Word: phrasings
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
James Joyce had a lovely phrase in Finnegans Wake: "The hereweareagain gaieties." A Kennedy campaign always had the hereweareagain gaieties, that Irish quality of politics as frolic, overlaid with a unique elegance and a ruthlessness that advanced upon you with the brightest of teeth. No wonder that in the presidential campaign of 1988, Americans feel a nostalgia for the festive in their politics. American politics used to be fun. Once upon a time, lively, funny people practiced the art. In a priceless line about the 1988 race, Robert Strauss, former Democratic Party chairman and an accomplished humorist, said Dukakis reminded...
...literature to its manageable "content," a way of rendering art's raw power more digestible. She wanted more attention paid to art's sensual capabilities, to the way it works upon consciousness through the imprint of its form and surfaces. It was all summed up in her famous phrase: "Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon...
...Angeles "in what they now call a 'dysfunctional family,' " he says. "I didn't get what I needed from my parents. They were busy dealing with their own pain." McFerrin started studying music theory at six and learned from his father "how to breathe musically and anticipate the next phrase. He taught me how to sing commas and spaces, not just lyrics." Shy at school, McFerrin cried easily as a child and lost himself in his own imagination. The Catholic Church gave him a spiritual foundation; music, he says, "was always a catalyst, an outlet...
...people. We were created to look at one another, weren't we?" No passing remark could take you closer to the heart of 19th century realism: the idea of the artist as an engine for looking, a being whose destiny was to study what Balzac, in a famous phrase that declared its rebellion from the theological order of Dante's Divine Comedy, called La Comedie Humaine...
Wait a minute, I can hear you saying. Don't these things cost money? The phrase budget deficit comes to mind. Is this as important as finding the unified theory of physics or housing the homeless? Yes and no. Yes, NASA could save money in the long run by having a clear goal, but why is money so scarce? Every year the U.S. Government invests some $300 billion in a Manichaean mythology that the world is divided by an eternal conflict between the forces of good and evil, light and dark. Why not invest instead in a different mythology...