“... circle at that time, so that s/he can place the two heavy volumes on a desk and be drawn into the self-satisfied philosophical benevolence and contempt for all received opinion and custom which inspired those young enthusiasts. We open them beside the solicitor’s clerk, Henry Crabb Robinson, who later recalled: ‘It made me feel more generously. I had ...”

“... as cheap and easy as fast food, or, more precisely, as a fast fast. In general, the rhetoric of self-improvement in America conceals an underlying drive to self-destruction, just as its narcissism masks a deeper nihilism. Like the book as a whole, this is quick, witty and largely unpersuasive. Indeed, there is such ...”

“... in Vienna was no longer imitating art: it was parodying it. And for Kraus it was the ‘mental self-mutilation of mankind through its press’ that had done most to trivialise and misrepresent what was becoming a terrifying political situation. Kraus exposed, often by imitation, the new decadent facetiousness. Journalists, he wrote, were now capable of ...”

“... to Santayana, he points out, the book demonstrates, ‘in equal measure, candour and ignorance of self’. But he later announces that his own character ‘consists mainly of defects’, and the literary provenance of his book is, in part, Rousseauesque. Powered by the humour with which he learnt to defend his forlornness, the ...”

“... be the similarity of presentation in the placing of images on the paper, between, for example, the Self-Portrait of 1943, the famous Christian Bérard (to be shown only in facsimile) and the more recent portraits of lord Goodman (etched and drawn) – all of them with pillows, but only pillows, behind the figure. Less obviously noticeable will be how the nudes ...”

“... again and again according to the perceptions of social pundits: with each recasting and each self-appointed recaster of Marx representing the texture of current thought, we’ll have a chance to observe something about our state of mind, while, if we were there before, we can comfort ourselves with the notion that our Marx – naturally – was the real ...”

“... runs through all he says and does that vein of irony by which we may so often mark one of life’s self-acknowledged failures … a man of parts without character and with more wit than sense.’ The actor offers no comment, but by now he doesn’t need to. David Gates, the creator of these connoisseurs of disappointment and ...”

“... universal manhood – progress, sovereignty, free will, moral truth, reason – as exclusivist and self-serving creations of white, heterosexual bourgeois males. In the regime of deindustrialisation and globalised financial capitalism that followed the oil crisis of 1973, man would be increasingly deprived of his work ethic (and ...”

“... case work. And finally there are the multiples themselves, some of whom organise themselves into self-help groups, publish newsletters and the like. What is multiple personality disorder? During the 19th century British doctors wrote of ‘double consciousness’. Typically a patient had two states, one vivacious, one inhibited. There was one-way ...”

“... own can turn out to have been someone else’s all along. Being possessive doesn’t make one self-possessed, and White makes great play in this fascinating and archly mischievous book with ideas of ownership, sexual and otherwise. By calling his first chapter ‘My Shrinks’, and the following chapters ‘My Father’, ‘My Mother’, ‘My ...”

“... in Jonathan Dimbleby’s interim (and interminable) biography that Prince Charles is reflective or self-aware enough to have grasped this sad, simple and vital truth. To be sure, we are repeatedly informed that he is drawn to history, nostalgia, heritage and tradition. But the first of these is not easily reconciled with the rest. Despite having read history ...”

“... device. This is perfectly illustrated by the alien suit: it emphasises an awkwardness which is it-self not entirely foreign to Grant, and places him in a broader awkwardness, a big brother scenario; the suit frames him, in both senses of the word. There is another game being played here. Roger Thornhill thinks he’s involved in a case of mistaken ...”

“... cannot account for by the ordinary Methods of Knowledge, and Principles of Reason. Enthusiasm was self-deception hardened into certainty, ‘Men being most forwardly obedient to the impulses they receive from themselves’. It was ridiculous (hence Locke’s dry tone), but powerful. Locke passed his intellectual curiosity about the powers of enthusiasm to his ...”

“... aspects of personality whose importance can be recognised without upsetting the model of the self as a system of checks and balances. A mood may be dominant, but it passes; one feeling gives way to another. The passions, on the other hand, are ‘thorough’, sudden and monarchical; they possess us completely, lift us out of the realm of choice and ...”

“... usually a real breakdown in the overall coherence of memory systems and the accompanying sense of self.’ They come ‘because they feel dreadful … not because they do not know if God exists or how to read the weather’. In short, ‘in psychotherapy one is not trying to establish objective truth’ but rather to find ‘a means of containing ...”