Word: astonishing
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...prophetic words: "Taken as a whole, literature in democratic ages can never present, as it does in periods of aristocracy, an aspect of order, regularity, science and art; its form will on the contrary ordinarily be slighted, sometimes despised, [and] the object of authors will be to astonish rather than please, and to stir the passions rather than charm the taste...
Whatever the film's shortcomings, Tony Curtis must be adjudged not guilty. In an atypically intelligent and subtle performance, he climbs inside DeSalvo and makes himself astonish ingly at home. Curtis plays the ordinary Albert without his customary flip mannerisms. And as the monster within the skin, he is something else. Under orders from some burning sector of his mind, he hysterically re-enacts one killing by wrapping his hands around an imaginary girl's windpipe. Hovering between pathos and terror, Curtis suddenly makes the viewer's breath stop in his own throat - and incidentally gives...
...same time, however, Cocteau seems to have known in the marrow of his Paris-burgher bones that the only successful French Revolution was that which had been conducted by the bourgeois, not against them. Although he liked to shock and astonish them on his own terms, he was always careful not to offend or challenge on their terms. Astutely, he wrote: "I know to what extent...
...Osborne has simmered down since. Antiroyalism was once such an embattled issue that even Americans-who basically adore royalty-could echo Mark Twain's dictum: "There was never a throne which did not represent a crime." But nowadays monarchy is not much of a villain. And what would astonish Mark Twain is not that so many kings have lost their crowns but that so many still wear them...
...during a brief ceremony in the Governor's Palace, had chosen for itself the status of a French territory. "France respects this status and will continue to do so," he said. "I am a man who has lived much and has seen many varied situations. None of them astonish me, none will astonish me. Whatever happens, I will serve France. I am sure that you will serve her with...