On the record
Gladstone said; “ideals are never realised.” That is no reason, he meant, why men should not persist and toil and hope, and this is plainly the true temper for the politician.
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John Morley
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gutenberg.orgJohn Morley: “Gladstone said; “ideals are never realised.” That is no reason, he meant, why men should not persist and toil and hope…”
Editor's note · Context
Morley quotes Gladstone on the importance of persistence in politics despite the unattainability of ideals.
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More from John Morley
Yet he had prepared this document for the very purpose of tempting France into a declaration of war.
For this line of contention he was called an “unpatriotic trumpet of disaster,” and other names commonly bestowed on all men in all countries who venture to say that what chances for the hour to be a popular war is a blunder.
Happy the man who from out the floods has fled the storm and found the haven; happy too is he who has surmounted toil and trouble.—Bacchae, 902-5.
A rendering less apt for this occasion finds favour with some scholars, that true virtue can never be restored to those who have once fallen away from it.
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