“I start a book and I want to make it perfect, want it to turn every color, want it to be the world. Ten pages in, I've already blown it, limited it, made it less, marred it. That's very discouraging. I hate the book at that point. After a while I arrive at an accommodation: Well, it's not the ideal, it's not the perfect object I wanted to make, but maybeif I go ahead and finish it anywayI can get it right next time. Maybe I can have another chance.” IfsWorldWantWellsMadeI CanBookWantedHateTurnsNextChancePerfectObjectsColorTenPagesIdealsI HateMade ItNext TimeDiscouragingAnother ChanceAccommodations Author:Joan Didion
“Nonsense prevails, modesty fails Grace and virtue turn into stupidity While the calendar fades almost all barricades to a pale compromise And our leaders have feasts on the backsides of beasts They still think they're the gods of antiquity If something you missed didn't even exist It was just an ideal is it such a surprise?” IfsThinkingStillsTurnsLeaderVirtueGraceFailingIdealsSurpriseStupidityCompromiseBeastNonsenseFadesModestyPaleAntiquityCalendarsBarricadesBacksides Author:Elvis Costello
“As for comics, one has only to turn to the characteristic output of Marvel Comics, for the period from about 1961 to about 1975, to find not an expression of base and cynical impulses but of good, old-fashioned liberal humanism of a kind that may strike us today, God help us, as quaint, but which nevertheless appealed, in story after story, to ideals such as tolerance, technological optimism, and self-sacrifice for the benefit of others.” KindMaySelfHelpingStoriesTodayTurnsSacrificeExpressionPeriodsBenefitsIdealsOptimismHumanismStrikesToleranceImpulseCharacteristicsCynicalNeverthelessTechnologicalOld FashionedSelf SacrificeOutputGod HelpQuaintGod Help UsMarvel Comics Author:Michael Chabon
“In the past, love for me has always meant forever, and sure, you still nurse some of those fantasies, but I don't try to force it anymore. I hung on to my fairy-tale ideals for a long time. But where I am now, what I've been through, there are no rules. There are lots of ways it can turn out.” WayTryingYearsKindLongStillsDifferentPastTurnsForceFantasyForeverLong TimeIdealsTalesFairyJust OneNurseDifferent KindsFairy TaleHungPast Love Author:Jennifer Lopez
“It has been a long road from Plato's Meno to the present, but it is perhaps encouraging that most of the progress along that road has been made since the turn of the twentieth century, and a large fraction of it since the midpoint of the century. Thought was still wholly intangible and ineffable until modern formal logic interpreted it as the manipulation of formal tokens. And it seemed still to inhabit mainly the heaven of Platonic ideals, or the equally obscure spaces of the human mind, until computers taught us how symbols could be processed by machines.” MindHumansLongHas BeensMadeStillsTurnsHeavenSpaceProgressModernCenturyTaughtComputerIdealsLogicMachinesSymbolsManipulationHuman MindFormalObscurePlatoTwentieth CenturyFractionsTaught UsTokensIntangibleIneffablePlatonicLong RoadPlato S Author:Allen Newell
“No other country in the world does what we do. On every issue, the world turns to us, not simply because of the size of our economy or our military might - but because of the ideals we stand for, and the burdens we bear to advance them.” WorldDoeCountryMightTurnsEconomyIssuesMilitaryBearsIdealsSizeBurdenOther Countries Author:Barack Obama
“For when is the child the ideal child in our eyes and to our hearts? Is it not when with gentle hand he takes his father by the beard, and turns that father's face up to his brothers and sisters to kiss? when even the lovely selfishness of love-seeking has vanished, and the heart is absorbed in loving?” HeartChildrenHandsEyeFacesTurnsFatherBrotherKissingIdealsSeekingLovelySelfishnessGentleBrothers And SistersBeard Book:Unspoken Sermons Source: Unspoken Sermons
“The ancients of the ideal description, instead of trying to turn their impracticable chimeras, as does the modern dreamer, into social and political prodigies, deposited them in great works of art, which still live while states and constitutions have perished, bequeathing to posterity not shameful defects but triumphant successes.” TryingDoeArtStillsStatesPoliticalArtistTurnsSocialModernIdealsConstitutionReformDescriptionWorks Of ArtDreamerIdealismDefectsGreat WorkPosterityShamefulTriumphantProdigiesChimera Book:Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860: Volume Nine, Scholarly Edition Source: Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860: Volume Nine, Scholarly Edition