Word: cynic
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Conant, realization of the hard cold facts of the atomic age is only half the battle, for he believes that America cannot develop as a free nation either by subscribing to the pious faith in the lasting effects of revolution, or escaping into the enervating and oftentimes reactionary cynicism. Rather than the sentimentalist or the cynic, he calls for a hard-boiled idealist "whose mode of action is in terms of the calculated risk and who, in order to calculate that risk, prefers to talk in terms of concrete and limited objectives...
...exposition of a role on which Moliere leaves his audience as judge. Lubchansky's interpretation is most notable for its absence, and although he competently portrays Alceste's disillusionment and dark anger, he plays the role straight, leaving his listeners to decide whether he is a justifiably pessimistic cynic or a ridiculous crank...
Hutchins himself is thoroughly gracious, a towering and handsome figure who speaks with distinct self-assurance. One who has been conditioned by descriptions of a sneering cynic finds himself very pleasantly surprised. And while the mellow trimmings to American education are every collegiate's joy, there is good reason to give Hutchins a hearing...
Indignant juvenile delinquents of both male and female gender have poured forth their wayward wrath upon Freshman cynic Donald S. Rugoff, who read Life Magazine's recent pictorial essay on the gloriously wholesome American teen-age girl and wrote to the editor venomously suggesting that he had been looking at our young girlhood through "rose-colored glasses," and urging him to take a soulful glance at the pick-ups in Times Square and Boston Common...
Sheppey (well played by Edmund Gwenn) is a perky London barber who wins ?8,500 in a sweepstakes, decides to give his money to the poor, begins by bringing home a streetwalker and a thief. From there on the cynic and ironist in Maugham have a field day. Sheppey, his family feels sure, must be off his chump. The harlot and the thief, bored stiff by the good life, scamper back to the bad one. For a final joker, Maugham shows that the exemplary Sheppey really is sick: he has been having visions of a strange woman, who turns...