Unpretentious Quotes

I privately say to you, old friend... please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of early-blooming parentheses: (((()))).

There are times when wisdom cannot be found in the chambers of parliament or the halls of academia but at the unpretentious setting of the kitchen table.

I privately say to you old friend (unto you, really, I'm afraid), please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of early-blooming parenthesis: (((( )))). I suppose, most unflorally, I truly mean them to be taken, first off as bow-legged--buckle-legged--omens of my state of mind and body at this writing.

It turns out that the men who ultimately, who unpretentiously value peace are willing to sacrifice their own peace of mind in order to render it. The question is, 'Who, between opposing forces, would do such a thing?' It seems only theoretical albeit true that men who accept an objective rather than subjective moral standard are, in a general sense, more capable of making such sacrifices for the sake of peace.

I love the way she feels in the curve of my arm. I love her unpretentious beauty, her intelligence, her nerve. But could I ever love her? The concept of falling in love is completely foreign, something I can’t bring myself to accept. Her hair pillows my cheek and her hand on my leg is warm. I care about you, Conner, and I hate to see you hurting. I want to respond but can’t find the pretty words I need.

A delicate scent hung in the air as we strolled down the long boulevard toward the Opera House holding hands. Paris had come to life in a very special way, the lights of the Eiffel Tower a gentle reminder that nothing mattered once that starry blanket covered the great city, except love. Love was the reason Paris existed. For those lonely in their soul, their heart a barren wasteland starving for nourishment, she offered hope. For those like Caroline and I, lucky enough to have found each other and begin the healing process to repair our brokenness, Paris was a bastion to love's transforming power. A year ago I could not have pictured myself holding hands with someone as nice as Caroline, as lovely and unpretentious. She was pretty, but her soul made her beautiful. I loved everything about her, including her damage.

unpretentious like wood that has not been fashioned into anything;

King of Queens was unpretentious and, most important, funny.

The day comes in the life of every single man living alone when he must give a dinner party, however unpretentious, and that day had now arrived for Rupert Stonebird.

No one has even begun to understand comradeship who does not accept with it a certain hearty eagerness in eating, drinking, or smoking, an uproarious materialism which to many women appears only hoggish. You may call the thing an orgy or a sacrament; it is certainly an essential. It is at root a resistance to the superciliousness of the individual. Nay, its very swaggering and howling are humble. In the heart of its rowdiness there is a sort of mad modesty; a desire to melt the separate soul into the mass of unpretentious masculinity. It is a clamorous confession of the weakness of all flesh. No man must be superior to the things that are common to men. This sort of equality must be bodily and gross and comic. Not only are we all in the same boat, but we are all seasick.

Lucille has a dull life, Mr. Marlowe. She's stuck here with me and a PBX. And an itty-bitty diamond ring - so small I was ashamed to give it to her. But what can a man do? If he loves a girl, he'd like it to show on her finger." Lucille held her left hand up and moved it around to get a flash from the little stone. "I hate it," she said. "I hate it like I hate the sunshine and the summer and the bright stars and the full moon. That's how I hate it". I picked up the key and my suitcase and left them. A little more of that and I'd be falling in love with myself. I might even give myself a small unpretentious diamond ring.

The only responsible course is to deny oneself the ideological misuse of one’s own existence, and for the rest to conduct oneself in private as modestly, unobtrusively and unpretentiously as is required, no longer by good upbringing, but by the shame of still having air to breathe, in hell.

I've known humans, and I know beasts. The beast is better. It is unpretentious. It kills for food. Humans do 'cause they're just not any good.

As Harry Potter was the only other thing I was passionate about, the doctors gave consent for me to leave the hospital and collect the fifth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, from the local book shop. I was so ecstatic to have the book and excited to begin reading it, but there was never any hint of your imminent arrival and the way you would change my life so drastically. Luna, you instantly captivated me. I didn’t know why but there was something about you with your upside-down magazine, straggly blonde hair, and the honest, abashed way you stared at people without blinking that fascinated and perplexed me at once. You laughed hysterically at one of Ron’s quips and didn’t stop to excuse yourself and feel ashamed when it became clear that everyone found you strange. Throughout the book, I found myself waiting for your brief appearances and wanting to know more about you and why you were the way you were. You baffled me, not because you were odd (though indeed you were), but because you were… perfect. But it was a different kind of perfect to the perfectly thin, smiling magazine girls I simultaneously idolised and reviled. It was the way you carried your oddness like it was the most natural thing in the world. You didn’t market your oddness as your defining feature the way some insecure teenagers do, in guise of confidence and security. And nor were you oblivious to the awkward and uncomfortable feelings your oddness provoked in others. When, unable to comprehend how you wore your oddness so honestly and unashamedly, your peers reverted to mockery and bullying, you recognized this as a reflection of their own deep-seated insecurity and calmly let them carry on, quite above your head. You weren’t trying hard to present a certain aspect of yourself that would boldly identify you in the world. And that’s when it occurred to me how bizarre and positively ridiculous it was to apply the word “weird” to describe you, when you represented the most natural and unpretentious state possible to be; you were yourself.

When she was widowed, there were still pleasing qualities in her, suitable for an unpretentious everyday life, and people sent matchmakers to her, but she declined any new matrimony and busied herself with the baking of savory pies.

Without knowing it he drew a very pleasant picture of an affectionate, happy family who lived unpretentiously in circumstances of moderate affluence at peace with themselves and the world and undisturbed by any fear that anything might happen to affect their security. The life he described lacked neither grace nor dignity; it was healthy and normal, and through its intellectual interests not entirely material; the persons who led it were simple and honest, neither ambitious nor envious, prepared to do their duty by the state and by their neighbors according to their lights; and there was in them neither harm nor malice. If Lydia saw how much of their good nature, their kindliness, their unpleasing self-complacency depended on the long-established and well-ordered prosperity of the country that had given them birth; if she had an inkling that, like children building castles on the sea sand, they might at any moment be swept away by a tidal wave, she allowed no sign of it to appear on her face.

Those kinds of memories—unpretentious, commonplace. But for me, they’re all meaningful and valuable. As each of these memories flits across my mind, I’m sure I unconsciously smile, or give a slight frown. Commonplace they might be, but the accumulation of these memories has led to one result: me.

