“Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.”
“Love in full life and length, not love ideal,No, nor ideal beauty, that fine name,But something better still, so very real...”
“The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real that we exist, it is by the ideal that we live.”
“Life is real, not ideal.”
“God loves human beings. God loves the world. Not an ideal human, but human beings as they are; not an ideal world, but the real world. What we find repulsive in their opposition to God, what we shrink back from with pain and hostility, namely, real human beings, the real world, this is for God the ground of unfathomable love.”
“There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.”