Word: zeal
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...inevitable historically. The Middle Ages had come to a natural end by exhaustion, becoming an intolerable despotic repression of man's physical nature in favor of the spiritual one. Then, however, we turned our backs upon the Spirit and embraced all that is material with excessive and unwarranted zeal. This new way of thinking, which had imposed on us its guidance, did not admit the existence of intrinsic evil in man nor did it see any higher task than the attainment of happiness on earth. It based modern Western civilization on the dangerous trend to worship man and his material...
...modern man a sense of autonomy from any higher forces above him. The Renaissance, he says, ended the Middle Age's complete repression of man's physical nature. "Then, however," Solzhenitsyn adds, "we turned our backs on the Spirit and embraced all that is material with excessive and unwarranted zeal...
...Charles has headed off for Atlantic City, where he will harness his zeal by acting as associate producer of the Miss America Pageant. An interior designer by profession, he is one of 250,000 people who work hard for the system each year without pay. "Just say the pageant is my golf game," explains Charles when asked why he does it. From Atlantic City, too, comes intriguing word about some of the other contestants. Miss Mississippi, Christine learns, was a twirler in her band at "Ole Miss" and a fraternity sweetheart, and is the proud owner of a poodle named...
...public schools' greatest influence and eventual decline. Masters like Dr. Thomas Arnold injected Victorian moral earnestness into the system. Schools became molders of character and soul. Students who had been forced to memorize the Aeneid still graduated unable to write their native tongue, but the harrowing, evangelical zeal drummed into them for years helped them become high-minded gentlemen, trained to follow their superiors and lead the lower classes. Rabid athleticism flourished...
...devote themselves to tedious proclamations of selfhood while ignoring the class whose legend is writ in the Social Register. Despite his considerable failings as a novelist, Auchincloss does for that class what John O'Hara did for the country-club set: observes its workings with the tireless zeal of a behavioral scientist...