Word: leper
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Throughout the ages, leprosy has been looked upon with contempt and horror. The Bible enjoins lepers to "dwell alone," wear torn clothing and cry out "Unclean, unclean." In the Middle Ages lepers were barred from public buildings, forbidden to speak with children and required to sound a bell or clapper. The very word leper came to mean outcast...
...wish they wouldn't have accepted her at all," said one incensed parent of his commuter-daughter. "I think it's a slap in the face." A long-time Harvard administrator argued that foreing a specific group to live at home was comparable to exiling them to a leper colony--not the kind of move likely to improve community relations...
...public order and white supremacy. Since 1962 she has enjoyed real freedom for a total of only eleven months, and she is now beginning another five-year term as a banned person. Thus she, along with 114 other black and white opponents of apartheid, remains an outcast, a legal leper with few rights and many restrictions...
Graham Greene's architect Querry had to trek to an African leprosarium to find a metaphor adequate to express his mood; nothing less would be sufficiently wasted, blighted, defunct. Querry was, Greene meant, A Burnt-Out Case, like the leper Deo Gratias, his soul far gone. He was a masterpiece of acedia, a skull full of ashes, a rhapsodist of his own desolation...
Mahoney is unsure precisely what he'll be doing for Mother Teresa, but suggests several possibilities--work in a home for the dying, in a leper colony, or in an orphanage. He certainly won't be living in the lap of luxury: for his first two months. he'll reside "in a common room of sorts with a group of brothers" who will also work with Mother Teresa. After that, Teresa's order will no longer be able to fund his room and board--and Mahoney is prepared to make...