Word: apted
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Dates: during 1873-1873
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...societies and associations, Christian, scientific, or literary, and discover them, without the use of glasses, in our college halls. That which most astonishes us is the fact that those who thus court and attain popularity are not always the best or the most deserving of their fellows, and are apt to meet their own level when Time holds the microscope to their defects, and lays bare the selfish motives and small machinery by which their policy has been made active and for a time, successful. Your politic man is a curiosity; it is as curious to watch his manoeuvres...
...college circles, owing to this very prevalence of roughing, a person is guarded in his expressions, and assures himself of the correctness of statements before venturing to make them. It renders him more careful and less apt to blunder through fear of jesting at his expense. But it is the power which it gives one to turn the laugh upon the attacking party, to parry the pointed allusion and to return one equally or more forcible, the facility with which it enables us to flash back a repartee or retort, that especially recommends, instead of condemns, roughing. My intention...
...single writer to traverse the whole range of English literature without a stumble would be almost impossible. Mr. Taine, although on the whole wonderfully apt to be right, is acknowledged to have made some mistakes; and one of these mistakes is, I think, his estimation of Thackeray. It has always been the fashion to decry Thackeray as a cynic. While his critics unite in praise of his keen insight into all the foibles and vices of our nature, they are equally unanimous in declaring that he has turned this power to a bad use, that he has made...