“... intuitions, omens, dreams, haunted places, &c, &c.’ In and out of poems, Hardy apprehends the self as one of those spectres:For my part, if there is any way of getting a melancholy satisfaction out of life it lies in dying, so to speak, before one is out of the flesh; by which I mean putting on the manners of ghosts, wandering in their haunts and taking ...”

“... was that of Gladstonianism, which long outlived Gladstone. This was the era of moral improvement, self-help and laissez-faire; or at any rate of restriction of the strictly economic role of state activity to the grounds sanctioned by classical (or neo-classical) economic precepts. The state had no responsibility for the working of the system as a whole. At ...”

“... Guardian, praising the ‘sadness and honesty’ of Inglis’s book. ‘He ruefully chronicles the self-delusions, and above all the foolish self-righteousness of socialist intellectuals in Britain.’ A charitable interpretation of this book is that Inglis is a fantasist, and that just as he could palm himself off to his ...”

“... a friend on Denmark.’ I felt that she was speaking to my better, less disabled and still fresh self, hoping perhaps to lift me out of the sodden delinquency of my life, already burdened with worries and anxieties that I was now sure were to threaten my future. Reading Hamlet as an affirmation of my status in her eyes, not as someone devalued, as in mine I ...”

“... in my own eyes; a sad sack enclosing a disease process, no longer an object of respect, or self-respect. He spoke to me kindly, and cut the dose by a third. Very few doctors understand this: that, somehow, you have to live till you’re cured. I went home, to the dark, enclosed rooms of our apartment. I cut my dose by a third. Presently I sat down and ...”

“... nicotine junkies. It means that the site is protected against whatever lurks outside. It becomes a self-contained module, art-friendly, Web-friendly, vegetarian and open to offers from film companies. The decontaminated civic space (rescued from blight) is the contrary of the Paris described in Apollinaire’s ‘Zone’, which celebrated a cartography of ...”

“... the subsidies and political protection that make the Israeli occupation and the high-handed and self-defeating policies it engenders possible, there is little, if any, reason to hope that anything resembling the former peace process can be resurrected.’ Words like these are rarely spoken in public in Washington, and anyone who does use them is almost ...”

“... not religious themselves, and their explanations are not intended to be compatible with the self-understanding of those who are. Even if scientific explanations predict the persistence of religion, they tend to undermine any claim to the truth of religious beliefs. They are essentially explanations of religion from the outside, and are thought to ...”

“... recognisable to us now. In her writings, Walker drops her masks; her voice is immediate, at once self-lacerating and self-protective as she confronts her critics. No doilies, no frills; art as armour for mind and body: I make art for white boys to feel up their sisters at no. no shame. I make art for white girls to finger ...”

“... city we were still in awe of from above. Oxford can be an uneasy place for teenagers not reared on self-belief and champagne, and it was emboldening to walk it from above; the closest you could get to conquering the city. But it was more than that; I have always loved to be up high, and I have always loved the electricity it puts in the blood.Night ...”

“... case of today’s ‘socialism’ is China, where the Communist Party is engaged in a campaign of self-legitimisation which promotes three theses: 1) Communist Party rule alone can guarantee successful capitalism; 2) the rule of the atheist Communist Party alone can guarantee authentic religious freedom; and 3) continuing Communist Party rule alone can ...”

“... book, Twelve Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, blends a defence of patriarchal tradition with self-help and psychoanalytic mysticism, drawing on Carl Jung and religious fables to produce such peculiar tips as ‘Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street,’ alongside more menacing advice on how to physically discipline your child. His public profile ...”

“... American Booksellers Association jamboree was in nearby Miami’s South Beach that year). Will Self and his American publisher, Morgan Entrekin, arrived as I was leaving. The vast expanse of water and the huge hotel behind it made Self momentarily speechless. ‘Belly of an architect,’ he said, using the title of the ...”

“... repeatedly shown in elegant, hazy close-up, looks demure and modest, about as far from her usual self as she could be. It’s not that she usually looks guilty or complicated. She just looks as if she doesn’t know how not to have fun. Earlier, when she tells two of her friends that she has been offered a job by a trapeze artist, she runs lightly across the ...”

“... the common and indivisible homeland of all Spaniards’ as well as guaranteeing ‘the right to self-government of the nationalities and regions of which it is composed’. This process was easier for the ‘historical nationalities’ of Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia than for the rest. Although the autonomous regions had more powers than they ...”