Word: whims
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...nothing could have appealed more to the nobility, so recently released from the blinding authority of the Sun King, than Watteau's languid and worry-free world of harlequins and sultry lovers and frolicking aristocrats. Watteau's shingle for the art dealer Gersaint was apparently done on whim, but it shows him at his most graceful and elegant. Watteau himself boasted of it, and it was one of the last things he painted. A few months after finishing it, he died of consumption...
...value convenience and mobility above roots (their roots are generally back in Indiana, or in the suburbs), for people who are eternally on the edge of their chairs, ready to leave for Europe or the Caribbean or to take over the West Coast office at an executive's whim...
...polarization. There have been ebbs and tides between the two blocs, with the result that lower-court judges and practicing lawyers can never really tell whether the Supreme Court is heading thisaway or thataway. Thus the law of the land has often seemed to be dictated more by the whim of the moment than by consistent principle...
...Whim of the Pope. A cardinal, according to an old Roman riddle, is a whim of the Pope; he must vow absolute obedience to the will of the man who holds the See of St. Peter, must get explicit papal permission to leave Rome or its suburbs. But a cardinal is also, next to the Pope, the most privileged and the most powerful cleric in the Roman Catholic Church. As one of the most spectacular dressers of Christendom, he has to lay out at least $3,000 for his cassocks and skullcaps of scarlet and purple* (which are worn during...
...step down by the end of 1963, when he will have ruled West Germany for twelve straight years. Unkindest cut of all was a 16-page, four-year contract by which the Free Democrats, painfully aware that any less formal deal with Adenauer is subject to cancellation at whim, ensured that their key policies will be binding on the coalition...