The Only Use of
idealism
in
Pygmalion
- If an imaginative boy has a sufficiently rich mother who has intelligence, personal grace, dignity of character without harshness, and a cultivated sense of the best art of her time to enable her to make her house beautiful, she sets a standard for him against which very few women can struggle, besides effecting for him a disengagement of his affections, his sense of beauty, and his idealism from his specifically sexual impulses.†
Act 5
Definition:
-
(idealism as in: youthful idealism) the belief that behavior should be guided by high ideals or standards and often that good things will result -- sometimes used to imply that such beliefs are unrealistic