“... At the same time he was obsessed with the possibility. Probably the best account of his youthful self is in the first volume of Anthony Powell’s memoirs, Infants of the Spring. ‘He was one of those individuals – a recognised genus – who seem to have been sent into the world to be talked about. Such persons satisfy a basic human need. Connolly’s ...”

“... element of wish-fulfilment can have some disturbing effects, as Paul Williams revealed in a candid self-analysis: ‘There’s a terrible thing that happens ... I find that the better the performance – you know when Dylan, when I was like, sitting in the audience in Berkeley in’86 – Dylan’s doing “Lenny Bruce” and I’m thinking “God! this is ...”

“... justifying the popular fascination with ‘heritage’, even in its more meretricious forms. Most self-consciously ‘progressive’ writers have tended to denounce the heritage business as an unacceptable opiate: not only does it enable aristocrats to go on living in their country houses; it also presents a sanitised and sentimental version of the past in ...”

“... expunged from the later version. It was something of a paradox that in the middle of the war this self-important innocent should have been chosen by Hitler to run the arms economy for him. Success in this endeavour made it more and more unlikely that the new Berlin would materialise. Indeed if Speer’s efforts had kept the war going six months longer Berlin ...”

“... rightly, both he and Straw are hesitant to proclaim their Christian faith for fear of appearing self-righteous or exclusive and fanatical.’ Is this a tacit admission that, in a secular society, too overt a religious commitment generates suspicion rather than approval? Does it follow therefore that Christians should disguise their Christianity, talk about ...”

“... all subjects of particular importance to a country which is undergoing a painful process of self-examination, as can be seen in the series of referenda held during the Eighties and Nineties on issues such as divorce and abortion, which have forced us to look at the nature of the Irish family and the central and destructive role played by the Catholic ...”

“... when its implications are carried out strictly, coincides with pure realism. The self of solipsism shrinks to a point without extension, and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it.’ There is certainly a disappearance of the ego which undercuts the possibility of solipsistic thinking: it shows up later in the challenge to the very ...”

“... Blake and Shelley both drew a firm line at other practices: Blake at masturbation (‘The self enjoyings of self denial’), and Shelley at homosexuality (he was incredulous that the ‘operose’ act of sodomy should have been performed by the Greeks). Shelley is famous for having written that ‘chastity is a ...”

“... something was the prospect of a ‘German century’, ended by what Stern calls a ‘stoppable self-destruction’. The ambiguous promise of Einstein’s German world is evoked in a series of biographical studies, supplemented by several more general essays. The most substantial piece, taking up a third of the book, describes the relationship of Haber and ...”

“... seen similar insects in cabinets, at home, but it is quite another thing to capture such one’s self – to feel it struggling between one’s fingers, and to gaze upon its fresh and living beauty, a bright gem shining out amid the silent gloom of a dark and tangled forest. The village of Dobbo held that evening at least one contented man. Wallace returned ...”

“... something that ran in the family) and showed poor concentration at his lessons. To counter these self-centred and lazy habits, he was entrusted at the age of seven to Dr Georg Hinzpeter. The tutor’s pedagogical views tended to be (in his own words) ‘hard or even bleak’, and he certainly had little time for ...”

“... the athletics in bed which the modern novel goes in for are beginning today to sound almost as self-consciously enacted: as if there was a gap between what the writer really felt and what he expected language to do for himself and his reader. And yet that is not the case here. Reading the novel, one is convinced that Morgan, no less than ...”

“... toothache, tax bills, the loss of friends. Thoughts about oneself – in the root sense, self-ish thoughts – present no thunderous problem. No, what I am concerned with here is the ability to think about things outside one’s own self or self-interest. ‘I need some time to ...”

“... found in Schnaase, and later in Riegl and Wölfflin, of an autonomous development in art, a self-transformation: the freedom of the artist comes to imply the freedom of art. The clearest example of this autonomy is Riegl’s discussion of the development of ornamental motifs. For example, he argues that the acanthus motif emerged, not in imitation of ...”

“... power; in the second, lightness, clarity and weakness. In other words, it was both an exercise in self-ridicule and a warning.’ Everything Milosz says is light and clear; it certainly isn’t weak, but it is unemphatic, unemotional, scrupulous, fastidious, reticent. Milosz returns to this contrast on a number of occasions. ‘Nothing is more deceptive than ...”