Word: conversationalist
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...today, at 75 he is jowled but in his face remains most of the vigor of his younger self. You stop and think if the stories about his being on his deathbed when he was in jail at Danbury in 1946 have any truth in them. A capable conversationalist, Curley can talk on almost any subject with the facility of a specialist, the gift of a retentive memory stands by him well. From a small amount of reading, he is able to glean and store a warehouse of facts; one of the reasons that he was so valuable...
Descriptions of Isaiah Berlin range from "the most brilliant man in the Western World" to "the wittiest" to "the best conversationalist." You have an uncomprehending respect for people who so describe him for you feel they belong to the inner circle, the practiced. The outsider suspects the significance of the torrent of Oxford language which pours forth from this round and rumpled gentleman but seldom succeeds in keeping up with his pace. Berlin himself observes that his audiences "first struggle desperately but then sink under, staring with glazed eyes." One intense lady became so desperate that she finally interrupted...
Father Leonard Feeney, S.J., is a short, 52-year-old man with a mobile, dimpled face and expressive hands. A literary priest who studied at Oxford and once worked on the Jesuit weekly America, Leonard Feeney is an enthusiastic conversationalist who sometimes begins his sentences with a naive, unliterary "Gee!" The author of several volumes of poetry and essays, he confessed in his Fish on Friday: "I am given to superlatives. I overstate things . . . I say 'most' when I mean 'much.' Without the words 'tremendous,' 'wonderful,' 'amazing,' and 'astounding...
...more fluent conversationalist than in the old, shy days, the handsome and unattached Oppie was much sought after as a guest at cocktail and dinner parties. He gave bachelor dinners, serving his own expertly cooked hot Mexican dishes, and mixed a mean Martini with laboratory precision...
Mourned Jean Cocteau, poet, dramatist and conversationalist: "Sometimes after dinner with a celebrated group of brilliant minds, the talk in the salon over the coffee is about the high price of butter and eggs. Such a subject does not lend itself to brilliance!" But anxiety focuses on more than carrots and conversation. In the survey, fewer than one-third of all Europeans believe that there exists "a fairly good chance" to avoid a major war within the next 25 to 30 years. Asked further: "Which side [U.S. or Russia] do you think is gaining ground today and which losing ground...