Word: temperance
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1920-1929
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Senator Robinson is a fighting Southerner who talks with his fists. Born with a red-headed temper, he soon acquired freckles. But years of law and politics have induced a certain amiability, so that he now enjoys fishing...
...wishes in a Theological School he wishes this atmosphere of intellectual and moral reality. No show of piety or no flavor of professionalism can make up for any suggestion of unreality. A man may enter the Harvard Theological School knowing that the School is true to the whole temper of the University life...
...felt that colleges were responsible for "smoking, drinking, cosmetics, French heels, and all other flapperisms among young women", and the only ways out in his opinion was to burn them all to the ground. Then President Butler of Columbia complained in his annual report against "the spirit and temper of journalism, which may perhaps be fairly described as day-to-dayness," and which has "notably invaded American education to its grave undoing...
Similarly in urging youth to temper its daily conduct with thoughtfulness, it is difficult to escape the form "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not". Moral exhortations in these forms are excellent in their way but indigestible when not highly tempered by imagination and especially when administered in large doses. They lose effectiveness in proportion as they increase in number and lack imagination. When a schoolboy hears "My Vacation" spoken of as a "fearsome opportunity of time", he is not apt to be properly terrified...
...lucky for us that the inspired French critics went no further in their indictment. Something intervened to restore their good temper and they conclude philosophically that, after all, America existed anyhow, and inevitably had to be discovered if only by accident. Perhaps only the redskins would have wished an indefinite postponement of Columbus's sailing...