Word: selfishness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...America, which she almost did. In both instances Hellman felt an attraction for a man who could be portrayed as unattractive, even cruel, and she probably could see herself as unattractive for feeling the way she did. Hellman would most likely admit the streak of Regina in her--a selfish, belligerent streak that finds strength seductive and weakness distasteful...
...same theme, is in fact so moralistic that in the end nobody wins out, everyone having been clearly shown the error of his greedy ways. Nichols tampers fatally with the format by making the heiress the one who wants to give it all away, and the two men selfish dopes who don't deserve the money but apparently get it anyway. The moral simplicity of the tale is so distorted, and its punch so diluted, that we end up disgusted with the heroes and indifferent to the outcome. Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, and even Mel Brooks in his undisciplined...
...founding of America was not just a political event, the breaking away of some dissatisfied colonies from a shortsighted and selfish mother country. It was also an act of political philosophy and faith. It was a promise, as Archibald MacLeish put it, a promise to the colonists, to their descendants and to the world at large. The promise was contained in the Declaration of Independence: that people could govern themselves; that they could live in both freedom and equality; and that they would act in accord with reason-reason being a divine attribute, God's light...
...Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned in a sailing accident on the Mediterranean. Back in London, the Gentleman's Magazine harrumphed: "We ought as justly to regret the decease of the Devil." A far different post-mortem came from Lord Byron, who called Shelley "the best and the least selfish man I ever knew. I never knew one who was not a beast in comparison...
...events of 1968. As in any socialist-realist work the characters must be archetypes. The "positive hero" is a working class Czech guy, who just returned from Syria where he was providing "brotherly help" on an engineering project. The "bad guy" is a son of the exploiting class, "pretentious, selfish and foreign to our country." The fact that he operates as "eminence grise" of various literary and political circles is not "an indication of exceptional gifts, but rather a symptom of an egoistic character, in his case almost innate." Why almost? Isn't it obvious since we learn later that...