“... wrought, judicious introduction describes Browne’s wide-ranging curiosity, his influences, his self-fascination, his faith and doubts. A pocket edition of Browne is good to have not least because his aphoristic style rewards casual reading. Open it at any page, and find a surprise. Browne thought of himself as a natural philosopher, what we would now call ...”

“... on the loose: it’s an alternative account, and it has its own narrative. It’s not only a self-justifying means of expression for a man who has no other outlet, whose real voice nobody otherwise will ever hear; it also has a notional addressee: the rich, the fat, the smug. And it isn’t quite as ingenuous as it sounds. As it builds to a climax, it ...”

“... be called Tory and Whig. This secrecy also allowed for corrupt bargains, unholy alliances and the self-interested actions for which the members of this Long Parliament became famous. It may also account for the paucity of sources from which historians can derive the Long Parliament’s history. The first half of Patterson’s study is an examination of those ...”

“... and not enough granite in her being. The missing granite is provided by Anne Lindell, Violet’s self-portrait in Broderie anglaise, no longer a character cloaked in legend like Sasha, a mirage disappearing into the distance. Far from being a ravishingly beautiful woman, she ‘wasn’t even pretty’. ‘Her features were irregular; her nose turned up, her ...”

“... inner compositions which, like magnets, attract further impressions and serve as the core of the self’s creative articulation.’ This seems exactly right, and very important. What comes out of a successful analysis is the discovery not of a hidden desire but of primordial structures of motivation that organise one’s experience of ...”

“... and the perspective of TN with which I am directly presented are not the point of view of the true self, for the true self has no point of view … Something essential about me has nothing to do with my perspective and position in the world. ‘Unless you have had this thought yourself,’ Nagel writes, ‘it will probably ...”

“... the look of others through Their own eyes. A digest of their correct impressions of Their self-analytical attitudes overlaid by your Ghostly transparent face. These lines from ‘Wet Casements’ stage the philosophical problem of other minds, of trying to justify the belief that others have an inner experience like our own. The passage seems to ...”

“... more characteristic trait of Mann’s writing, the reason Nabokov dismissed him as a pretentiously self-monumentalising nonentity. One scarcely thinks of playfulness in connection with Buddenbrooks or The Magic Mountain, and Joseph and His Brothers, whatever comic interludes it may include, tends to sink under the weight of its narrative detail and its ...”

“... dismembering them? What’s to prevent them from doing things like that?’ In his memoir – self-published, self-justifying – the chief of medicine, Richard Deichmann, claimed it was necessary to shut down the hospital fast because ‘patients with all kinds of serious infections … in intimate, unsanitary ...”

“... Council) or act as a showcase for the country’s current trends, a publicity stunt, a forum for self-criticism, a curatorial opportunity. This year’s Kenyan exhibit was withdrawn after widespread criticism that its Italian curators had chosen more Chinese artists than Kenyan ones. The 32 rooms of Enwezor’s Palazzo Centrale are centred on Das Kapital ...”

“... subjects not citizens. This fixity of citizenship, its exclusivity, formed the hard core of their self-identification. To have two patriae, to be a Roman and also an Athenian, a Gaul or a Samaritan, was only made conceivable by the Romans, who created the only ancient culture that could see noble motives in those that opposed it: Romans ‘make a desolation ...”

“... Jia is a genre novelist, whose books have sold several million copies in China, and an assiduous self-publicist. When Mai Jia’s publisher told the press he would pay an advance of ten million yuan for his new novel, Whisper of the Wind, Mai Jia denied the story, denounced his publisher as a hype artist and so got double the exposure. The TV adaptation of ...”

“... Icelandic arsehole’ to one of his meaner conquests), the prototype of the selfish and self-assured young man, who when the book begins has just caught a glimpse of his intended next victim, Hannah, the stately and beautiful wife of the camp commandant. He, the commandant, ‘the Old Boozer’ Major Paul Doll is the second narrator-character, and ...”

“... thanks to Florence Nightingale – the Napoleonic Wars attract a breezier strain of self-congratulation. An emphasis on jolly seafaring tends to block out carnage, disfigurement and mangled limbs. The deaths of Nelson and Moore are remembered, but as moments of high-minded stoicism hardly stained by the spatter of blood. Uglow’s balanced ...”

“... in their efforts to keep left-wing ideas out of their publications, for ‘if some measure of self-policing (or self-discipline) is not instituted, their ostensible masters may be obliged to take a more active role in the management of those institutions which, nominally at any rate, are in their charge.’ The Daily ...”