Word: encyclop
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...send obscene letters to relatives; in 18th century London, privies were called Jerichos; Boswell went to bed with Rousseau's wife precisely 13 times. The Durants can scarcely resist an anecdote or an aphorism. The borrowed ones are usually the best, as for instance Diderot's Encyclopédie distinction between the words bind and attach: "One is bound to one's wife, attached to one's mistress." But the authors also do reasonably well on their own, as when they say of Louis XV that he "lacked the art of dying in due time...
...come about that a man born poor, losing his mother at birth and soon deserted by his father, afflicted with a painful and humiliating disease, left to wander for twelve years among alien cities and conflicting faiths, repudiated by society and civilization, repudiating Voltaire, Diderot, the Encyclopédi and the Age of Reason, driven from place to place as a dangerous rebel, suspected of crime and insanity, and seeing, in his last months, the apotheosis of his greatest enemy-how did it come about that this man, after his death, triumphed over Voltaire, revived religion, transformed education, elevated...