I was lucky enough to see with my own eyes the recent stock-market crash, where they lost several million dollars, a rabble of dead money that went sliding off into the sea. Never as then, amid suicides, hysteria, and groups of fainting people, have I felt the sensation of real death, death without hope, death that is nothing but rottenness, for the spectacle was terrifying but devoid of greatness... I felt something like a divine urge to bombard that whole canyon of shadow, where ambulances collected suicides whose hands were full of rings.
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There are people who think that wrestling is an ignoble sport. Wrestling is not sport, it is a spectacle, and it is no more ignoble to attend a wrestled performance of suffering than a performance of the sorrows of Arnolphe or Andromaque.
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He always looked forward to the evening drives through the centre of Shanghai, this electric and lurid city, more exciting than any other in the world. As they reached the Bubbling Well Road he pressed his face to the windshield and gazed at the pavements lined with night-clubs and gambling dens, crowded with bar-girls and gangsters and rich beggars with their bodyguards. Crowds of gamblers pushed their way into the jai alai stadiums, blocking the traffic in the Bubbling Well Road. An armoured police van with two Thompson guns mounted in a steel turret above the driver swung in front of the Packard and cleared the pavement. A party of young Chinese women in sequinned dresses tripped over a child's coffin decked with paper flowers. Arms linked together, they lurched against the radiator grille of the Packard and swayed past Jim's window, slapping the windshield with their small hands and screaming obscenities. Nearby, along the windows of the Sun Sun department store in the Nanking Road, a party of young European jews were fighting in and out of the strolling crowds with a gang of older German boys in the swastika armbands of the Graf Zeppelin Club. Chased by the police sirens, they ran through the entrance of the Cathay Theatre, the world's largest cinema, where a crowd of Chinese shopgirls and typists, beggars and pickpockets spilled in the street to watch people arriving for the evening performance. As they stepped from their limousines the women steered their long skirts through the honour guard of fifty hunchbacks in mediaeval costume. Three months earlier, when his parents had taken Jim to the premiere of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, there had been two hundred hunchbacks, recruited by the management of the theatre from every back alley in Shanghai. As always, the spectacle outside the theatre for exceeded anything shown on its screen.
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OZOCRACY - Watch the spectacle (or divisive, polarizing issue) we, the politicians, have created or pointed out, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. The politicians have us casting votes for them based on issues like lipsticked pigs, teen pregnancy, duplicitous social class polarization, who is the truer American, who is a homosexual, race and religion etc. while they steal us blind and violate the Public Trust. (Term is based on this scene from The Wizard of Oz http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWyCCJ6B2WE&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.squidoo.com%2FUSA_VOTERS_VOTE_NO_TO_GOVERNMENT_CORRUPTION_THIS_ELECTION&feature=player_embedded
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The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment but it is no less than a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy.
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We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.
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If your job is to leaven ordinary lives with elevating spectacle, be elevating or be gone.
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A certain kind of rich man afflicted with the symptoms of moral dandyism sooner or later comes to the conclusion that it isn't enough merely to make money. He feels obliged to hold views, to espouse causes and elect Presidents, to explain to a trembling world how and why the world went wrong. The spectacle is nearly always comic.
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The Opera is obviously the first draft of a fine spectacle; it suggests the idea of one.
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... [Washington] is always an entertaining spectacle. Look at it now. The present President has the name of Roosevelt, marked facial resemblan...
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There is no doubt, that man is not built to be a carnivorous animal. … What a sweet, pleasing and innocent sight is the spectacle of a table served that way and what a difference to a make up of fuming animal meat, slaughtered and dead! Man in no way has the constitution of a carnivorous being. Hunt and voracity are unnatural to him. Man has neither the sharp pointed teeth or claws to slaughter his prey. On the contrary his hands are made to pick fruits, berries and vegetables and teeth appropriate to chew them
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The camera has an interest in turning history into spectacle, but none in reversing the process. At best, the picture leaves a vague blur in the observer's mind; strong enough to send him into battle perhaps, but not to have him understand why he is going.
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There is no spectacle on earth more appealing than that of a beautiful woman in the act of cooking dinner for someone she loves.
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What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their natural and surest support.
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The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy.
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There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.
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My curiosity to see the melancholy spectacle of the executions was so strong that I could not resist it, although I was sensible that I would ...
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The spectacle [of American politics] resembles that of swarms of insects changing from worms to wings. They must get the wings or die. For our...
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Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament.
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An ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle.
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What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and sure...
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To witness two lovers is a spectacle for the gods.
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Colossians 2:15:
And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
(NIV)
[God] disarmed the principalities and powers that were ranged against us and made a bold display and public example of them, in triumphing over them in Him and in it [the cross].
(AMP)
And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.
(KJV)
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You had to make an appointment to see her. But it was just a crazy spectacle, people filing past.
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What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual & surest support?
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Life is not a spectacle or a feast it is a predicament.
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