Word: rueful
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...prose stylist of his day, and the tallest (6 ft. 3 in.). Once, staring over the heads of a crowd, he saw himself being watched at a distance by "a strange visage" that studied him "with an expression of comical woebegoneness." Just as he was getting interested in the "rueful being," he discovered that it was himself, reflected in a mirror...
...previous volume, Thackeray: The Uses of Adversity, University of Illinois Provost Gordon N. Ray, No. 1 living authority on Thackeray, described the tragedies that went into the making of the "rueful being"-particularly the death of Thackeray's infant daughter Jane and the insanity of his young wife Isabella. The new volume shows the saddened giant in his prime-the famed, wealthy author of Vanity Fair and Henry Esmond; the doting father of two idolizing, teen-age daughters; the hero and leading spirit of all who detested the rambunctious literary supremacy of Charles Dickens. Author Ray's biography...
Reminiscing in Paris about her earlier years, aging (22) Novelist Franchise (Those Without Shadows) Sagan was rueful about the estimated $500,000 she made off her first three bedtime stories. "The tax people caught up with me and took 65% of my earnings," said she with a certain sadness. "If I'd had more sense I'd have owned whole estates by now. But I bought cars and boats which ended up scuttled on roads or at the bottom...
...Lauris Norstad. the man who now holds his old job as SACEUR (Supreme Allied Commander Europe). After a quick look at the office that he left in 1952 to campaign for the presidency, Ike dropped into the officers' mess, sipped at a martini proffered by Norstad with the rueful comment: "It's been many a year since...
Trees Behind the Church. The letters show Joyce as a man drunk on language. He had the gift of tongues (just for fun, he dashed off translations of a poem by James Stephens in German, Latin, Norwegian, Italian and French). His view of himself was generally rueful, whether he was commenting on his physical "cowardice" or remarking on his "steely cheerfulness in what does not afflict me personally." He read hugely, but at times with so little discrimination that his head felt full of "pebbles and rubbish and broken matches and lots of glass picked up 'most everywhere...