In this entre-nous spirit, then, old confidant before we join the others, the grounded everywhere, including, I’m sure, the middle-aged hot-rodders who insist on zooming us to the moon, the Dharma Bums, the makers of cigarette filters for thinking men, the Beat and the Sloppy and the Petulant, the chosen cultists, all the lofty experts who know so well what we should or shouldn’t do with our poor little sex organs, all the bearded, proud, unlettered young men and unskilled guitarists and Zen-killers and incorporated aesthetic Teddy boys who look down their thoroughly unenlightened noses at this splendid planet where (please don’t shut me up) Kilroy, Christ, and Shakespeare all stopped – before we join these others, I privately say to you, old friend (unto you, really, I’m afraid), please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of very early-blooming parentheses: (((()))).

[...] please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of very early-blooming parentheses: ( ( ( ( ) ) ) ).

How about something that isn’t real, like a humble vegan or an unpretentious hipster?” Liv asked snidely.

A man needs to feel powerful and respected. Innately within us, as far back as we can remember, we have taught ourselves to grand stand in our abilities to be tough, to conquer, to impress and to win in all aspects of our lives in order to be validated by others and in doing so we have built our conceptual house of self on the sand of societal opinion. Yet, ironically, it’s only when a man finds his true strength in humility, in its purest sense, will he ever experience what genuine power and respect feels like. The man who builds his conceptual house of self on the rock of unpretentious decorum simply needs no validation outside of his creator. He is who he is…and for all intense and purposes that is the only respectable power any man should ever seek.

Wolfgang Pauli, in the months before Heisenberg's paper on matrix mechanics pointed the way to a new quantum theory, wrote to a friend, "At the moment physics is again terribly confused. In any case, it is too difficult for me, and I wish I had been a movie comedian or something of the sort and had never heard of physics." That testimony is particularly impressive if contrasted with Pauli's words less than five months later: "Heisenberg's type of mechanics has again given me hope and joy in life. To be sure it does not supply the solution to the riddle, but I believe it is again possible to march forward.

A secret to being more revered than resented, he learned, was to display (at least when he could muster the discipline) a self-deprecating humor, unpretentious demeanor, and unaggressive style in conversation.

The Japanese people struck him as gentle and unpretentious, with a deep appreciation for beauty and ideas. “Of all the people I have met, I like the Japanese most, as they are modest, intelligent, considerate, and have a feel for art,

He had envisioned each contour and line of her face, the spellbinding individuality of personal detail. Here was a woman who had lived, and that life had been kind and good. And within that goodness lay true glamour, which was far more than the sum of ephemeral, physical parts. That was why, even attired in an unpretentious house dress, her forty-eight-year-old face scarcely made up, Molly was glamorous in a way that put in the shade women half her age and on the cover of fashion magazines.

APPRECIATION OF UNPRETENTIOUS TRUTHS. — It is the sign of a higher culture to esteem more highly the little, humble truths, those discovered by a strict method, rather than the gladdening and dazzling errors that originate in metaphysical and artistic ages and men.

A man of rigid uprightness, sincerely religious; steeped in his art, earnest and grave, yet not lacking naive humour; ever hospitable and generous, and yet shrewd and cautious; pugnacious when his art was slighted or his rights were infringed; generous in the extreme to his wife and children, and eager to give the latter advantages which he had never known himself; a lover of sound theology, and of a piety as deep as it was unpretentious—such were the qualities of one who towers above all other masters of music in moral grandeur.

I watch the disparate fragments float up and disappear, without comment. Pure unpretentious visions. In my mind, however, these simple scenes summon forth a sadness that I can find no words for. Like a ship sailing past a window, they appear only to disappear without a trace.

Snow is beautiful, almost ridiculously picturesque as it wafts down and blankets the ground, bringing with it a beatific quiet. Wintry mix is radically unromantic, as nicely captured by the word graupel. Wintry mix is a thoroughly Midwestern form of precipitation: practical, unlovely, and unpretentious.

The New York Times foresaw that in future generations “if a great soldier is indomitable in purpose and exhaustless in courage, endurance, and equanimity; if he is free from vanity and pettiness, if he is unpretentious, truthful, frank, constant, generous to friends, magnanimous to foes, and patriotic to the core, of him it will be said, ‘He is like Grant.

Now she realized how significant this unpretentious facade was, not just as a defense against public intrusion and curiosity, but as a reminder that sometimes the extraordinary existed just below the surface of the ordinary. The bookshop was a link to the outside world, to stability and normality, and a portal into the mysterious and intoxicating world of Inquiry.

For those who choose to live no longer as tourists but as pilgrims, the Songs of Ascents combine all the cheerfulness of a travel song with the practicality of a guidebook and map. Their unpretentious brevity is excellently described by William Faulkner. “They are not monuments, but footprints. A monument only says, ‘At least I got this far,’ while a footprint says, ‘This is where I was when I moved again.’”9

Hygge favors the ordinary and familiar. It is unpretentious and imperfect and encourages satisfaction is everydayness. This attitude of gratitude helps them ignore the urge to reach for more. Many Danes quickly admit that having too much of anything undermines its value. Extravagance begins to feel exhausting and overwhelming when it happens all the time. Simple pleasures, on the other hand cultivate contentment.

There’s the reassuring smell of a coal fire and beeswax polish, and the dark-green leather button-back booths are deep and comfortable, built for long, relaxed drinking sessions. An old man and his snoozing Jack Russell are the only other patrons. It’s one of those unpretentious, end-of-the-world pubs that you know hasn’t changed much in decades, ruddy quarry tiles and a brass surround running the length of the well-stocked bar.

Those kinds of memories -- unpretentious, commonplace. But for me, they're all meaningful and valuable. As each of these memories flits across my mind, I'm sure I unconsciously smile, or give a slight frown. Commonplace they might be, but the accumulation of these memories has led to one result: me. Me here and now, on the north shore of Kauai. Sometimes when I think of life, I feel like a piece of driftwood washed up on a shore.

Smart, yet unpretentious. Tough enough to stand up to him, yet Zen-like enough to rise above turmoil. Well-educated and independent, yet ready to make accommodations for him and a family. Down-to-earth, but with a touch of the ethereal. Savvy enough to know how to manage him, but secure enough to not always need to. And it wouldn’t hurt to be a beautiful, lanky blonde with an easygoing sense of humor who liked organic vegetarian food.

