S. staffers wondered what Thompson had done to get Kennedy to speak so stirringly.

NEWYORKER: Romney��s Dilemma

Among politicians, there is the idealism of high-flown speechmaking, in which crowds are stirringly summoned to support great things.

NPR: Transcript: Gov. Sarah Palin At The RNC

Or, most stirringly, far from the block they shared, at adjacent bookstalls in Union Square on a hot Saturday noon, where they honored the strangeness of detecting each other so far afield with a curt nod.

NEWYORKER: Lucky Alan

Bent on suicide, a man repeatedly drives along a winding road on the outskirts of Tehran, searching for an accomplice among laborers at arid construction sites, finally making a pact with a man who insists on speaking stirringly of the world's beauty.

WSJ: The Metaphysical Riddles of Abbas Kiarostami

Both the composition and the color of the images are stirringly beautiful, but they feel loaded with symbolism and sentiment: an emaciated man swaying with exhaustion during an interminable roll call appears to be experiencing a kind of transcendent ecstasy, like Joan of Arc on the pyre.

NEWYORKER: Fateless