Word: humority
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...create a new type of nation that could draw strength from its religious pluralism. This comfort with the concept of tolerance--which was based on an aversion to tyranny, a fealty to free expression, a willingness to compromise, the morality of respecting other individuals and even a bit of humor and humility--is what most distinguishes America and its like-minded allies in the messy struggles that confront a new century...
...HUMOR...
...creating Silence Dogood, Franklin invented what became the quintessential genre of American folksy humor: the wry and self-deprecating homespun character whose feigned innocence and naivete are disarming but whose wicked little insights poke through the pretensions of the elite and the follies of everyday life. "I am courteous and affable, good humored (unless I am first provoked) and handsome, and sometimes witty," she declares, flicking in the word "sometimes" with a dexterity uncommon in a 16-year-old. "I have likewise a natural inclination to observe and reprove the faults of others, at which I have an excellent faculty...
...memory." The court, Franklin wrote, was so moved by the speech that she was acquitted, and one of the judges married her the next day. Only years later, after the account was reprinted in both America and England, did Franklin reveal it was a hoax. As Franklin knew, humor was the gentlest yet most powerful way to make political points, and America would always be strongest when it was confident enough, and self-aware enough, to laugh at itself...
...caps, but the model American wears the placid, loose-jawed countenance of Ben Franklin, Ur-republican. He stands in stark contrast to his sanctimonious and chauvinistic and mercantile countrymen, a model of what the French like most in their Americans: a skeptical, subtle faux naif with a sense of humor and a taste for culture and a deep appreciation for the supremacy of France...