Images of him continued to plague me, unbidden and cruelly tantalising: the mesmerizing blue eyes that compelled me to share with him my most private fears; the feel of his thick, untidy hair as the sunlight split it into myriad shades of gold; the soft laugh that touched my soul; his aloof but unpretentious manner; his confident assurance that I could make my own choices. I shuddered at the thought of Steldor's attitude toward me, for he saw me as only a woman, relegated to supervising that household, planning and executing social events and raising the children. All he really wanted was my presence in his bed, which made me all the more unwilling to comply. Steldor's glance made me uncomfortable, his patronising laugh made me cringe, his condescension frequently led to my humiliation. In Narians arms, I had felt extraordinary happiness; in Steldor's I felt trapped.

Inexpensive Progress Encase your legs in nylons, Bestride your hills with pylons O age without a soul; Away with gentle willows And all the elmy billows That through your valleys roll. Let's say goodbye to hedges And roads with grassy edges And winding country lanes; Let all things travel faster Where motor car is master Till only Speed remains. Destroy the ancient inn-signs But strew the roads with tin signs 'Keep Left,' 'M4,' 'Keep Out!' Command, instruction, warning, Repetitive adorning The rockeried roundabout; For every raw obscenity Must have its small 'amenity,' Its patch of shaven green, And hoardings look a wonder In banks of floribunda With floodlights in between. Leave no old village standing Which could provide a landing For aeroplanes to roar, But spare such cheap defacements As huts with shattered casements Unlived-in since the war. Let no provincial High Street Which might be your or my street Look as it used to do, But let the chain stores place here Their miles of black glass facia And traffic thunder through. And if there is some scenery, Some unpretentious greenery, Surviving anywhere, It does not need protecting For soon we'll be erecting A Power Station there. When all our roads are lighted By concrete monsters sited Like gallows overhead, Bathed in the yellow vomit Each monster belches from it, We'll know that we are dead.

One of the gifts that comes with age is an appreciation for some of the more simple, more commonplace things that seem mundane earlier in one’s life. As the years pass, the hidden treasure to be found in humble and unpretentious virtues becomes more accentuated—things like rest, silence, and the joy of an ordinary day. The attraction toward activity and achievement lessens, becoming slowly, steadily, and appropriately replaced by an interest in more internal matters.

The foundation of that morality, he believed, was rising above the “merely personal” to live in a way that benefited humanity. There were times when he could be callous to those closest to him, which shows that, like the rest of us humans, he had flaws. Yet more than most people, he dedicated himself honestly and sometimes courageously to actions that he felt transcended selfish desires in order to encourage human progress and the preservation of individual freedoms. He was generally kind, good-natured, gentle, and unpretentious. When he and Elsa left for Japan in 1922, he offered her daughters some advice on how to lead a moral life. “Use for yourself little,” he said, “but give to others much.

I miss the thoughts of you now... For in my head they over ran. But now, on unpretentious grounds... There's a grave with unearthed sand. You brought the color to my world, When I was content living in gray. But, now those colors are too bright, They tarnish all that they portray. I miss the thought of you, more than you... Because my thoughts left you unblemished. And I held on to them; with tenacious grip... But, like your honor, they diminished. For while my heart was sentient... You drug my name through the mire... And now when thoughts of you arise... They're just cinder in the fire. I miss the thoughts of you now... For in my head, you were amended... But, now in your place, Is a nameless face... Of a man who has descended.

you loved your own country, its smoothness and efficiency, its practicality, its broad, unpretentious accents and emphasis on honesty. I would say—I did say—that you were enamored of an archaic version of the U.S., either an America that was long past or that never was; that you were enamored of an idea. And you would say—did say—that part of what America was was an idea, and that was more than most countries could claim, which were mostly scrappy pasts and circumscriptions on a map. It was a fine, it was a beautiful idea, too, you said, and you pointed out—I granted you this—that a nation that aimed to preserve above all the ability of its citizens to do pretty much whatever they wanted was exactly the sort of place that should have captivated the likes of me. But it hasn’t worked out that way, I’d object, and you’d counter, better than anywhere else, and we would be off.

Isn’t that momentous? Women! A krewe of women. Turning the tide on men! We are making history here. Yes, this moment! Making history.” The woman had barely taken a breath. She tapped Constance on the arm and picked up her fork to begin her hors d’oeuvre of boudin-stuffed mushrooms. Constance leaned toward the woman as if wishing to speak more directly. In truth, she wanted to see the name on the place card. She had time to make out only the first name: Marianne. “Ah, yes, Marianne,” she said. “It is history, isn’t it? You are so very right.” “It is time that women spoke up for themselves, did for themselves, and we are part of that wave that will surely come to shore when we get the vote. But for now, having our own ball will have to suffice.” The woman turned to her neighbor on the other side. “Indeed.” Constance finished the last bit of mushroom, speaking to the air. Her fork clanged on the plate as the uniformed server whisked it away. It was replaced immediately with a sumptuous, but unpretentious luncheon plate of shrimp and asparagus, with a decorative sprig of green grapes.

He spoke of his father and mother with a faintly mocking irony which Lydia saw well enough he assumed only to conceal the loving admiration with which he regarded them. Without knowing it he drew a very pleasant picture of an affectionate, happy family who lived unpretentiously in circumstances of moderate affluence at peace with themselves and the world and undisturbed by any fear that anything might happen to affect their security. The life he described lacked neither grace nor dignity; it was healthy and normal, and through its intellectual interests not entirely material; the persons who led it were simple and honest, neither ambitious nor envious, prepared to do their duty by the state and by their neighbours according to their lights; and there was in them neither harm nor malice. If Lydia saw how much of their good nature, their kindliness, their not unpleasing self-complacency depended on the long-established and well-ordered prosperity of the country that had given them birth; if she had an inkling that, like children building castles on the sea sand, they might at any moment be swept away by a tidal wave, she allowed no sign of it to appear on her face. ‘How lucky you English are,’ she said.

