La Ruffiana ( in Italian, pimp or whore ) is an older female character of the commedia dell ' arte with a shady past or who used to be a prostitute.

Ruffiana can also be used to describe a witch

I want the room in the attic prepared for him He is a most unusual lad, quite precocious in many ways.

In fact it has caused us to give serious thought to moving our residence south, because it is not easy for the most objective Southerner to sit calmly by when his host is telling a roomful of people that the only way to deal with Southerners who oppose integration is to send in troops and shoot the bastards down.

but for this discussion the most important division is between those who have been reconstructed and those who haven't.

But apart from racial problems, the old unreconstructed South -- to use the moderate words favored by Mr. Thomas Griffith -- finds itself unsympathetic to most of what is different about the civilization of the North.

The general acceptance of the idea of governmental ( i.e., societal ) responsibility for the economic well-being of the American people is surely one of the two most significant watersheds in American constitutional history.

Accidental war is so sensitive a subject that most of the people who could become directly involved in one are told just enough so they can perform their portions of incredibly complex tasks.

Even though in most cases the completion of the definitive editions of their writings is still years off, enough documentation has already been assembled to warrant drawing a new composite profile of the leadership which performed the heroic dual feats of winning American independence and founding a new nation.

It is clear that, while most writers enjoy picturing the Negro as a woolly-headed, humble old agrarian who mutters `` yassuhs '' and `` sho' nufs '' with blissful deference to his white employer ( or, in Old South terms, `` massuh '' ), this stereotype is doomed to become in reality as obsolete as Caldwell's Lester.

Presenting an individualized Negro character, it would seem, is one of the most difficult assignments a Southern writer could tackle ; ;

All but the most rabid of Confederate flag wavers admit that the Old Southern tradition is defunct in actuality and sigh that its passing was accompanied by the disappearance of many genteel and aristocratic traditions of the reputedly languid ante-bellum way of life.

Yet often fear persists because, even with the most rigid ritual, one is never quite free from the uneasy feeling that one might make some mistake or that in every previous execution one had been unaware of the really decisive act.

Perhaps the most illuminating example of the reduction of fear through understanding is derived from our increased knowledge of the nature of disease.

The consciousness it mirrors may have come earlier to Europe than to America, but it is the consciousness that most `` mature '' societies arrive at when their successes in technological and economic systematization propel them into a time of examining the not-strictly-practical ends of culture.

And the life they lead is undisciplined and for the most part unproductive, even though they make a fetish of devoting themselves to some creative pursuit -- writing, painting, music.

The music which Lautner has composed for this episode is for the most part `` rather pretty and perfectly banal ''.

Presupposed in Plato's system is a doctrine of levels of insight, in which a certain kind of detached understanding is alone capable of penetrating to the most sublime wisdom.

As long as perception is seen as composed only of isolated sense data, most of the quality and interconnectedness of existence loses its objectivity, becomes an invention of consciousness, and the result is a philosophical scepticism.

And it is precisely in this poorer economic class that one finds, and has always found, the most racial friction.

It is something which most of us try to get out from under.

We assume for this illustration that the size of the land plots is so great that the distance between dwellings is greater than the voice can carry and that most of the communication is between nearest neighbors only, as shown in Figure 2.

For one thing, this is not a subject often discussed or analyzed.

But more important, and the thing which the casual traveler and the blind sojourner often do not see, is that these places and activities are often the settings in which Persians exercise their extraordinary aesthetic sensibilities.

Yet within this limitation there is an astonishing variety: design as intricate as that in the carpet or miniature, with the melodic line like the painted or woven line often flowing into an arabesque.

`` Most often '', she says, `` it's the monogamous relationship that is dishonest ''.

If many of the characters in contemporary novels appear to be the bloodless relations of characters in a case history it is because the novelist is often forgetful today that those things that we call character manifest themselves in surface behavior, that the ego is still the executive agency of personality, and that all we know of personality must be discerned through the ego.

It is often stated that Copernican astronomy is ' simpler ' than Ptolemaic.

1543 A.D. is often venerated as the birthday of the scientific revolution.

But when these expectations are once too often ground into the dust, innocence can falter, since its strength is according to the strength of him who possesses it.

Next I refer to our program in space exploration, which is often mistakenly supposed to be an integral part of defense research and development.

The relatively long and often colorful selections in this anthology enable the reader to become genuinely absorbed in what is said, whether he responds with anger or applause.

The continuities, contrasts, and similarities discernible when past and present are surveyed together are inexhaustible and the one is often understood through the other.

It is true that this distinction between style and idea often approaches the arbitrary since in the end we must admit that style and content frequently influence or interpenetrate one another and sometimes appear as expressions of the same insight.

The volume is a piece of passionate special pleading, written with the heat -- and often with the wisdom, it must be said -- of a Liberal damning the shortsightedness of politicians from 1782 to 1832.

That he read some of the books assigned to him with a studied carefulness is evident from his notes, which are often so full that they provide an unquestionable basis for the identification of reviews that were printed without his signature.

The religious quest is often intense and deep, and there are students on every campus who are seriously wrestling with the most profound questions of meaning and value.

His neighbors celebrated his return, even if it was only temporary, and Morgan was especially gratified by the quaint expression of an elderly friend, Isaac Lane, who told him, `` A man that has so often left all that is dear to him, as thou hast, to serve thy country, must create a sympathetic feeling in every patriotic heart ''.

Without a precise knowledge of Germanic philology, however, it is debatable whether their use was not more often a source of confusion and error than anything else.

Youth may be, and often is, skeptical, cynical or despairing ; ;

Although Patchen has given previous evidence of an interest in jazz, the musical group that he works with, the Chamber Jazz Sextet, is often ignored by jazz critics.

He is forced to play for little money, and must often take another job to live.