Word: high-flown
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...deflating wisecrack. The airlift memorial at which last week's anniversary ceremonies began is universally known to Berliners as "the Hunger Claw"; a modernistic postwar church that looks as though a train might pull into it at any moment is called "Jesus Station." When Berliners use the high-flown expressions coined to describe their city's cold-war role-"the beacon of freedom" or "the show window of democracy"-there is always a sardonic edge to their voices...
Tillich may be a great thinker, but human thought does not manufacture God. God is! Theology-totin' Tillich has got the cart before the horse. Prodigal man does not find God by high-flown speculations; God has to grab hold of his straying child. That's why his son came out of heaven, chasing after...
These were high-flown words-and thoughts-to come from the pen of an old soldier. But they were words carefully calculated for their effect on France's restless officers. The moral that Ely and De Gaulle clearly intended them to draw: the fate of Western civilization will rest in part on the manner in which France and the French army conduct themselves in the awakening nations of France's former African empire...
...power of positive thinking and collective morality. With all his ironic intelligence, he knew what fun he could have with a satiric vivisection of the medical profession. Unhappily, he decided to do the two plays in one. The unexpected result: the comedy makes the tragedy seem pretentious and high-flown, and the tragedy makes the comedy seem at times no better than common bladder farce. Besides, after 52 years on the boards, the situation and some of the characters are getting rickety...
ANECDOTES OF DESTINY, by Isak Dinesen (244 pp.; Random House; $3.75), tells how, once upon a time, there was a theological student of Shiraz who thought highly of angels-so highly that he made himself wings and got all set for flight to the angelic spheres. But the Shiraz authorities, who disapproved of high-flown ideas, dressed up a beautiful dancer to look like an angel and planted her on the roof of the student's house, where he studied the skies. By next morning the happy student had reached two important conclusions: that angelic conduct...