar Wilde It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.    -- Virginia Woolf

Idols, Idolatry We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of idolatry.    -- Ralph Waldo Emerson Sacred cows make very poor gladiators.    -- Nikki Giovanni Man is a dog's ideal of what God should be.    -- Holbrook Jackson The idol is the measure of the worshipper.    -- James Russell Lowell Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.    -- Thomas Paine Idolatry is in a man's own thought, not in the opinion of another.    -- John Selden 'Tis mad idolatry To make the service greater than the god.    -- William Shakespeare When men have gone so far as to talk as though their idols have come to life, it is time that someone broke them.    -- Richard H. Tawney Whatever a man seeks, honors, or exalts more than God, this is the god of his idolatry.    -- William B. Ullathorne Rapine, avarice, expense, This is idolatry; and these we adore; Plain living and high thinking are no more.    -- William Wordsworth

Ignorance To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant    -- Amos Bronson Alcott Little wit in the head makes much work for the feet.    -- Anon. The trouble ain't that people are ignorant: it's that they know so much that ain't so.    -- Josh Billings I am not ashamed to confess I am ignorant of what I do not know.    -- Cicero What the eye does not see, the heart does not rue.    -- Mary Collyer Ignorance is the night of the mind, but a night without moon or star.    -- Confucius Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities.    -- George Eliot There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.    -- Ralph Waldo Emerson Ignorance is the necessary condition of life itself. If we knew everything we could not endure existence for a single hour.    -- Anatole France He that knows little often repeats it.    -- Thomas Fuller Ignorance, if not bliss, often saves a good deal of time.    -- Anthony Gilbert He knows so little and knows it so fluently.    -- Ellen Glasgow There is nothing more frightening than ignorance in action.    -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe When an idea is wanting, a word can always be found to take its place.    -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The most violent element in society is ignorance.    -- Emma Goldman Ignorance is the mother of presumption.    -- Marie de Gournay Where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise.    -- Thomas Gray When we are not sure, we are alive.    -- Graham Greene Ignorance is not bliss; ignorance is impotence; it is fear; it is cruelty; it is all the things that make for unhappiness.    -- Ingrid Holtby If ignorance is indeed bliss, it is a very low grade of the article.    -- Tehyi Hsieh Your ignorance cramps my conversation.    -- Bob Hope Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know.    -- Aldous Huxley Ignorance cannot always be inferred from inaccuracy; knowledge is not always present.    -- Samuel Johnson Art hath an enemy called Ignorance.    -- Ben Jonson Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.    -- Martin Luther King, Jr. Ignorance of the law must not prevent the losing attorney from collecting hid fee.    -- Legal Maxim Ignorance is a voluntary misfortune.    -- Nicholas Ling The empty vessel giveth a greater sound then the full barrel.    -- John Lyly It is a blind goose that cometh to the fox's sermon.    -- John Lyly Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge.    -- Horace Mann The know-nothings are, unfortunately, seldom the do-nothings.    -- Mignon McLaughlin Ignorance is the mother of all evils.    -- Michel de Montaigne There is an ABC ignorance which precedes knowledge and a doctoral ignorance which comes after it.    -- Michel de Montaigne Ignorance is of a peculiar nature. Once dispelled it is impossible to re-establish it.    -- Thomas Paine Ignorance is no excuse, it's the real thing.    -- Irene Peter From ignorance our comfort flows, The only wretched are the wise.    -- Matthew Prior If you are ignorant, you certainly can get into some interresting arguments.    -- Herbert Prochnow Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.    -- Will Rogers Against stupidity the very Gods themselves toil in vain.    -- Friedrich von Schiller Ignorance is degrading only when found in company with great riches.    -- Arthur Schopenauer Ignorance is the curse of God, Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.    -- William Skakespeare, Henry VI Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.    -- Sydney Smith Ignorant men Don't know what good they hold in their hands until They've flung it away.    -- Sophocles It may be that the ignorant man, alone, has any chance to mate his life with life.    -- Wallace Stevens Blind and naked Ignorance Delivers brawling judgements, unashamed.    -- Alfred Lord Tennyson The older we grow the greater becomes our wonder at how much ignorance one can contain without bursting one's clothes.    -- Mark Twain I would rather have my ignorance than another man's knowledge, because I have so much of it.    -- Mark Twain Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance is the death of knowledge.    -- Alfred North Whitehead I do not approve of anything which tampers with natural ignorance.    -- Oscar Wilde There is more stupidity around than hydrogen, and it has a longer shelf life.    -- Frank Zappa

Illness The difficulty with becoming a patient is that as soon as you get horizontal, part of your being yearns, not for a doctor, but for a medicine man.    -- Shana Alexander A man's illness is his private territory and, no matter how much he loves you and how close you are, you stay an outsider. You are healthy.    -- Lauren Bacall What a strange distance there is between ill people and well ones.    -- Winifred Holtby A disease and its treatment can be a series of humiliations, a chisel for humility.    -- Laurel Lee Apprehension, uncertainty, waiting, expectation, fear of surprise, do a patient more harm than any exertion.    -- Florence Nightingale Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.    -- Susan Sontag Sickness, like sex, demands a private room, or at the very least, a discreet curtain around the ward bed.    -- Violet Weingarten The sick soon come to understand that they live in a different world from that of the well and that the two cannot communicate.    -- Jessamyn West There is, let us confess it (and illness is the great confessional), a childish outspokenness in illness; things are said, truths blurted out, which the cautious respectability of health conceals.    -- Virginia Woolf Every invalid is a prisoner.    -- Marguerite Yourcenar

Illusion Some of my best friends are illusions. Been sustaining me for years.    -- Sheila Ballantyne A pleasant illusion is better than a harsh reality.    -- Christian Nestell Bovee We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament, and embrace it with a passion, if we want to be happy.    -- Cyril Connolly It is respectable to have no illusions, and safe, and profitable and dull.    -- Joseph Conrad magic lives in curves, not angles.    -- Mason Cooley If you ever do a survey, you'll find that people prefer illusion to reality, ten to one. Twenty, even.    -- Judith Guest Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion.    -- Arthur Koestler Therefore trust to thy heart, and to what the world calls illusions.    -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow An illusion which makes me happy is worth a verity which drags me to the ground.    -- Christopher Martin-Wieland It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.    -- W. Somerset Maugham The task of the real intellectual consists of analyzing illusions in order to discover their causes.    -- Arthur Miller Better a dish of illusion and a hearty appetite for life, than a feast of reality and indigestion therewith.    -- Harry A. Overstreet It takes a lot to wound a man without illusions.    -- Ellis Peters Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.    -- Mark Twain The one person who has more illusions than the dreamer is the man of action.    -- Oscar Wilde It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.    -- Virginia Woolf