Word: aloofness
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...white 1954 three-hole Buick sedan came to a gentle halt and an elderly couple got out. They were tourists, just passing by. The birdlike little woman chattered warmly to the counterman as she ordered weak tea. Her husband, a tall, stooped, somber man in a sports jacket, remained aloof. His heavy, bald dome wrinkled uneasily; his face drooped; his mouth was firmly shut. He folded and unfolded his big hands, cracking a knuckle occasionally and gazing, with utter absorption, at the garish, commonplace surroundings. His blue-grey eyes shone steady and intense as the crack of dawn...
TOWARD the end of the 16th century a strange, aloof figure - came to the Spanish hilltop town of Toledo. His origins were obscure, and his name-Domenikos Theotokopoulos-was so difficult that he was called simply El Greco (The Greek). He said he was born in Crete, boasted that he had been a student of Titian and, as one Toledo Spaniard recorded, "he let it be understood that nothing in the world was superior to his art." Certainly the stranger had at his brush tip not only Titian's designs but also all the secrets of Tintoretto...
...student and a married woman, the woman and her husband, the husband and a little cocotte, the cocotte and a poet, the poet and an actress, the actress and a count, and the count and the original prostitute. This merry-go-round of sex is attended by an aloof interlocutor who explains that he represents the audience, and it revolves to the tune of a haunting waltz by Oscar Strauss...
Laureate Jimenez, 74, has lived in the Americas for two decades, but by birth, education and citizenship he is Spanish. Illness in his youth made him aloof and hypochondriacal. His cheerful and practical wife Zenobia looked after him maternally, ran a handicrafts shop in Madrid so that he could work at his poetry without having to worry about earning a living. Shortly after their marriage, he wrote a collection of lyrics entitled Diario de un poeta recién casado (Diary of a Newlywed Poet), one of his finest works. That same productive year (1917) he published his most famous...
...Britain was faced with the outline of a thorny choice. If a European customs union actually came into existence and Britain stood aloof, there was every likelihood that the tariff wall thrown up by the new group would bar many British exports from European markets. (One-eighth of British exports now go to the Messina Six.) But could Britain consent to have her tariff policy toward the rest of the Commonwealth, the system of "imperial preference," tampered with by an outside authority? If Britain were forced to choose between Europe and the Commonwealth, said Harold Macmillan, "we could not hesitate...