Word: disdain
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Named for the 3rd century Babylonian Gnostic Mani, who taught that the Creator is an evil being opposed to the good God, Manichaeans viewed the world as bad and salvation as escape from it. Modern Manichaeans are those whose hunger for the spiritual leads them to disdain the material; they try to make the leap of faith without having their feet planted firmly on the ground...
Faces of Tragedy. Snow sees ignorance and disdain in both camps, but it is plain that he puts heavier blame on the traditional side. "The scientists have the future in their bones: the traditional culture responds by wishing the future did not exist." The literary intellectuals, particularly, tend to talk about the tragic human condition, and such talk infuriates Snow. The individual's condition may be tragic. Snow admits ("Each of us is solitary: each of us dies alone''), but that is no reason why the "social condition" must be tragic, too. For science, after all, promises...
...times. Painter Dobell found Prime Minister Menzies a "good sitter," reports that they chatted about friends, other artists and a mutual lumbago during their sketching sessions. Viewing the finished product, a friend remarked that Dobell had captured Menzies' "supercilious look." "No," corrected Dobell, "I've got his disdain-for-critics look." Gruffed Menzies himself: "I see you've got my damned chins...
Liberals blasted Babbitt's disdain for the class struggle, conservatives his acerb attitude toward religious enthusiasm. Anglican Poet Eliot suggested that he was "trying to build a Catholic platform out of Protestant planks." He was a man perhaps defined only by his enemies. In the end, if he could not say himself precisely what he was trying to say, he did once quote a bit of doggerel that seemed...
...smalltown leather manufacturer who has made himself the living symbol of the Frenchman who carefully counts his change, has long been unhappy in his Cabinet job. He wanted to make quicker progress toward a settlement in Algeria; he deplored De Gaulle's disregard of his allies and his disdain for NATO. And Pinay made no attempt to disguise his personal dislike for Premier Michel Debre. On at least one occasion he so irked De Gaulle himself that the general accused Pinay of having forgotten "which republic...