Word: rara
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...quotation, often unjust, cannot do Willa Cather justice. Her manner of writing has little in common with her noisy day. Characterized by an English critic as "that rara avis, an autochthonous American author," she is most conveniently classified by negatives. Says the same critic: "The King Charles's head of psychoanalysis and experiment in genre does not keep continually turning up in her books as they do [sic] in those rather Mr. Dick-like compositions of Mr. Sherwood Anderson for instance." Unlike Sinclair Lewis, she does not bite her country's hand; unlike Edith Wharton (whose example influenced...
...produce great intellectual leaders can do so far more effectively by concentrating on that one thing. It means sacrificing nine tenths of what constitutes college life at present, including things which may be as valuable as purely mental growth, but it is the best way to produce that rara avis, a really strong intellect, ready to "spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind...
...thus get his mind off the injured member, or if Manuel should inadvertently fall asleep between rest periods the foreman should not try to awaken him but should sit down and listen sympathetically to his snoring. The only difficulty in this theory would seem to be in discovering that rara avis The Sympathetic Foreman...
...Rara avis....what he would call "all interesting piece of neckwear" piece of neckwear" flows.... sport shirt.... loose coat as liable not to match the lower half.... cigarette holder...corner of handkerchief protruding from lower coat pocket.... the eye goes down the full length and then back up, finally resting where it began, on the long locks in pompadour, slightly out of alignment...
...between, they might be discounted, but many cases have recently come up where the tradition of "majesty" as a necessary attribute to law seems to have been disregarded. The Tennessee anti-evolution law, brought to light a year and a half ago, might be dismissed as a rara avis if it were not for the fact that the same law was recently brought up in a bill in Minnesota to introduce it there. The State of Nebraska considered the advisability of jailing "sheiks" and "vamps". Now a proposal to prohibit pie is before the legislature of Kansas...