Word: olympian
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...large degree the number and character of those persons qualified to merit it. The writers now living whom the majority would grant the title may be counted on the fingers of one hand. One man alone would probably be a unanimous choice, and that one is Thomas Hardy, an Olympian who lingers on, cloistered in the secrecy of an English garden. Beside him how does Miss Loos, how does even Mr. Galsworthy, in spite of his splendid achievements, stand...
...first half of the film shows him a pillar of society, plain, foursquare, sunk in a large family. A doting father of six, a pompous cashier in his bank, a champion bowler, he is admirable in all things, full of little unpricked vanities, and simply worshipful in an Olympian set of whiskers that obscure almost a half of his necktie but add immeasurably to his dignity...
Foremost in the collection is the reclining Idaean Hercules. His body is graceful rather than Herculean, his face Attic rather than Theban. To him is attributed the glory of founding the Olympian games and it is no wonder that the Athenians represented him as more lithe, less ponderous than the deity venerated by the despised Boeotians. He reposes on lion skins, suggestive of swift strength, leisurely superior to operose muscularity...
...which, if for no other reason is laudable on account of its in time qualities and the moral certainty that--come what may--the victor will be the same. In other athletic contests there is a disturbing element of chance. But today there are no upsets. An Olympian calm pervades Plympton Street, for the conventional huge scarlet margin has been got out, dusted, and is ready for service. The Lampoon with its gracile lethargy and its dogged comic spirit has without cessation offered itself as the goat or the this or whatever constitutes the flors and fauna of defeated parties...
...structures stretching with geometric relentlessness into the infinite heavens, its enormous pistons thumping, dynamos roaring, cogwheels whirring, it was agreed that nothing so immense, grand, complete had ever been comprehended by the eye. For a while it seemed as if one would behold an entire civilization revealed from an Olympian vantage point, would glimpse its heart palpitating beneath steel ribs. Then the scenario took hold, reduced the magnificent spectacle to the condition of a god smothered with a dishrag...