I could profess to love ambiguity, but nothing drives me crazier than trying to follow the "plot" of an art-house film.
India could profess its commitment to an FMCT, thus burnishing its non-proliferation "credentials" despite the fact that it had built and tested bombs outside the NPT, in the certain knowledge that it could go on churning out weapons materials regardless.
The point was not that people should be allowed to do (or not do) anything they said their beliefs mandated, but that no one could profess to tell another person what he believed in his heart.
We couldn't profess to be fans of Roy Keane on the fashion desk, but his chin furniture certainly caught our eye on Saturday evening's Match of the Day (now available on iPlayer).
A century ago, when pursuit of the Almighty Dollar was the great, grubby obsession of the masses, indifference to money was considered a mark of distinction -- because it was an indifference that only those who already had lots of money could plausibly profess.
At one point Mr. Bush said that he had cautioned his press secretary, Ari Fleischer, that at times he would withhold information so that Mr. Fleischer could truthfully profess ignorance to reporters -- hardly a new strategy for occupants of the White House.
On Saturday, Francis sought to encourage those who had decided to remain in the region, lauding Jordan for welcoming refugees and ensuring that all Christians in the kingdom could freely profess their faith.
(Indeed, when William Lloyd Garrison began his Liberator in 1831, urging the immediate and unconditional emancipation of all slaves, he had only a tiny following; and a few years later he had actually been mobbed in Boston). But with the sections, perforce, being drawn closely together, Northerners could no longer profess indifference to the South and its institutions.
A remark in Philoponus' edition of Ammonius' lectures on De Anima (104,21 23) to the effect that the soul could be forced to profess tyrants' impious dogma, but could not be forced to assent to it and believe it, might perhaps go back to Ammonius and has been taken as possible evidence that he was coerced to pay lip service to Christianity (Westerink 1962, XI XII and Cameron 1969,14 15).
But when it comes to the middle classes, many could do far more than they profess or wish.
