Word: apothegms
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...been said of Edward George Villiers Stanley, 62, present and 17th Earl of Derby, that he could no more do a mean action than stoop to flatter a fool. In that apothegm is the key to the understanding of his character. A big, burly, slightly flabby man, he looks for all the world like an overdressed butcher or a well-to-do farmer, an oversized mustache accentuating his incongruous appearance. His voice is loud, deep, hearty. In a stolid English way he is a friendly man, although he has few intimates. He is somewhat downright in his opinions and there...
...would have guessed, The French psychologist who wrote the first unprejudiced life of Shelley (Ariel*) can conduct a philosophical argument with delicacy, wit and penetration. From his interest in Shelley, one would also have guessed that M. Maurois accepts the latter half of Plato's apothegm: "There are two kinds of causes; one necessary, the other divine," and agrees with Vauvenargues: "Genius depends largely on our passions." The three compact dialogs of the present volume, between a young platonist-aristocrat lieutenant and his old rationalist-radical tutor, run widely and vigorously over the pros" and cons of the proposition...
This book takes no text; it employs no plot to give it body, no characters to give it blood and spirit. Its subject is the continent of Africa; and its strangeness proves once more the truth of an ancient apothegm concerning truth and fiction. Written in the manner of a novel and cast in the pattern of a travelogue, it belongs to that obscure hinterland of literature that W. H. Hudson visited in Green Mansions and Defoe, to a certain extent, in Robinson Crusoe...