1. For centuries, commercial portrait painters have employed a bifurcated aesthetic: like other artists, they strive to represent the truth that gives their works life, but commerce dictates that they simultaneously employ subtle ______ that make the likeness more attractive than the sitter.
2. Dogmatic professors often alienate their classes because they fail to realize that their ______ enervates rather than inspires students.
3. General McClellan focused so intently on the petty, logistical details of the upcoming campaign that Lincoln felt that said attention to ______, however necessary, had superseded more lofty goals.
4. Jimmy Stewart, the actor, spoke with an (i) ______ that (ii) ______ audiences; through hesitancy and understatement, he was at least as captivating as his flamboyant peers.
5. The most startling aspect of Preston Brooks, the 19th century southern congressman, was his temperament, (i) ______ to the point of violence. While a man of principles, he did not merely piously pray for political converts—more likely, opposition would cause him to become (ii) ______ and fly in to a rage. Famously, he once (iii) ______ a foe into unconsciousness on the floor of the Senate.
6. Ironically, the commentator who so roundly condemned personal (i) ______ was (ii) ______ to the point of bankruptcy—he himself was a reflection of an aspect of the ills that, in other areas, he railed against.
7. Most readers of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil probably remember it as a collection of poetic aphorisms, each standing alone; these readers missed or have forgotten the linear (i) ______ arcing through the work. Interestingly enough, it could be argued that a parallel cognitive gulf pervades the book itself. While Nietzsche rails against the (ii) “______” of earlier philosophers and contrasts it to the ideal of the “free spirit,” unencumbered by religions and prejudices, he then espouses the possibility of (iii) ______ —such an ordering of spiritual strength seemingly undercuts the notion of an independent spirit.
8. Just as ancient Greek culture in some ways provided the Romans with a model, the remnants of Roman culture ______ the development of medieval European mores.
9. As an evolutionary adaptation, cats have developed a mechanism whereby their heads are measuring devices, as their bodies can fit through any space that their heads can, and this physiology is a safeguard that ______ their success as a species.
10. Modern political campaigns are so full of misrepresentations and worse that candor is an ______.
11. There are no other contemporary novelists whose works resemble those of Thomas Pynchon, but his appeal rests on more than the (i) ______ displayed in his work. In an age when novelists largely limit their observations to lightweight banter about sexuality, Pynchon still offers (ii) ______ commentary about human nature.
12. Crane Brinton argued that the middle phases of revolutions are especially (i) ______ because the unleashed force of social momentum transfers power inexorably from more stable (if oppressive) forces to less temperate ones. Yet, he then goes on to say that the excesses (ii) ______ and a more peaceful period of “Thermidor” ensues.
13. The Donner party made a ______ choice to try to cross the Rockies too late in the season, and they paid dearly for that dangerous decision.
14. Struggling with the uphill descent, the ancient jalopy blew a gasket when it reached the level plateau, and then the car slowly ______ to a stop.