Word: retort
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...have seen her, offstage as well as on, are likely to disagree. When an errant pigeon flew in her apartment window, what could she do but ask, "Any messages?" When a waiter at Buckingham Palace spilled hot soup down her neck, her retort was, of course, "Never darken my Dior again." Miss Lillie, in fact, has long since passed into a sort of performers' nirvana and become a model for zany aunts and dowagers. She was, the various authors have told her, the inspiration for Mary Poppins, Auntie Mame and Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit...
...Lucia di Lammermoor at Covent Garden in 1959. Otherwise the two are a study in contrasts: separate conjugations of greatness. Each has her passionate following. Ask a Sutherland admirer about Sills' voice and he might say, "Pretty, but thin." Ask a Sillsian about Sutherland and he might retort, "Beautiful, but boring." Still, all would probably agree with Conductor Thomas Schippers that "we haven't had the luxury of comparing two such singers for 50 years...
...savings deposits. Although Citibank holds $2 billion in individual savings, the Nader group noted, only $500 million is invested in residential mortgages. In view of the social blight sweeping most great U.S. cities, especially in slum areas, the investigators' point is not unreasonable. The bank's retort-perhaps inadequate -is that Citibank handles more mortgages than other major New York banks. However, the principle that banks must invest close to home is not one that the highly mobile U.S. has followed in the past...
...Quiet Life. The critics retort that giant companies, which have billion-dollar investments in existing technology, seek not progress but what the late Judge Learned Hand called "the quiet life" of monopolists-an existence undisturbed by the innovations of pushy competitors. Many of the genuinely new products that have appeared since World War II have been the work of small firms. Transistor radios were first sold in large volume by Sony, then a struggling young Japanese company; stainless-steel razor blades were introduced by Wilkinson Sword, a British firm that few Americans had heard of; dry copiers were invented...
...Surgeon General's findings brought a prompt retort from the Tobacco Institute, which declared: "The question of health and smoking is still a question." In turn, the American Cancer Society urged the tobacco industry to use the money saved by the demise of TV cigarette ads to mount a new, massive research program that "might even lead you to a safer cigarette...