AESTHETIC SIMPLICITY For some people simplicity is an aesthetic value, so one further sense that might be attached to the notion of simple living is a preference for an uncomplicated, uncluttered living environment. Imagine, for instance, an apartment with white walls, white trim, bare wood floors, simple wooden furniture, plain white kitchenware, white towels in the bathroom, and white blankets on the simple wooden beds. Or a house where the brick walls and overhead beams are left exposed, the furniture is rustic, and any artwork on display is clearly local and amateurish. Or a study containing nothing but a desk and a chair. All these are interiors that people deliberately create for themselves. Simplicity of this sort is not necessarily frugal. The uncluttered apartment could be in the center of Paris; the plain wooden furniture might be custom-made. Wittgenstein designed a house in Vienna for his sister Margaret characterized by austere, almost minimalist aesthetic lines, yet built with no concern for cost. But although such setups may not be cheap, they make no exhibition of expense. And the styles have symbolic significance. They bespeak sympathy with the plain, the unpretentious, the unostentatious. They connote honesty, purity, and a mind focused on essentials. In the case of country retreats, closeness to nature may also be sought and expressed.

Where do the biggest movie star of his generation and a revered director (and great actor in his own right) stay when they are visiting someone? Would you believe the local Holiday Inn? Hoping to forge a better connection to Chris, Clint Eastwood and Bradley Cooper came to see me and the rest of the family in early spring of 2014, before they started filming American Sniper. The unpretentiousness of their visit and their genuine goodwill floored me. It was a great omen for the movie. Bubba and I picked them up at the local airport and brought them home; within minutes Bubba had Bradley out in the back playing soccer. Meanwhile, Clint and I talked inside. He reminded me of my grandfather with his courtly manners and gracious ways. He was very funny, with a quiet, quick wit and dry sense of humor. After dinner--it was an oryx Chris had killed shortly before he died--Bradley took Bubba to the Dairy Queen for dessert. Even in small-town Texas, he couldn’t quite get away without being recognized, and when someone asked for his photo, he stepped aside to pose. Bubba folded his arms across his chest and scanned the area much as his dad would have: on overwatch. I guess I didn’t really understand how unusual the situation was until later, when I dropped them off at the Holiday Inn. I watched them walk into the lobby and disappear. That’s Clint Eastwood and Bradley Cooper! Awesome!

Preparatory men. I welcome all signs that a more manly, a warlike, age is about to begin, an age which, above all, will give honor to valor once again. For this age shall prepare the way for one yet higher, and it shall gather the strength which this higher age will need one day - this age which is to carry heroism into the pursuit of knowledge and wage wars for the sake of thoughts and their consequences. To this end we now need many preparatory valorous men who cannot leap into being out of nothing - any more than out of the sand and slime of our present civilisation and metropolitanism: men who are bent on seeking for that aspect in all things which must be overcome; men characterised by cheerfulness, patience, unpretentiousness, and contempt for all great vanities, as well as by magnanimity in victory and forbearance regarding the small vanities of the vanquished; men possessed of keen and free judgement concerning all victors and the share of chance in every victory and every fame; men who have their own festivals, their own weekdays, their own periods of mourning, who are accustomed to command with assurance and are no less ready to obey when necessary, in both cases equally proud and serving their own cause; men who are in greater danger, more fruitful, and happier! For, believe me, the secret of the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously! Build your cities under Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors, as long as you cannot be rulers and owners, you lovers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be satisfied to live like shy deer, hidden in the woods! At long last the pursuit of knowledge will reach out for its due: it will want to rule and own, and you with it!

For our part, we thought we would be following her path from a distance in the press. Our friends called to tell us when the photo of Diana pushing Patrick in his stroller appeared in Newsweek, or when our name was mentioned in a news magazine or paper. We were generally mislabeled as the Robinsons. Everyone asked if we would be going to the wedding, and we would reply, “Us? No, of course not.” We truly never expected to hear from Diana again, so her January letter became especially precious to us. We were stunned when a letter from Diana on Buckingham Palace stationary arrived in late March. She was clearly happy, writing, “I am on a cloud.” She missed Patrick “dreadfully.” She hoped that we were all “settled down by now, including your cat too--.” Diana had never even seen our cat. We’d left him with my brother because England requires a six-month quarantine for cats and dogs. How did she ever remember we had one? Then, “I will be sending you an invitation to the wedding, naturally. . . .” The wedding . . . naturally . . . God bless her. Maybe we weren’t going to lose her after all. She even asked me to send a picture of Patrick to show to “her intended(!), since I’m always talking about him.” As for her engagement, she could never even have imagined it the year before. She closed with her typical and appealing modesty: “I do hope you don’t mind me writing to you but just had to let you know what was going on.” Mind? I was thrilled and touched and amazed by her fondness and thoughtfulness, as I have been every single time she has written to us and seen us. This was always to be the Diana we knew and loved—kind, affectionate, unpretentious. I wrote back write away and sent her the two photographs I’d taken of her holding Patrick in our living room the previous fall. After Diana received the photographs, she wrote back on March 31 to thank me and sent us their official engagement picture. She said I should throw the photograph away if it was of no use. She added, “You said some lovely things which I don’t feel I deserve . . . .” Surely, she knew from the previous year that we would be her devoted friends forever.

I miss Diana more than I can express. The world seems a colder place without her luminous presence. To had had Diana’s friendship, to have known her personally, has been a gift beyond comparison. She brought joy and pride and a touch of glamour to my life for years. I loved and admired her without reservation. When Patrick recognized her picture on magazine covers, I thought how incredible it was that we actually knew the beautiful, famous Diana. Best of all, we knew she was even lovelier inside. I read her letters, feeling deeply touched that she continued to care for us. Seeing her in person--warm, unpretentious, and radiant--was a thrill that lasted a long, long time. It truly was, “like being brushed by angels’ wings,” as my friend at the funeral had said. Whoever would have thought when I called for a nanny so many years ago, that magic would enter my life. My family and I watched her dazzling progress from a shy teenager to a multi-faceted and charismatic woman. She fulfilled her many roles so beautifully. Yet to me, Diana was a beloved friend, not the world-famous Princess of Wales. Behind the glamour, I saw the qualities I’d always admired in her--kindness, integrity, and grace in all she did. Above all, Diana was born to be a mother. Showing affection was as natural to her as breathing. I saw her tender care for my young son. I know she was an utterly devoted mother to her own boys, giving them unconditional love and deriving her greatest joy in life from them. I’ve wished so often that her life had been a fairytale, that Diana had been spared the pain and loneliness she suffered. But without the despair, she might not have developed the strength and humanity that reached out to people everywhere. Diana instinctively looked beyond her own problems to ease the pain and distress of others. She touched so many people in her short lifetime. I never thought it would end this way--that she would die so young. I will always remember, as the last hymn faded into silence at her funeral, the solemn tread of the soldiers’ boots--so haunting, so final--as they carried her casket through the Abbey. I couldn’t bear that she was leaving forever. For months now, I’ve searched for some solace in this tragedy. I hope that Diana’s untimely death and the worldwide mourning for her have silenced forever those who belittled her values and doubted her appeal. She rests peacefully now beyond reproach--young and beautiful. Diana, you were greater than we realized. We will never, never forget you.

