Word: epigrams
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...effective for a writer than having something intense to say. He is never at a loss, especially when scoring satirical bull's-eyes at three feet, as in his hilarious overkill of Dr. Reuben's split-level moralizing about sex. At his best, Vidal can turn an epigram with the wittiest of the 19th century. "The worst that can be said of pornography," he writes, "is that it leads not to 'antisocial' sexual acts but to the reading of more pornography...
...surprised to see a brightly-colored, semi-profound epigram affixed to the wall next to the desk of Nixon press aide Maxine Paul. The epigram, lettered in the style of Sister Corrita, read: Do Not Cry Because The Sun Has Gone, For Your Tears Will Blind You To The Stars...
...justifies his pleasure by rationalizing that an independent Israel will distract the Arabs from uniting to take over British oil interests. Later, he swells in equity and power as director of postwar real estate development. Outwardly the idealistic public servant, inwardly the unscrupulous hypocrite, Magog exemplifies Sinclair's epigram that "if politics was the art of the possible, then principles were the patina of the pragmatic...
Safire published a second edition so quickly because of the bounteous contributions of President Nixon and that empyreal employer of epigram, Spiro Agnew. Since the language of politics is essentially the lexicon of propaganda, the tone of the Nixonisms reflects what are perceived to be the shifting moods and needs of the nation. Thus, Safire observes, the Great Unwashed is undesirable, while the Silent Majority is praiseworthy. Nixon's critics, says Safire, have manufactured their own verbal ammunition, such as Nixonomics and Southern Strategy...
...shell-inlay work and flowing, knife-blade forms that so inexplicably resemble archaic Chinese bronze decoration, without feeling some instant response to the vitality of their stylistic language. Through their art runs a supreme capacity to make sensation concrete: what European artist, for instance, could develop a more concise epigram of a grizzly bear's humped, sullen power than the unknown Tlingit carver who hewed one (see cut below) full-face, with shell teeth, on a house wall in Sitka? In the same way, there are painted buckskin coats and drums in the Whitney whose spontaneous, eccentric beauty...