Word: wit
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...composed presence is palpable in Manets like the Bunch of Asparagus, 1880, with its almost miraculous rendering of the blue tips of the asparagus spears. (It sold, fresh off the easel, to a collector named Charles Ephrussi. Manet felt he had been paid too generously, and with his usual wit he sent Ephrussi a tiny painting of a single asparagus spear, with a note: "This one was missing from your bunch...
...There's nothing left of quick wit," Hood says. "There is eloquence lacking in public life. Just look at the presidential debates, for example...
Such fragments are all that is left of Heraclitus' great book, On Nature, which was lost many centuries ago. They come to us with a scattered, enigmatic quality--epigrams and bits of poetry saved from the ruins. But they also have a wit and, for someone known as an obscure philosopher, a prismatic clarity that travels well across centuries. The thoughts remain fresh and profound. Haxton's translation shines them up handsomely. "To a god the wisdom/of the wisest man/sounds apish. Beauty/in a human face/looks apish too./In everything/we have attained/the excellence of apes...
...good to have the author's subtle wit and love of wordplay on display again, even in small doses. And the book on beasts will be of special interest to the faithful because it purports to be a facsimile of a copy actually owned by Harry Potter and bearing his schoolboyish annotations. When, for example, the author promises "A Brief History of Muggle Awareness of Fantastic Beasts," Harry circles "Brief" and scrawls "you liar." No wonder so many readers love this...
...Given the time frame and economic realities, we don't know whether we're going to be able to do it," Lee says. "We're really at our wit's end here...