Now, who and what is this minstrel in reality? Where does he come from? In what respects does he differ from his predecessors? He has been described as a cross between the early medieval court-singer and the ancient mime of classical times. The mime had never ceased to flourish since the days of classical antiquity; when even the last traces of classical culture disappeared, the descendants of the old mimes still continued to travel about the Empire, entertaining the masses with their unpretentious, unsophisticated and unliterary art. The Germanic countries were flooded out with mimes in the early Middle Ages; but until the ninth century the poets and singers at the courts kept themselves strictly apart from them. Not until they lost their cultured audience, as a result of the Carolingian Renaissance and the clericalism of the following generation, and came up against the competition of the mimes in the lower classes, did they have, to a certain extent, to become mimes themselves in order to be able to compete with their rivals. Thus both singers and comedians now move in the same circles, intermingle and influence each other so much that they soon become indistinguishable from one another. The mime and the scop both become the minstrel. The most striking characteristic of the minstrel is his versatility. The place of the cultured, highly specialized heroic ballad poet is now taken by the Jack of all trades, who is no longer merely a poet and singer, but also a musician and dancer, dramatist and actor, clown and acrobat, juggler and bear-leader, in a word, the universal jester and maître de plaisir of the age. Specialization, distinction and solemn dignity are now finished with; the court poet has become everybody’s fool and his social degradation has such a revolutionary and shattering effect on himself that he never entirely recovers from the shock. From now on he is one of the déclassés, in the same class as tramps and prostitutes, runaway clerics and sent-down students, charlatans and beggars. He has been called the ‘journalist of the age’, but he really goes in for entertainment of every kind: the dancing song as well as the satirical song, the fairy story as well as the mime, the legend of saints as well as the heroic epic. In this context, however, the epic takes on quite new features: it acquires in places a more pointed character with a new straining after effect, which was absolutely foreign to the spirit of the old heroic ballad. The minstrel no longer strikes the gloomy, solemn, tragi-heroic note of the ‘Hildebrandslied’, for he wants to make even the epic sound entertaining; he tries to provide sensations, effective climaxes and lively epigrams. Compared with the monuments of the older heroic poetry, the ‘Chanson de Roland’ never fails to reveal this popular minstrel taste for the piquant.

She thought about all the baking therapy she and Char had done together during that time. Usually in the wee, wee hours. Those sessions never had anything to do with their respective jobs. And everything to do with salvation. Their worlds might be uncontrolled chaos, but baking always made sense. Flour, butter, and sugar were as integral a part of her as breathing. Lani had long since lost count of the number of nights she and Charlotte had crammed themselves into her tiny kitchen, or Charlotte's even tinier one, whipping up this creation or that, all the while hashing and rehashing whatever the problems du jour happened to be. It was the one thing she truly missed about being in New York. No one on Sugarberry understood how baking helped take the edge off. Some folks liked a dry martini. Lani and Char, on the other hand, had routinely talked themselves down from the emotional ledge with rich vanilla queen cake and some black velvet frosting. It might take a little longer to assemble than the perfect adult beverage... but it was the very solace found in the dependable process of measuring and leavening that had made it their own personal martini. Not to mention the payoff was way, way better. Those nights hadn't been about culinary experience, either. The more basic, the more elemental the recipe, the better. Maybe Lani should have seen it all along. Her destiny wasn't to be found in New York, or even Paris, or Prague, making the richest, most intricate cakes, or the most delicate French pastries. No, culinary fulfillment- for her, the same as life fulfillment- was going to be experienced on a tiny spit of land off the coast of Georgia, where she could happily populate the world with gloriously unpretentious, rustic, and rudimentary little cupcakes.

BECKONED to the square to listen to a representative of the Virginia Company of London. He seemed an unpretentious man, a clerk, if you will, who had some important points to make before the Jamestown colonists started mingling with the new members. The man stepped up on a makeshift wooden box and spoke to the good people gathered for the day’s celebration. As he looked out at the more delicate gender, he released a sigh of satisfaction. The bride ship had come through, and it was hoped these ninety women would secure the colony’s growth. The clerk waved a document in the air and the crowd hushed, anxious to hear what he would say. “Each woman,” he called out, to reach the hearing of those standing furthest away. “Each woman, upon entering into marriage with a man of Jamestown, will receive as promised, one new apron, two new pairs of shoes, six pairs of sheets…” He droned on, reciting the promises made by the Virginia Company of London. As each new item was listed, gasps of delight flickered in the air. The gifting lent the day even more enjoyment for these items were needed to set up a good home and many of the women were arriving with few possessions. The representative talked at length about marriage licenses and how each couple would be married, one after the other, until all were satisfied. When all was said, and done, there would be a lot of paperwork, but these contracts were the foundation of the colony, the building blocks that would ensure the birth of children on this new soil. It wasn’t just the Virginia Company of London who wanted the population to grow in the colony, it was also the wish of Scarlett. These people who would be her neighbours, these men who would make business deals with her husband, these children who would grow by her child’s side, were the herd. From these people, would she harvest, and as they prospered, so would she.

It's as if many of the middle class have discovered aspiration isn't about having a home that is large, showy and full of bling and are instead focusing on the private, unpretentious, and sustainable.

Father, Your ways are unpretentious, simple, gracious. —Julie Garmon

What’s the effect of this attitude of gratitude on Southern children? Well, we think it’s summed up by this description of Mississippi Grits Sela Ward: “Her niceness is genuine, the product of a small-town Southern upbringing that left her with a lasting appreciation for the generosity of spirits that surrounded her as a child. It’s not just about disarming smiles and gracious manners, though they’re part of her charm. It’s more about her openness, her unpretentiousness, and her self-deprecating sense of humor.” We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

I have never aspired to be the greatest cook, but rather the greatest at inspiring others to cook. I believe the best way to do that is to make cooking approachable to all - with unpretentious recipes and delicious results, people are hooked. I hope my cookbooks are the ones covered in chocolate fingerprints with oil splatters and crinkled pages. The ones that never make it onto the bookshelf in the living room as they are tucked safely in the kitchen.

