Word: exertions
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...moral to draw from the Scarlett and Ashley Wilkes story: Keep your dreams if you like (though Ashley may turn out to be to be a jerk when deprived of his chivalric mystique), but work with what you have--which Scarlett, God knows, did. Americans get the Presidents they exert themselves to deserve. That may or may not be a good thing; it is a mistake to get prissy about it. Selflessness shades into self-righteousness. If Presidents are chosen by the exertions of selfless zealots, the process may prove dangerously unrepresentative...
...charge. ''Clinton has recognized that without American involvement and force, no resolution is possible." said an official at the German foreign ministry. "The President knows," said White House press secretary Mike McCurry, "that the times when we make even modest progress on Bosnia are when we step in and exert leadership...
...hundredths of 1% of its national budget on all forms of cultural subsidy--the equivalent of maybe five cups of diner coffee per citizen per year. In fiscal 1995 the NEH got $172 million, the NEA got $162.4 million, and the CPB got $285.6 million. Still, these modest sums exert large leverage on private and corporate patronage through "matching grants" (to qualify, the recipient must raise as much as $3 from the private sources for every federal dollar) and by the vitally important role played by the NEA and the NEH as Good Housekeeping seals of approval on projects...
...primitive creature may take apart an internal-combustion engine to study it but still never understand how it works--because its secret lies external to it, in the principle that explosions exert pressure. This insight is vital to understanding the engine. Hence it is no mystery why scientists haven't grasped the brain: they have been studying it solely on its own terms, much the way a primitive creature studies the engine. In my opinion, the answer lies outward. Scientists should ask, What real-world principle is the brain designed to exploit? TOM SALES Somerset, New Jersey...
...years, "even if everyone else considered that gardening was a sign of a diseased mind and uncouth habits." Yet Lacy is convinced that whatever motive draws gardeners in, whether vanity or foolishness or the need to bury their treasure in the ground, the actual experience outdoors will come to exert its own pull. "I know nobody who has given it up, except for reasons of infirmity, advancing age and incapacity," he says. "It holds the attention firmly, because there is always something new to learn, new discoveries to make." People who want a garden because the neighbor...