Word Bank:





virulent – quite strong, extreme

unkempt – not neat, messy

transient – fleeting, not lasting, temporary

threadbare – shabby, worn out

a sycophant – a butt kisser, someone who sucks up to authority figures

rudimentary – basic

quiescent – passive, refusing to act

pragmatic – practical

pessimism – a belief that life is evil, the world is evil

ornate – really fancy

oblivion – a state of being forgotten

to nullify – to wipe out, to extinguish

a misanthrope – one who hates humanity

lassitude – laziness, languor

judicious – showing sound judgment

intrepid – without fear

laconic – not wordy

heresy – a belief contrary to the opinion of authorities

gratuitous – random, not necessary

frugality – the quality of not spending alot; economical

fickle – changeable, not predictable

to exonerate – to find innocent





1. The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus wanted to convey how ___________ time and our lives are by saying, “Time is a river and you cannot step into the same river twice.”





2. Knut Hamsun won a Nobel Prize for his novel Hunger, in which he describes a period of time in his youth when he wandered through Oslo homeless, not having eaten for days, wearing a _____________ coat that showed his true state of impoverishment.





3. Now the housing and banking industries know that it was not especially _____________ for them to provide huge amounts of loan money to people who had previously defaulted on loans.





4. The month of August seems to encourage a sense of ______________ in everyone. Nobody wants to do anything other than travel or rest with family members.





5. In Ang Lee’s film Lust/Caution, the Chinese female protagonist, although knowing she can be caught and tortured or killed, still acts in an ____________ manner and pursues a mission she feels can help her people against the Japanese oppressors of her country.





6. It’s ironic. We all seem to spend years studying advanced mathematics, but by the time we reach the age of 40, all we remember are the most _____________ aspects of math!





7. Thomas Jefferson believed in states’ rights. Therefore, he believed that any state could ____________ a federal law that it did not agree with. The Civil War ended this concept.





8. Giocomo Leopardi was an Italian poet who wrote poems that expressed a philosophy of ____________________ - he believed that life was meaningless, filled with sorrow and that all human endeavor was absurd; nevertheless, he believed that universal love and compassion was a necessary response to the evils of the world.





9. In the early 1950s people in the United States learned how ______________ racism was in the South when they read about how the 12 year-old African American child, Emmet Til, had been beaten to death by white men in Mississippi.





10. Spartan youth, unlike Athenian youth, were taught to be ____________ and to let actions speak louder than words.





11. The interior of that restaurant was so ___________, it looked like the interior of the Titanic! I’ve never been to such a glitzy restaurant!





12. They say that, basically, Euripides was a _______________ who avoided human company and who thought humanity was capable of the worst abuses; yet, his plays are highly idealistic and he seemed to believe that we can all overcome the savage tendencies within us.





13. There’s a lot of sexism in literature. Hamlet says, “Frailty, thy name is woman!” while Virgil wrote: “Varia et mutabile femina!” “Random and _________ is woman!” meaning that no woman’s actions can be predicted.





14. I have always liked foreign film more than Hollywood film; Hollywood films seem to have a lot of _________________ violence and sex that foreign films avoid; foreign films are clearly more cerebral and thought-provoking.





15. Americans had become a bit too wasteful. But, with the 2008 economic crisis, they had to learn how to show more _________________ and to live more simply and sensibly.





16. Although Joe Hill, famous American labor leader, had been a person of integrity, he was falsely accused of murder and all attempts to _____________ him failed; he was shot by firing squad in Utah in 1915.





17. It used to be considered __________________ to say that the Bible should be interpreted non-literally and symbolically; now many Christians seem to believe this.





18. Many people admire pacifist leaders like Gandhi and the Dalai Lama, but I wonder whether the type of _____________ approach to evil they take, the “turn-the-other-cheek” approach, might be furthering the cause of evil in the world.





19. When my father, the accountant, learned I wanted to study philosophy, he went ballistic! “You need to study something ____________,” he yelled! “Philosophy! You’ll be a waiter when you graduate from school with philosophy!”





20. After traveling from California by bus for four days, without benefit of a shower, it was impossible not to appear ____________ upon arriving in Boston.





21. Every class seems to have at least one ______________ who will try to benefit from doing whatever he/she can to please the teacher or the administration of the school.



