Word: humanities
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Your review . . . reminds me of some acute remarks which were made on this engaging subject about 30 years ago. The following appeared, I believe, in 1918: . . . The human weakness for profanity is like the human weakness for tobacco-it does not cure anything, but it undoubtedly soothes and caresses. Carried to excess, it grieves the judicious; practiced in moderation, it allays the passions, promotes digestion, placates animosities, and makes for happiness at the domestic hearth . . . No sane man would seek relief in cussing if a safe fell upon him, or a lion bit off his leg, or an anarchist...
...Roosevelt is so busy about so many things that she often has good cause to be late. As chairman of U.N.'s Human Rights Commission, she had been delayed, helping to thrash out a human-rights charter for the world, combining common sense with an air of guilelessness to get agreement where no agreement seemed possible. She brought flights of oratory to earth with such innocent remarks as "I am probably the least learned person around this table, so I have thought of this article in terms of what the ordinary person would understand." In a two-hour wrangle...
Tuesday afternoon five sports writers and a human being went over to Soldiers Field to watch football practice. The five of them go every day, but it was the first time for me. I thought it would be good to write a piece telling exactly what happens down there at the practice sessions, so for three successive days I peered into the dusk along with the sports writers. The following exclusive article, entitled "I Couldn't See A Goddam Thing," is the depressing result of this project...
...sports writers stand on the sidelines, noting precisely who does exactly what on each play. But the lights are so dim that a human being's naked eye can barely see the helmets, let alone the play, let even more alone who made the tackle, and the hell with who should have made the tackle but didn...
...seems instead frenzied and common; a supporting cast that is uniformly excellent, particularly Macduff; a set that gives no feeling of being a habitation at all but does add immeasurably to the rawness of the theme (the hero, as Welles interprets him, is too uncivilized to live in a human dwelling); and finally, an exciting, superior movie with moments of startling brilliance...