IDEALIST • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Idealist

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/aɪdˈilɪst/ Listen

noun

Idealist n.

One who idealizes; one who forms picturesque fancies; one given to romantic expectations.

One who holds the doctrine of idealism, in any sense. In senses 4 and 5 of idealism, opposed to realist.

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Etymology of 'Idealist'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Idealist" Quotes from Famous Books

... breaches of parole, by which our prisoners of one day were in the field against us on the next, called imperatively for an example, and it was probably rather for his broken faith than for his hare-brained scheme that Cordua died. At the same time it is impossible not to feel sorrow for this idealist of twenty-three who died for a cause which was not his own. He was shot in the garden of Pretoria Gaol upon August 24th. A fresh and more stringent proclamation from Lord Roberts showed that the British Commander was losing his patience in the face of the wholesale ...

— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... mean? But that is what everyone—once we were at war— refused to remember. And so we cried "Lusitania!" against thousands of men who had no choice in the matter at all. Remedy? There's only one. Somehow we must get men to believe that Christ wasn't a mad idealist when He preached His Sermon on the Mount; that what He showed for the world's salvation then was not a sign only, but the very Instrument itself. We've got to make men see that there's something in human nature waiting to respond to a new law. There are two things ...

— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman

... faculty of respectful admiration highly developed, but he doesn't use it with much judgment; in fact, he's a rather reckless idealist. There are excuses for him; he was never much ...

— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss

... Milton's voice had no influence, as he had no part in their transaction. Milton was the last man of whom a practical politician would have sought advice. He knew nothing of the temper of the nation, and treated all that opposed his own view with supreme disdain. On the other hand, idealist though he was, he does not move in the sphere of speculative politics, or count among those philosophic names, a few in each century, who have influenced, not action but thought. Accordingly his opinions have for us a purely personal interest. They are part of the character of the poet Milton, ...

— Milton • Mark Pattison

... judgment upon Sordello? Does he regard him as an idealist of aims too lofty for success in this world, and whose "failure" implied his triumph in another, where his "broken arc" would become the "perfect round"? Assuredly not. That might indeed be his destiny, but ...

— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

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