Word: difficult
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...powers. Perhaps the suggestion of both classroom and courtroom is apt. For here, Berlin's people are expected to learn the ways of democracy, and here the Big Four of World War II are supposed to sit in solemn judgment on their efforts. But, this week, it was difficult to tell who was judge, who the accused...
...also a decay of the power of conviction or mastery; we permit ourselves everywhere to be overwhelmed by the accidents of our massive ignorance and by the apparent subjectivity of our individual processes ... It is a world alive and moving but which does not understand itself . . . Shaw is as difficult as Joyce, Mann as Kafka, if you really look into them. The difficulties arise . . . partly because of the conditions of society . . . The audience is able to bring less to the work of art than under the conditions of the old culture, and the artist is required to bring more . . . almost...
...group of inspired idiots sat up nights trying to devise a game that would be almost unplayable, and even more difficult to follow, they would have a hard time improving on the 700-year-old game of "court tennis." In fact, there have been some noble tries. There have been court tennis players who used champagne bottles for bats, or played the game while riding ponies. And an 18th Century Frenchman went so far as to serve while crouched in a barrel, returning to the barrel between strokes. None of these refinements lasted: the game was baffling enough...
...socially irresponsible graduates ("useless or dangerous to society"). Columbia Law Professor Karl Llewellyn thought that the professional schools should not neglect the bottom 90% for the sake of the top 10%. Said he: "In the average town of 100,000, trying to find a good lawyer is as difficult as trying to find a good dentist...
...problem of arousing the voters' interest is a particularly difficult one at Harvard. Council labors are, for the most part, hardly of the type that catch the imagination; Councilmen and candidates for office have been understandably squeamish about making a lot of noise about issues or their own qualifications for office. It has been a pretty sober affair, as undergraduates who voted last Thursday--or who didn't take the trouble to vote--can testify...