For when he was poor, he had an unpretentious heart, but when he became rich, he became filled with arrogance.

To me Everything and More reads, rather, as a discourse from a green, gridded prairie heaven, where irony-free people who’ve been educated to a turn in those prairie schoolhouses and great-but-unpretentious universities sit around their dinner tables buttering sweet corn, drinking iced tea, and patiently trying to explain even the most recondite mysteries of the universe, out of a conviction that the world must be amenable to human understanding and that if you can understand something, you can explain it in words: fancy words if that helps, plain words if possible. But in any case you can reach out to other minds through that medium of words and make a connection. Handing out irradiated corn kernels to a troop of Boy Scouts and writing books that explain difficult matters in disarmingly informal language are the same act, a way of saying “here is something cool that I want to share with you for no reason other than making the spark jump between minds.” If that is how you have been raised, then to explain anything to anyone is a pleasure. To explain difficult things is a challenge. And to explain the infamously difficult ideas that were spawned in chiliastic profusion during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Infinities, Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Hilbert’s problems, Gödel’s Proof) is Mount Everest.

Scandinavians generally possess an intimate understanding of nature and because of this have a heightened appreciation of the intrinsic qualities of raw materials (especially local ones). The long and rich traditions of craftmanship and folk art that have existed in all five countries demonstrate not only the Scandinavian peoples' empathy for materials, but also their desire to infuse everyday objects with a natural, unpretentious beauty.

No constitution arises from deliberation. The rights of the people are never written, except as simple restatements of previous, unwritten rights. … Although written laws are merely the declarations of pre-existing laws, it is far from true that all these laws can be written. … The more of it one puts into writing, the weaker the institution becomes. … No nation can give itself liberty if it is not already free, for human influence extends only as far as existing rights have developed. … There never existed a free nation which did not have seeds of liberty as old as itself in its natural constitution. … Nor has any nation ever successfully attempted to develop, by its fundamental written laws, rights other than those which existed in its natural constitution. … One of the greatest errors of a century which professed them all was to believe that a political constitution could be created and written a priori, whereas reason and experience unite in proving that a constitution is a divine work and that precisely the most fundamental and essentially constitutional of a nation’s laws could not possibly be written. … Promises, contracts, and oaths are mere words. It is as easy to break this trifling bond as to make it. Without the doctrine of a Divine Legislator, all moral obligation becomes illusory. Power on one side, weakness on the other: this constitutes all the bonds of human societies. The codifiers of Roman law unpretentiously inserted a remarkable fragment of Greek jurisprudence in the first chapter of their collection. Among the laws which govern us, it says, some are written and others are not. Nothing could be more simple and yet more profound. …428

Hitler was surprisingly modest and unpretentious, especially for the leader of the second largest party in the country.

I thought it was the kind of bar my guy [Rebus] would drink in,” said Rankin. “Very unaffected, very unpretentious, basic, stripped back. Almost like a private club. Everybody knows everybody else. . . . The kind of Edinburgh I was writing about was this secret Edinburgh that tourists never saw, the stuff that was happening just below the surface, and I thought [Oxford Bar] a nice representation of that.

Kayapó. In muddy villages, everyone is smiling everywhere all the time, very kind, very unpretentious.

Just before noon one sunny summer’s day, three bears were returning home from their morning wander. They lived in a sturdy wooden cabin, unpretentious and rustic. Approaching the house he’d built with his own paws, Daddy Bear felt a sense of satisfaction. The residence blended in with the forest rather than standing out from it. All the construction materials had been ethically sourced. The wood came from trees felled by storms. A thick layer of turf on the roof provided insulation in winter and kept the cabin cool in summer. In addition to being practical, the turf looked pretty. Its grass sprouted straight up like hair jutting from a mythic head. A little too big to be quaint, yet a little too small to be showoffish, the house was just right. And just right was the way Daddy Bear liked things.

I welcome all signs that a more virile, warlike age is about to begin, which will restore honor to courage above all. For this age shall prepare the way for one yet higher, and it shall gather the strength that this higher age will require one day — the age that will carry heroism into the search for knowledge and that will wage wars for the sake of ideas and their consequences. To this end we now need many preparatory courageous human beings — human beings who know how to be silent, lonely, resolute, and content and constant in invisible activities; human beings distinguished as much by cheerfulness, patience, unpretentiousness, and contempt for all great vanities as by magnanimity in victory and forbearance regarding the small vanities of the vanquished; human beings accustomed to command with assurance but instantly ready to obey when that is called for — equally proud, equally serving their own cause in both cases, more endangered human beings, more fruitful human beings, happier beings! For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is — to live dangerously!

We now need many preparatory courageous human beings—human beings who know how to be silent, lonely, resolute, and content and constant in invisible activities; human beings distinguished as much by cheerfulness, patience, unpretentiousness, and contempt for all great vanities as by magnanimity in victory and forbearance regarding the small vanities of the vanquished; human beings accustomed to command with assurance but instantly ready to obey when that is called for—equally proud, equally serving their own cause in both cases, more endangered human beings, more fruitful human beings, happier beings! For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is—to live dangerously!

Here's a top tip: get hold of a hardback edition of one of these pompous books, cut out the middle couple of hundred or more pages of it, and then you can just put your usual, normal, real people's, non-hipster, pompless, friendly-neighborhood, genuinely readable, unpretentious, happybrow, fun, top-entertainment books inside it, so that people think you're ultra-hip and highbrow and can actually make sense of that wacko shit.

Rosa Parks personified “unshouted courage” in her unpretentious act of civil disobedience on a Montgomery bus over fifty years ago and the calm, though deliberate, manner in which she recalled her act in countless interviews thereafter. What a stunning contrast to Martin Luther King Jr.’s and Malcolm X’s volcanic vocal pronouncements. Rosa Parks reminds us that courage comes in many shapes, sizes, and voices, even a voice just above a whisper. The question is not will you or I be courageous like Rosa Parks or any of the sung and unsung champions of the civil rights movement, but will we be true to our convictions in ways that are true to who we are? Will I listen to and own my unique courageous voice? Will you?

