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“... The topic of national self-regard falls under the general historical heading of ‘exceptionalism’ – where claims are made as to the unique quality of national experience, or ‘character’. The two are usually connected. How a nation views its elementary virtues or basic inclinations is obviously significant ...”

“... and wonder who the fuck I think I am to speak to you this way.’Blending anti-racism and self-help, these books promise to transform their readers from unwitting accomplices into allies in the anti-racist struggle. DiAngelo, Saad and Ricketts all combine personal anecdotes and snippets of memoir with didactic instruction in the history and theory of ...”

“... of themselves as atheists, the madman sees that they don’t really understand what that means; self-comprehension is still on its way to them, like light from a remote star. Nowadays, many philosophers who take this aspect of Nietzsche’s work seriously tend to write about the death of God as if it were old news – rather more than a century and half ...”

“... ideology, or the superego, as a kind of sickness, a frenzied sadistic idealism which drives us to self-destruction in the name of righteousness. What Marx has done here, without appearing to be aware of it, is to shift the whole question of ethics from the ‘superstructure’ to the ‘base’. It is not, as he seems to think, that he has got rid of ...”

“... clear from his new one that he hasn’t lost the trick of it. After so long a lay-off some self-consciousness might have been expected, but Frayn has turned this potential liability to advantage by making it an essential part of his subject. The Trick of It is, among other things, an essay on itself, but the reflexive element is saved from a merely ...”

“... intellectuals felt in August 1914. Thomas Mann’s contribution to this eruption of nationalist self-consciousness was delivered in a series of essays written over the following four years, and it is among the strangest things he ever wrote. Not the least paradox of this exacting, ambitious and deeply ironical work is the fact that when it was first ...”

“... modernism’. This is a large claim, and the basis for it is Modersohn-Becker’s series of nude self-portraits, the first such works by a woman. Paula Becker grew up in Dresden until she was 12, when her family moved to the smaller, wealthy city of Bremen, where her father worked as a building and works inspector on the newly nationalised railway. Despite ...”

“... justification question: how can we come to terms with the evil that we do, consistently with our self-respect? Now just as over time the presumption of respect for God has increasingly been questioned, a fact that has changed the way in which the traditional problem is viewed, so it may be (as Mark Twain’s sour tone suggests) that taking our ...”

“... It may be that only the truly self-absorbed can make art out of self-effacement. This at least is one of the suggestions of the first volume of Christopher Isherwood’s Diaries, a whingeing, inward-bound mammoth of a book, where the author laboriously chronicles and inspects his every moment for changes in the moral and spiritual weather ...”

“... child, it tends to disavow its lowly parentage and fantasise that it sprang from its own loins, self-generating and self-fashioning. Thought, for idealist philosophers, is self-dependent. You can’t nip behind it to something more fundamental, since that itself would have to be ...”

“... the aforementioned angel in it. Really. By contrast, Great Apes isn’t a disaster, exactly. Will Self does know when he’s being funny; and, at a minimum, he’s reliably obscene. But his book doesn’t work either, and by the time one’s halfway through, the jokes are falling pretty flat. Simon Dykes, successful painter, distinctly a creative type, awakes ...”

“... Fabians and the New Lifers split. The New Lifers held that socialism could come only through the self-improvement of individuals, without which political action was useless; the Fabians believed that political action was the first priority. It is thus not surprising that the Woman Question loomed so large for both groups, since industrialism was propelling ...”

“... John Minton’s face is familiar – if not from the self-portrait now in the National Portrait Gallery, then from the likeness he commissioned from Lucian Freud and bequeathed to the Royal College of Art. It is very long, large-eyed, hollow-cheeked, with a receding chin and dark tousled hair. Photographs suggest that the self-portrait is a better physical likeness; the truth about his emotional state seems to lie with Lucian Freud ...”

“... generation’ believed, as he did, that the old ways of getting educated and finding one’s true self had failed, but they didn’t share his peculiar interests or match the scope and eccentricity of his reading. Isherwood, though always a friend, distanced himself physically and spiritually. Chester Kallman, though himself the cause of much, mostly ...”

“... all the suggestions offered by all the great dead philosophers. Since philosophy became self-consciously professional, the first task has usually been disdained as ‘mere’ edification. The analytic philosophers take on the second assignment, and congratulate themselves on their ‘scientific’ devotion to truth, hardness of nose, and sheer ...”