Word: aimless
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...emotional conflict. In the play, all the tent-show folk-hula dancer, snake-charmer, clown, odd-job men - accept with varying humors their haphazard, futile nom-adism-all except the barker, "Nifty" Miller, soul and essence of the entire raucous flimflam. He, chained like the others to the aimless tent life, holds fast to the idea that his only son will one day be a wealthy, respectable lawyer in a stable community. But the ballyhoo beckons to the boy, also. He joins the circus one vacation, soon develops an aversion for "all them colleges" of his father's dreams...
...complete and break my solemn vow. First, anent footnotes, if you think they belong in the magazine, run 'em. ... If TIME succeeds as you want to run it, you prove that you are right: if it flops, then you are wrong and no breathless tagging in the wandering aimless footsteps of the public can save you anyway. TIME is one of four or five periodicals in America fit for persons of intelligence to read. . . . Particularly do I like your novel phrasing, your occasional Dutch lead, your informality, your nonchalant and indifferent manner of treating a man's religion...
...book in which plot matters not a whit and conversation, behavior and obiter dicta are everything. The first is stilted, the second unreal-having breakfasted, these upper-class Brit-ishers "wiped their lips and put down their napkins and blew their noses"-and the third consists largely in sudden aimless excursions into geology, botany, anthropology, astronomy...
...well-known how Mr. Mencken sticks stray figurative pins into the viscera of the age. And in the pricking he seems sometimes to follow an aimless aim; which is perfectly all right because he himself will retort that most purposes are eminent purposeless. And what he says he believes to be true. That all too human adjective belies his paradox...
...constructing the tutorial conference on the pattern of class instruction, there is equal risk of over-emphasizing the difference between the two. You do not overcome the defects of mere efficiency by mere inefficiency. To light a cigarette, stretch one's legs on the desk, and indulge in aimless, endless talk leads to wisdom no more than does the mechanical taking of notes or the frenzied cramming for an examination. We should watch lest the tutorial method degrade the process of learning into a form of intellectual journalism; in practice it should involve serious work and surely as much preparation...