Always and everywhere the message of the same rests on the pathway: The simple preserves the puzzle of what remains and what is just. Spontaneously it enters men and needs a lengthy growth. With the unpretentiousness of the ever-same it hides its blessing. The breadth of all growing things which rest along the pathway bestows the world. In what remains unsaid in their speech is - as Eckardt, the old master of letters and life, says - God, only God.

After some pondering, I made a decision that would affect all of my future work and writing in more ways than I could ever have anticipated. It was a decision between seminary and college teaching. More so it was a decision between two very different cultures of New England and the Southwest. I chose seminary teaching in Texas, which was a decision some of my colleague on the East Coast thought was foolish. From then on, as long as I was in the Southwest, I would feel the sting of the silent condescension and stereo typing by Eastern elites who disdained southwestern American culture. Many viewed as inconsequential everything that happened west of the Hudson River. What they disparaged was exactly what I loved, the easy going, unpretentious, common culture of my native landscape in Oklahoma and Texas.

When in doubt, choose kindness.

Successful American presidents project a populist image. They do not place themselves above their compatriots but strive whenever possible to show qualities typical of “average” Americans. If they have an intellectual bent, they do their best to hide it. To be likable, smiling, and unpretentious is all-important, to express the values of middle America an essential prerequisite for greatness.

The Virtue and unpretentiousness of the wise man, which I am talking about, goes unnoticed because of its transparent ordinariness.

After all the dangers of the past few hours, she savored the tranquil beauty of the Orcadian landscape, with its delicate pastel wash of lavenders and blues. "This is a beautiful place," she whispered, especially charmed by the flock of hardy swans honking and clacking on the hillside, and by the shaggy black pony that was staring at them from the edge of a barren meadow nearby, its long mane blowing in the breeze. "Beautiful?" Rohan had turned to her. She could feel him staring at her. "You think so?" She looked at him. "Don't you?" He shrugged, then shook his head. "Bleak and harsh and difficult." "Perhaps." She smiled gently, gazing at him. "But there is an exquisite sensitivity in the color of the light. And the sweep of these hills bespeaks a calm strength," she said slowly, her gaze traveling over the landscape. "Noble, but unpretentious. It is what it is. A hard land, maybe. But plain and honest." She glanced at him. "I could live here." The morning light matched the soft blue shade of Rohan's eyes as he gazed at her, sensing she was not talking only about Orkney. His wordless stare was so overwhelmed with emotion for her that although she was covered in grime and dressed like somebody's footman, the way he looked at her made her feel as beautiful as a princess.

So how do we connect with this elusive changeless side of life? By doing deeds that are so kind and loving they create something that “lives on and on in the heart and soul.” Inward, meditative retreat isn’t enough if we want to make a connection to the changeless. We need to be good for something, to reach out to those in need with a kind word, a moment of attention, some hope. Unpretentious as it sounds, that’s the key to dealing with change, and it’s the essence of Edgar Cayce’s social vision.

Successful American presidents project a populist image. They do not place themselves above their compatriots but strive whenever possible to show qualities typical of “average” Americans. If they have an intellectual bent, they do their best to hide it. To be likable, smiling, and unpretentious is all-important, to express the values of middle America an essential prerequisite for greatness. In France, great leaders historically do exactly the opposite: They stand above the masses, remote figures embodying France’s gloire and grandeur. They don’t try to be folksy or common in speech. No one cultivated this image more assiduously than de Gaulle. The general was not shy about invoking Notre Dame de France—Our Lady of France—or about identifying himself with national heroes such as Jeanne d’Arc and Clemenceau. Roosevelt, though reasonably familiar with the French language and culture, did not comprehend this French mythmaking, while de Gaulle, in his general ignorance of American ways, viewed FDR’s geniality as a guise for hypocrisy and artifice.3

Observe closely the next small child you encounter,’ as a prime example of living in the moment. ‘They are naturally balanced, living-in-the-present, stress-free beings. They are so focused on the present moment that they are entirely spontaneous, unpretentious and usually very happy. They are in a constant state of effortless meditation.’ ‘Babies are true Zen creatures,’ says paediatrician Dr Howard Chilton. APPRECIATION

The men in her life were clean-cut, well-bred, reliable, unpretentious and good company. “Diana is an Uptown girl who has never gone in for downtown men,” observes Rory Scott. If they wore a uniform or had been cast aside by Sarah so much the better. She felt rather sorry for Sarah’s rejects and often tried, unsuccessfully, to be asked out by them. So she did washing for William van Straubenzee, one of Sarah’s old boyfriends, and ironed the shirts of Rory Scott, who had then starred in a television documentary about Trooping the Colour, and Diana regularly stayed for weekends at his parents’ farm near Petworth, West Sussex. She continued caring for his wardrobe during her royal romance, on one occasion delivering a pile of freshly laundered shirts to the back entrance of St. James’s Palace, where Rory was on duty, in order to avoid the press. James Boughey was another military man who took her out to restaurants and the theatre and Diana visited Simon Berry and Adam Russell at their rented house on the Blenheim estate when they were undergraduates at Oxford. There were lots of boyfriends but none became lovers. The sense of destiny which Diana had felt from an early age shaped, albeit unconsciously, her relationships with the opposite sex. She says: “I knew I had to keep myself tidy for what lay ahead.” As Carolyn observes: “I’m not a terrible spiritual person but I do believe that she was meant to do what she is doing and she certainly believes that. She was surrounded by this golden aura which stopped men going any further, whether they would have liked to or not, it never happened. She was protected somehow by a perfect light.” It is a quality noted by her old boyfriends. Rory Scott says roguishly: “She was very sexually attractive and the relationship was not a platonic one as far as I was concerned but it remained that way. She was always a little aloof, you always felt that there was a lot you would never know about her.” In the summer of 1979 another boyfriend, Adam Russell, completed his language degree at Oxford and decided to spend a year travelling. He left unspoken the fact that he hoped the friendship between himself and Diana could be renewed and developed upon his return. When he arrived home a year later it was too late. A friend told him: “You’ve only got one rival, the Prince of Wales.

We put our shoes away. I had already purchased the necessary accouterments at the convenience store across the street—shampoo, soap, scrubbing cloth, and towels—and handed Tatsu what he needed as we went in. We paid the proprietor the government-mandated and subsidized four hundred yen apiece, walked up the wide wooden stairs to the changing area, undressed in the unadorned locker room, then went through the sliding glass door to the bath beyond. The bathing area was empty—peak time would be in the evening—and, like the locker room, spartan in its unpretentiousness: nothing more than a large square space, a high ceiling, white tile walls dripping with condensation, bright fluorescent lighting, and an exhaust fan on one wall that seemed to have given up on its long battle with the steam within. The only concession to an aesthetic not strictly utilitarian was a large, brightly colored mosaic of Ginza 4-chome on the wall above the bath itself.

