Word: preciously
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...demonstrate, or try to, that it is still possible to lead a reasonably normal existence without giving way to fear or fury, that it is still possible to raise children, given some luck, without turning them into implacable enemies. You can help to maintain and replenish the precious reserves of tolerance, if only with a quiet word here, a small action there. That may seem desperately inadequate against the fanaticism of both left and right, but the sum of many such words and actions may eventually sway the balance between reason and unreason. You can, above all, help redefine...
...room for maneuver. While enjoying the protection of the U.S. nuclear umbrella, he attacked American economic penetration of Europe, and unsuccessfully sought to undermine American business expansion by trying to persuade other countries to reject the dollar in favor of a return to the gold standard"that most precious of metals." He declared that the U.S. commitment to defend Europe against Soviet attack was meaningless, arguing that Washington would never risk Russian nuclear retaliation against American cities to save its allies. Finally, in 1966, he withdrew France from military participation in NATO but retained political membership in the Atlantic...
...Restif, splendid fellow, is not only a gossipist and eavesdropper but an aging whoremonger, moralist, printer and pamphleteer, skeptic, citizen, sentimentalist and night-prowling philosopher. He catches perfectly the queerness of the scene when he does reach the Bastille: "The fortress is being looted. From the high towers precious documents float down into the moat." He records the rainy grayness of Paris and the strange periods of calm when the Revolution catches its breath ("Most people lost interest . . . The price of bread continued to rise"). He sees the city's whores applaud a lynching "with their white hands...
...example. Image: Daumier doctors (no, not Daumier) attend to the ailing Cardinal Mazarin. They assume grave countenances and huddle aside for a conference with Colbert, Mazarin's aid and confidant. Diagnosis: lung dropsy. Prescription: bleeding and the ingestion of rhubarb and precious stones. The opening sequences of Louis XIV possess all the touches of realism that we have come to expect of contemporary, slice-of-life realism, but it is a realism rendered bizarre by its historical setting. Realism reified, alienated. If the characters believe the witchcraft of the doctors, can we be sure at any moment that we know...
...milieu, not a change in character. Such is the breadth and depth of Solzhenitsyn's vision that he chooses to be the voice of these voiceless and mediocre many. Without ever resorting to formal religious terminology, he says in effect that each of these humdrum souls is precious and equal in the sight of God and ought to be so treated. This is the j'accuse that he hurls in the face of tyranny. Furthermore, he shows what the harvest of tyranny is: fear, hate, mendacity, incompetence, dullness, an all-embracing corruption...