Word: cynics
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Mariniere is outward bound. Yet in her salon no jesting cynic twinkles at Haig and Haig across a mahogany bar. La Mariniere is a prison ship and she has no room for jests. But there are cynics on her passenger lists, men who have tasted the wine of life and have eaten its dust, men outward bound for French Guiana and hell...
...quite sure of themselves. Their shades are too heavy--their shadows too broadly etched. Miss Standing and Mr. Neill are not completely convincing as the "Half Ways". The audience is slow at understanding, but they are rather slow in helping them to understand. Mr. Mowbray as the cynic who tries to "Scotch the snake" of life has excellent moments, due perhaps to his possessing the nicest lines of the play. Yet he fails to maintain the consistency of Prior's character by ranting at times as no Priors ever rant--even when convinced that they are soundly, irrevocably dead...
...Cynic, as anyone knows who has taken Philosophy A, and everyone knows who has taken Greek, is a polite name for the canine minded. For only a dog can keep his nose so close to the scent that he does not in some fashion appreciate sunset and saints and symbols. But in spite of the bad lineage which this word must admit, it still remains popular, not alone at tea parties where to be a cynic is to be lionized, but even in Harvard Yard, where to be a cynic is to be quite de rigeur...
Conceivably there are three possible reactions to this state of affairs. "As good a criterion as any other" might be the observation of the cynic, or "Another argument for good teams," that of the pragmatist. But to the serious and thoughtful observer, these facts cannot fail to bring a renewed appreciation of the extent to which the distorted sense of values induced by the present overemphasis of football, has seeped into American academic life...
...insure some notoriety. Mr. Meneken often prefer being exactly notorious to being notoriously exact. Perhaps the need of American politics is a manual of malfeasance, of the psychology of political pragmatism, perhaps not. For, although the Machiavellian side of political theory will always remain the abode of the cynic in politics and, therefore, continue always to maintain some importance one cannot consider this particular proponent too seriously. The ironies of Shaw may be "gargoyles on a great cathedral"; the ironies of Meneken are as yet but poor figures on a trifling edifice...