Figure of Speech
When a person overly idealizes someone (or something, an object or idea), it is often referred to as "putting them on a pedestal".
The pejorative phrase "put on a pedestal" is often used to critique celebrity culture, an elected official or position of authority, about someone who is looked up to, held in high regard or revered. To an extent that an accusation or crime may have been overlooked or disregarded, when an investigation or criminal prosecution was later found necessary, because an abuse of position or social standing was committed.
Read more about this topic: Pedestal
Famous quotes containing the words figure of, figure and/or speech:
“He hath borne himself beyond the promise of his age, doing, in the figure of a lamb, the feats of a lion.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In a symbol there is concealment and yet revelation: here therefore, by silence and by speech acting together, comes a double significance.... In the symbol proper, what we can call a symbol, there is ever, more or less distinctly and directly, some embodiment and revelation of the Infinite; the Infinite is made to blend itself with the Finite, to stand visible, and as it were, attainable there. By symbols, accordingly, is man guided and commanded, made happy, made wretched.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)