Simplicity The inward reality of single-hearted focus upon God and his kingdom, which results in an outward lifestyle of modesty, openness, and unpretentiousness and which disciplines our hunger for status, glamour, and luxury

Life should not be lived in length; its breadth is insightful and not tenable in undepuracy. It will not be furious, but it will flip in curiosity and bravery hypotheses for peculiarities in mellow praxis. Open-heartedly, it will express the entity of your unpretentiousness, reality, and precision sustainability again and again; this will only be a fragment of a different and eccentric life.

I relentlessly scrutinized one question: ‘How do I plant a tiny unpretentious seed for myself in this barren world? How do I forfeit what is, and start living for the kingdom in my heart?’ I kept repeating it and repeating it in my head. I knew a dreamer should breathe; break the mold in which he was set. Imagination was the answer. I knew it was all in there, prepared like a dining table for me.

Emma found herself trying to imagine a notional man, a fantastical figure who didn’t make a big deal about it, just looked at the wine list and ordered, unpretentiously but with authority.

She is just Jen's sort of person: jaded, sweary, not a natural mother, the kind of person who implicitly gives Jen permission to mess up. Jen has always been drawn to these types of people. All of her friends are unpretentious, unafraid to do and say what they think.

She had a wicked and downright dirty sense of humour, and enjoyed nothing more than sharing funny stories and bawdy jokes. She was practical and unpretentious...

Students should be learning a strong and unpretentious prose that will carry their thoughts about the world they live in.

Every father is the perfect man to his son; closer to gods in perfection and divinity. But here, as he was being unflinchingly honest in his response and baring his very human imperfections, he was beginning to appear more of an imperfectly beautiful human and less of a depressingly perfect god. The conversations were so engaging that we went from sounding like raunchy teenagers, to erotic novelists, to perfect anti-socials. To being two unpretentious adults involved in a man-to-man talk. Finally, to being two independent souls unfettered by the mundane world and its constrictive definitions of relationships. The man was to become my muse. The theme. The story; its meaning and meaninglessness. The character, the audience. The admirer, the critic. The patron, and the beneficiary.

Class, conservatives insist, is not really about money or birth or even occupation. It is primarily a matter of authenticity, that most valuable cultural commodity. Class is about what one drives and where one shops and how one prays, and only secondarily about the work one does or the income one makes. What makes one a member of the noble proletariat is not work per se, but unpretentiousness, humility, and the rest of the qualities that our punditry claims to spy in the red states that voted for George W. Bush. The nation’s producers don’t care about unemployment or a dead-end life or a boss who makes five hundred times as much as they do. No. In red land both workers and their bosses are supposed to be united in disgust with those affected college boys at the next table, prattling on about French cheese and villas in Tuscany and the big ideas for running things that they read in books.

I have seen many manorial fortresses like Gasteluzar before, but Jaureguizar simply took my breath away. It was a grand old caserío, simple as all first ideas, primitive like all rough drafts. Its coarsely-hewn stones gave the mansion a certain unpretentious nobility and grandeur. The large two-story building with its swayback roof just sat there with a pained look of age about it, almost as if each stone’s once-fond affection for its neighboring stone had waned, wearied of the weight and togetherness of eons. A feeling of age clung to everything about it, as if Time, in a moment of weakness, had chosen to spare it, tucking it away in one of its cobwebbed back rooms. Though not a ruin, the building flirted dangerously with the idea.

Omar never lost the quiet humility of the boy who spent most of his twenties working in a button factory. He gained a reputation for being unpretentious, honest, and loyal.

unpretentious mansion

They respected this “old man,” because he knew his business, and nobody could fool him. Also they liked him, because he combined a proper amount of kindliness with his sternness; he was simple and unpretentious—when the work was crowded, you would have him eating his beans and coffee on a stool in the “eats” joint alongside you. He

A person who is characterized by humility, simplicity, unpretentiousness, brotherly feelings, love and who works for the good of others, one who is in constant remembrance of God are examples of a person of good character.

To me Everything and More reads, rather, as a discourse from a green, gridded prairie heaven, where irony-free people who’ve been educated to a turn in those prairie schoolhouses and great-but-unpretentious universities sit around their dinner tables buttering sweet corn, drinking iced tea, and patiently trying to explain even the most recondite mysteries of the universe, out of a conviction that the world must be amenable to human understanding and that if you can understand something, you can explain it in words: fancy words if that helps, plain words if possible. But in any case you can reach out to other minds through that medium of words and make a connection.

It looks amazing! Stunning. Gorgeous. The office, I mean. The office looks gorgeous. “Did you use a decorator?” I ask, and he says he did. I figured. If the earlier furniture was his doing, he clearly needed a professional for this. Still, it fits Wendell perfectly. The new Wendell. The spruced-up but still unpretentious Wendell.

Children are soft and supple, open-minded and unpretentious.

That Socrates was unpretentious almost to a fault, never believing wisdom was his alone or made him superior, but that everyone possessed it if one could only talk it out.

Class is about what one drives and where one shops and how one prays, and only secondarily about the work one does or the income one makes. What makes one a member of the noble proletariat is not work per se, but unpretentiousness, humility, and the rest of the qualities that our punditry claims to spy in the red states that voted for George W. Bush.

I took a long slurp of the instant coffee, just to annoy him some more. “Mmm. Unpretentious and perfectly pleasant. What a way to start the day.

In person Kaltenborn was lanky, with a clipped moustache and thin hair. He was described as “confident but not conceited,” “pompous,” “unpretentious,” and by many other contradictory adjectives. His capabilities were vast. He was the only newscaster in radio who could strap on a pair of shortwave earphones, listen without translation to speeches by Hitler, Mussolini, or Daladier, go on the air immediately with only his cryptic notes as a script, and deliver a polished analysis. He was a rapid-fire commentator but spoke in simple sentences packed with one-syllable words and was easy to understand. He could read a one-line news bulletin and immediately give a quarter-hour explanation of its significance and probable consequences. He died in 1965.