Idealistic Pursuit Quotes

A romantic striving for an impossible ideal.

I don't think perfection is possible. I think you can attempt to reach perfection, but I don't think it's a possible thing. I think perfection is a moving point, and we spend our artistic lives chasing it.

One of the saddest lines in the world is, 'Oh come now - be realistic.' The best parts of this world were not fashioned by those who were realistic. They were fashioned by those who dared to look hard at their wishes and gave them horses to ride.

… a noble dream

I'm in pursuit of what cannot be achieved: perfection.

Equality before the law is probably forever unattainable. It is a noble ideal, but it can never be realized

The select natures who pant after the ideal, and find nothing in pantaloons or petticoats great enough to command their reverence and love, are curiously in unison with the narrowest and pettiest.

Only because of the striving nature of men has mankind achieved what it has so far. Men are made that way; they are designed to reach out for things which they cannot see with their eyes but can only imagine. A man naturally seeks after his dream, his ideal, while women are more concerned with the here and now rather than the future, intangible realm.

I wake up every day in order to do something that's quixotic, and not necessarily called for in the world, but I do it because there's extraordinary meaning for me behind the effort.

Man can never come up to his ideal standard. It is the nature of the immortal spirit to raise that standard higher and higher as it goes from strength to strength, still upward and onward. The wisest and greatest men are ever the most modest.

Perfection is impossible, but you don't stop aiming for it.

I always say we're chasing perfection in an imperfect game.

The end of wisdom is to dream high enough to lose the dream in the seeking of it.

I also have this kind of fascination with Don Quixote, kind of like wanting something you're not going to get. I like that a lot.

By sealing our work with our blood, we may see at least the bright dawn of universal happiness.

The unique eludes us; yet we remain faithful to the ideal of it; and in spite of sense and of our merely abstract thinking, it becomes for us the most real thing in the actual world, although for us it is the elusive goal of an infinite quest.