“... well known to a higher art – between a friendly face and the goods it is offering. The feminine self-gift – ‘That I might there present it ... O, to whom?’ – has its basic charm in the relation between the giver and the given: the unique, personal and potentially lovable self, which is offering its necessarily ...”

“... Elizabeth felt herself close to madness and death. The woman who frequently described her younger self as impetuous and ‘headlong’ became terrified of exerting her seemingly fatal will – especially against the bias of her father’s desire – and terrified of doing anything further to break up the family. As Karlin notes, it was the daughter rather ...”

“... discovery of Schopenhauer – Tristan and Meistersinger. Tristan dedicates himself to death and self-destruction; Hans Sachs is a much more unambiguous self-abnegator than Wotan. It was not Wagner’s affair with Mathilde Wesendonck that gave rise to his involvement with Tristan: rather the other way round. Here Mein ...”

“... to advance the art of building by exercising imagination, became important to the architect’s self-esteem and reputation. Those who followed Roger North’s over-eager proto-professionals began to assume that their genius should mark the smallest details of the work they undertook and the erosion of the independence of the worker in stone, plaster, brick ...”

“... become, in Bainbridge’s hands, a symbol of everyone’s inability to get beyond the bounds of self. Perhaps for this reason it is the ordinary things in the story which stand out – Watson as headmaster, for example, dealing querulously with the problem of dust and horseflies in the playground, while dust in a chest of drawers is a cause of contention ...”

“... symbol and an advocate of the one male role never mentioned in rock and roll – that of father. Self-exiled in a country which idolised him without beginning to understand his talent, he was treated to that great nation’s highest reward for achievement – assassination. Sic transit gloria mundi. Or, as the motto of the Quarry Bank Boys Grammar School put ...”

“... historic rights associated with it, absolutely transcend other values, including those of rational self-interest. Rational interests dictate that Israel should integrate itself into the region by making sufficient accommodation with the Palestinians to satisfy the minimum desire of the latter for self-determination. Such a ...”

“... in love? I can’t believe it. Indeed I think it is female vice. Women are naturally vain and self-centred, interested only in themselves or what other people think of them; boasting in old age is what they are all too liable to come to. When Nancy smarts, Ackerley surreptitiously snickers: ‘I remember Nancy saying to me, “I believe you’d sacrifice ...”

“... et l’Architecte – an allusion to Marx’s distinction between the unthinking bee and that self-conscious builder, man. Mitterrand’s musings contain more wheat than chaff: they also suggest that he’s an artful architect, not just a bee. ‘One must be born in the provinces and feel one’s roots in order to understand instinctively the relationship ...”

“... between the writer Heinrich von Kleist and a poet, Karoline von Günderrode. Kleist, cruel and self-lacerating, his mind ‘a machine which is made to run at full speed while at the same time the brake is being applied’, is unable to place himself within Prussian bureaucracy and militarism, but is ambitious, eager to challenge Goethe. Günderrode, though ...”

“... the other hand: utterly unlike such bravura performers as Lacan and Derrida, he is magisterially self-effacing. Blanchot is a name in France, but not a face or a living presence. He is not seen in public and he does not pronounce on the issues of the day, nor put his signature to those spectacular round-robins by which intellectuals manifest their ...”

“... first in Highgate, then in Bexley Heath, and Mary turned herself into a striking example of self-help, studying geography, Latin and medicine from the books in her father’s library, and plumbing from the English Mechanic, while George roamed round the world as a gentlemanly travelling physician. In one biography after another, including the present ...”

“... sacked him after only two months). Yet even in the face of impending ruin, Himmler’s self-belief remained strong. In the final phase of the war, he began planning for the peace ahead. In the spring of 1945, orders went out to the camps to end the shooting of Jewish inmates. Communicating through his former personal physician, Felix Kersten, now ...”

“... to the history of musical modernism. Prokofiev was intolerant, impetuous and obnoxiously self-centred, but he had an unmatched musical ear, an eye for detail and a keen wit. His lexicon of invective and arcane slang is not easy to translate into English, but Phillips succeeds magnificently. Put-downs range from ‘haemorrhoidal’ to ...”

“... it began to lose some of its teeth: so much so, after a while, that one regular panellist, Will Self, announced he would no longer be taking part. At its erratic best, however, it remains a worthwhile show. In fact the Guardian columnist Martin Kettle went so far a couple of years ago as to call Ian Hislop, on the basis of his weekly appearances ...”