“... well out of these dreams. I believe that man, nowadays, is more fanatical than ever. But it’s self-infatuation. He sings of nothing else, and in the action of the mind that leaps beyond the stars, devouring space and gazing on infinity, as Montaigne would say, he finds nothing more exalted than that same human misery from which the mind is constantly ...”

“... than other Muldoon volumes. His previous long poems in particular tend to be sealed off within the self-reflexive confines of their own ludic patterning, a maze of mirrors one enters arbitrarily and inexplicably: the action of ‘Immram’ (Why Brownlee Left, 1980), for instance, is initiated by ‘a sixteen-ounce billiard cue’ with which the narrator is ...”

“... exactly a lost classic, as it is billed, since it was published in 1928, and again, in a slightly self-censored version, in 1968 – says he asked William Burroughs what he thought. ‘It’s the book that made me want to be a writer,’ Burroughs said. But was it poetry? ‘Of course it’s poetry. It rhymes.’ It is ‘closer to “Frankie and ...”

“... clear. The enforcement of Western environmental standards on developing countries expresses the self-indulgent romanticism of late-modern consumer cultures. It is both self-deceiving and inequitable. Developing countries cannot hope to protect their environments by curtailing economic growth. On the contrary, only further ...”

“... duty was to keep clear. Only ‘weak-chinned, weak-kneed liberals, social democrats and self-seeking gentlemen of no principles’ professed to believe otherwise. In Folsom’s unstructured account of the League’s history he comes back again and again to the question of the League’s Communist position. ‘Did the Communist Party control the ...”

“... the newspapers, coughing through his papirosi. Russian hospitality is complete and coercive, self-sacrificing and non-negotiable. I had with me my seven-year-old son, Jacob. We were given the smaller of the two rooms as our bedroom, while Sasha lodged with friends nearby, and Natasha, Tania and Nikolai slept in the larger room. No question of a hotel or ...”

“... often in the works of Philip Larkin? And which of these two poets would you reckon was the more self-centred, fond of flowers, susceptible to hyphens, keen on using the word mother? Such are the questions that can spin off from too many hours spent browsing in the realms of the Concordance. It so happens that both Larkin and Eliot have lately had their ...”

“... and so must churn out images directed both inwards and outwards with inventive abandon. Marcos’s self-indulgent poetry, the battl re-enactments in Reality, the photo opportunities and Web pages should not be too hastily dismissed; even the EPR, the first of a number of retro Marxist-Leninist armed groups appearing in other states, have tried fielding a few ...”

“... conclude from all this that the Greek literature of the Roman Empire was decadent, fossilised and self-obsessed, a pale and lifeless shadow of the classical model it followed so slavishly. This has been, and remains, the opinion of many, and a general neglect is the result. Today, the greater part of this vast and various corpus remains unclaimed by ...”

“... that it mattered even more to give an appearance of industry and humility. He cultivated humorous, self-deprecating understatement: it was said that he was not asked to write the Declaration of Independence for fear that he would put jokes into it. Disputatious in his youth, Franklin learned from experience to avoid never, always and inevitably and to favour ...”

“... which is all beginning all beginning still yet if I wanted to put a date when this naked shivering self began to puzzle at print sound spokensound the wind in the reeds or a cry in the street I’d choose that room for a start the bangles the curtain rings – it’s my baby tuckoo tuckoo tuckoo it is not the tundish this is echt British except that’s always ...”

“... our war’) could stand in the way of his plans. Campton’s fretfulness marks him as part of the self-indulgent expatriate community from which he imagines his art has set him apart: ‘These other men were whining at the interruption of their vile pleasures or their viler money-making; he, poor devil, was trembling for the chance to lay the foundation of a ...”

“... rarely found elsewhere. Unrequited resentment is the source of this propensity, not romantic self-indulgence or nostalgia standing in for nationhood. Since Walter Scott’s time the wound has been bandaged up in kitsch, of course. But the dressings have become so famously elaborate only because the cut went so deep. Will it ever be healed? Perhaps, but ...”

“... Sarah does not find fulfilment with either of her new loves. What she does find is knowledge, self-knowledge first and then knowledge of others. She perceives that the small theatrical company she had worked with for years in a close and productive professional relationship had been a family for her, a product of the kind of healing substitution that ...”

“... leave it for others to enjoy. But even nationalist destruction took second place to mercantile self-interest. Roofs were dismantled, window-frames stripped from walls and plumbing torn out of floors and carted away. Some looted for profit; others hoped they could refabricate homes elsewhere, in the shells of buildings destroyed after their Muslim owners ...”