“... People (1837), he surveys some two dozen texts, erudite and eccentric in turn, compiled by the self-taught in opposition to the academy, but popular and influential in their time. They range from the work of witty polemicists like Harvey Johnson, who in 1903 examined the failings of white society, asking whether whites could ever be trusted to govern ...”

“... close ranks against outsiders. Hooper makes much of what he regards as tell-tale memory lapses and self-contradiction among those he interviewed, and of the mysterious disappearance of vital documents: most of Koprowski’s papers from this time had been ‘lost in a move’. He describes how he and fellow whistle-blowers were threatened with defamation writs ...”

“... character. Clearly, this business is getting on my nerves. Perhaps I have embarked on a voyage of self-discovery. In any case, Miss Voigt doesn’t reply. Nor is my wife prepared to keep me company. ‘You will not enjoy this,’ she says, with the confidence of someone who is in a position to know. ‘And I do not wish to hear the things that you will say ...”

“... even loyalty and affection, tend to career wildly out of control. Disorder is the norm; and self-understanding a bitter joke. If Roth’s characters discover that ‘the direction of life is toward incoherence,’ their creator appears to believe that the direction of writing is towards coherence. The slovenliness of living is matched by the severity of ...”

“... Keynesians and monetarists is not the role of money but beliefs as to whether the economy is self-regulating and will, if left alone, quickly return to full employment. For Keynesians, aggregate demand is not self-regulating but must be corrected with either monetary or fiscal policies. For the monetarists, no such ...”

“... more like a starved poet than a revolutionist’. (Davitt in return called O’Donnell a ‘self-seeker and egotist’, ‘a most accomplished fraud, dishonest, treacherous, and aiming for office’.) These descriptions – and, perhaps, this invective – are not merely indicative of the prodigious detail of T.W. Moody’s new study: they supply much ...”

“... a second time and the Boat of Ra flew past as he came forth. The Two-Lands shivered beneath ... Self-aggrandisement was no sin in ancient Egypt. In fact, the more splendidly boastful one’s passage into the next world, the more secure one’s hold on the eternal goodies. Mailer’s main characters spend many a page locked into formal bouts of boasting ...”

“... Empire. But his eminence owed less to any outstanding military gifts than to the most shameless self-promotion. That unparalleled exhibitionist Sir Gerald Nabarro once said that without his moustache he might be mistaken for a nobody like Harold Wilson; behind his formidable moustache and haughty stare Kitchener was as scheming and ambitious a ...”

“... with a similar ‘teacher’, the sensei. Here, too, discipline is the key to harmony and self-fulfilment:    The sensei clapped his hands and it was time to begin ... Ito led the stretching and calisthenics, the others facing him in two lines. Ransom concentrated on duplicating his every move. With years of scrupulous imitation he might gain ...”

“... that could be deduced from a comprehensive biography like this one, or indeed from Waugh’s own self-projections, whether in his own life or in the heroes of his novels. Powell perceived, for instance, that Waugh was perfectly at home in his father’s house, that the pair were for the most part on affectionate terms and understood each other very ...”

“... contemporary style. It is wholly devoid even of latent vanity, for vanity goes with a process of self-creation, even if it is inadvertent; and though Heppenstall’s writing produces an unforgettable image of a way of life, it does not locate a personality in the midst of it. The effect is rather like that of a picture by Bonnard or Vuillard, which seems ...”

“... her father look at himself in a mirror. It never crossed his mind, she supposes, to keep a diary. Self-regard was no evident part of his nature. In a conductor that must be remarkable. Combining limitless executive power with the opportunity ritualistically to display it in public, the modern practice of conducting is wonderfully adapted to the expression of ...”

“... Beatrice records this renunciation of her own possible motherhood without a flicker of emotion or self-pity and goes on to urge that married women should also make the most of their intellectual faculties. ‘It pains me,’ she writes, ‘to see a fine intelligent girl, directly she marries, putting aside intellectual things as no longer pertinent to her ...”

“... the author’s books. If so, where to place Man’s Hope, Days of Wrath, and the post-Word War Two self-advertisements and hagiographies of General De Gaulle?’ For Lottman, the book is ‘a well-built narrative account of a revolutionary episode as it might have happened, with convincing personae who might reasonably have taken part in it’. Faint praise ...”

“... to fan mail (‘as many as two hundred letters a day’). The themes of these books – isolation, self-reliance, initiation – recur in his new memoir. So, too, do scenes of fantastic adventure and danger. The distinguishing feature of the new memoir – distinguishing it as a book for adults – is its depiction of sex, though this sex involves Paulsen’s ...”