Word: oracular
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...truth was in some ways unique and should be hinted at. He rarely explained anything he had said, unless by contradicting it. His attitude toward those of his own utterances that someone had had the temerity or good sense (depending on the circumstances) to record, was, at the least, oracular. Claims were facts because he had made them; petty and unsympathetic attempts to verify his remarks rendered an individual unworthy of Curley's further attention. His attitude toward facts resembled that of the student of the earliest Byzantine or Russian history who, in the absence of evidence, let alone verification...
...Gaulle triumphed on his own conditions. It is doubtful if one voter in a thousand bothered to ponder the new constitution's 92 articles (see box). Even if they listened attentively to De Gaulle's oracular and stylishly ambiguous speeches, they got little hint of what the future would be like. Not even his aides, dedicated as they are to his general philosophy, are allowed to know at any moment the pattern of his intentions. All that most Frenchmen have for certain this week is a memory of De Gaulle moving among masses of people with the awkward...
...Cabinet post to their burly idol, Jacques ("Le Tombeur") Soustelle, the Parisian politician who was the brains of the Algerian settlers' revolt against the Fourth Republic. When, during his first visit to Algeria, the streets rang with the cry "Vive Soustelle!", De Gaulle in his laconic and oracular way merely said: "Soustelle will have a place at my side." But it was not until last week that Soustelle got "his place" at last. As Minister of Information, he will become De Gaulle's official spokesman-a service until recently performed by voluble Novelist André Malraux...
...temple and counts the stars. When a troubled villager says, "I have a problem, sir" and Raju hears him out, the stargazer's career as a swami has begun. Soon he gets credit for every good thing that happens in Malgudi. He repays his followers in doubtful oracular wisdom ("What can a crocodile do to you if your mind is clear and your conscience is untroubled?"). When a drought parches the countryside, Raju inadvertently agrees to fast till the rains come. He caches food in the corners of the temple, but the round-the-clock ministrations of his disciples...
...good poet is to pose riddles-riddles of life, death and immortality-for the heart to answer. The difference between a good and a great poet lies in the lyricism, evocation and after effect of his oracular lines and, most important, in the cry of recognition drawn from the reader. This collection of poems, written over the past 25 years, falls far short of greatness, yet has extraordinary appeal. Fitzgerald blends his commitment to the present with a deep love of the pagan past (with Dudley Fitts, he has ably translated Sophocles' Oedipus Rex), and his work flickers...