“... as containing ‘hundreds of selves’, and often went by different names depending on which self was on top: ‘Katherine Mansfield’, her usual favourite, jostled for prominence with Käthe Schönfeld, Matilda Berry, Elizabeth Stanley, Julian Mark, Mrs K. Bendall, Kass, Katharina, Katoushka and Kissienka. The stories she told about herself often ...”

“... a poet. People who defined a new movement in their time.’The New York Times ended a few days of self-suppression with a summation of the Trump lobby’s atmospherics. ‘For Donald J. Trump’s most ardent supporters,’ it said,the assassination attempt on Saturday was the climax and confirmation of a story that Mr Trump has been telling for years. It is ...”

“... its use of apartheid, its provocations at Al-Aqsa Mosque, its continuing denial of Palestinian self-determination – might have led to the furies of 7 October. Instead, they insist that they are once again the victims of antisemitism, of ‘Amalek’, the enemy nation of the Israelites. That Israelis cannot see, or refuse to see, their own responsibility ...”

“... To limn the details of my situation I’ll reach into my past, adopt the system     Of self-portrayal – I know, no innovation –     Yet still the true strange ground of most creation. You always thought that kindly diagnosis Begins by looking at the child’s neurosis, So I hope you’ll pay attention. I was born     In Cambridge; both ...”

“... he is well aware of the significance of ‘collective worth’ for the humiliated masses who seek self-esteem in denigrating others. In extreme cases, such as Germany after Versailles or much of the Arab world today living in the shadow of Western dominance and the weaponry, of proxies, a paranoid nationalism sees the entire outside world as a gigantic ...”

“... in Europe will only disappear when the Soviet Union becomes a stable democracy. For that and other self-evident reasons I favour the retention of nuclear weapons and an adequate fighting force. What I am suggesting is that we should be thinking in more radical terms than we have since the war about the new meanings of defence, diplomacy and security. Our first ...”

“... speak made me shudder. It is not womanly to thrust yourself before the world.’ Extraordinary ‘self-assurance’ was the quality picked out by Gladstone, when, as prime minister, he took time off to review Besant’s autobiography in 1893. He attributed it to the lack of a sense of sin, which enabled her to change direction without a qualm. For ...”

“... Derrida, de Man, Hillis Miller – bring in gloomy reports on their reading, and the gloom is self-perpetuating, I agree, but I can’t see that a close reading of their books would find evidence of the glib levitation that Smith represents. There is, too, an ideological question. Critics who attack Eliot, Joyce, Yeats and Pound for the alleged ...”

“... Mrs Trilling has some sympathy for the black demonstrators – she admires their dignity and self-respect, and thinks they have a case against American society – but thinks the white student radicals were just spoilt and ungrateful kids, peeing on the carpet that welcomed them. One of these delinquents, famously photographed during the occupation ...”

“... reinforced by the resonant speaking voice from deep down in the diaphragm, confident and self-assured. When he spoke, his swift-moving lips, thick and red like two ripe fruits, evoked luxury and youthfulness; yet sometimes, thin as filaments of blood, they depicted death and carnage.’ In addition to the nature of the hankerings, the prose style ...”

“... hearing about for years?’ and then disappear under the hay again. It strikes me that Groucho’s self-interpretation of looking for a needle in a haystack undertakes to transfigure the coarse genre of farmer’s daughter gags into a search – almost hopeless, with just room for good spirits to operate – for a heart’s needle of pleasure somewhere within ...”

“... Pope’s outsider status, a product of his Roman Catholic faith and his physical handicap, some self-proclaimed New Historicists have slandered him as an apologist for such establishment vices as colonialism, which he explicitly and powerfully deplored. With such enemies, Pope did (and does) need friends. His correspondence records scores of relationships ...”

“... its innovative goals and practices, its productive methods, distribution systems and theoretical self-representations – all these things distinctly recall the situation of the early Modernist poetries which Jack Butler Yeats denounced. Indeed, what he had to say of those poets loved of Ezra Pound has been said, and continues to be said, of the poets and ...”

“... repress a harsh answer, to confess to a fault, and to stop (right or wrong) in the midst of self-defence, in gentle submission’. The advice of The Mother’s Assistant and Young Lady’s Friend was ‘Always conciliate,’ and The Lady’s Amaranth stated that a woman governs by ‘persuasion ... The empire of woman is an empire of softness ... her ...”

“... Almost nonchalantly Verghese draws us towards devastating suffering. Denial is common: initial self-deception; then rebellion against those offering treatment; and an unashamed escalation in self-endangering behaviour. But Verghese’s bleak descriptions are tinged with humour. The pecker-pickling Texas truckers who ...”