“... whose indebtedness to other literary works has nothing to do with derivativeness – nor with a self-regarding pan-literariness. Rather, Banville reminds us of the ways in which, and of the extent to which, literature can legitimately be made out of the issue of its own mode and being – and can thereby address profound issues of human cognition and ...”

“... look so many times I’d forgotten what it was. The whole thing looked like an instrument of self-torture with a handle and a zip. I made my entrance and everyone wanted to know where I was off to looking like that. My brother did a comb mime with his knife, tongue hanging out, jacket pushed back like a Ted. My father made me go upstairs and start ...”

“... contaminating him. I have seen three or four black-toned juvenilia which were perhaps the kind of self-betrayal that inspired his reserve. I understand the decision to suppress them, because it would be a pity if anything were to weaken the lifelong testimony to lucid outwardness and to the otherness of the actual, the beauty in which he placed his faith. We ...”

“... Lady, who to make things all the more poignant (or aggravating) is now just a shadow of her former self. So too is the British Empire, which persists, against all the evidence, in reimagining itself ruling the waves and capable of decently governing even its local citizens. There might be some who find a touching irony in Meryl Streep’s mentally diminished ...”

“... which had caused me to shift uncomfortably in my chair while David discussed the divided self, I began to look forward to my bibliotherapy session. A few days later I received a questionnaire by email, asking about my reading habits and life situation. By the time I’d filled it out there were no slots for several weeks, and after the consultation ...”

“... with his drawings than with his paintings and I can affirm that in this he was not blinded by self-esteem to any of his defects. He found more pleasure in drawing than in painting. I have often seen him sulking because he could not render in paint the spirit and truth he could render with his pencil.’ The Comte de Caylus records in his Vie d’Antoine ...”

“... hold on his membership. Cyanide pills – every guerrilla carried them – were an inducement to self-destruction. The current government continues to use the Prevention of Terrorism Act to repress Tamil civil rights; the army is still a constant presence in Tamil regions; press freedom continues to be threatened. In January, President Rajapaksa sacked the ...”

“... British people, since there is no way of stopping a thunderstorm. This … is a secret source of self-lacerating joy among the citizenry. The British rather enjoy feeling helpless, as the Americans do not. The thought that there is absolutely nothing one can do is regarded by some in the United States as defeatist, nihilistic and in some obscure sense ...”

“... back wall a line of ambulances is queuing up to deliver sick passengers to the hospital. We are self-isolated, safe in our fortress, as we wait on our order from the local bakery. This will be delivered too. An innocent contrast perhaps, though hardly benign. We are a month into coronavirus time. I began it by rereading Camus and then The Betrothed by ...”

“... meant to be impassioned, principled, brave and irresistibly sexy; but I found her spoilt, sulky, self-righteous and irritating. Justin only gets to know her properly and really fall in love after she’s dead. This is probably meant to be romantic but it’s actually quite creepy. And it’s depressing that there’s still any currency in the idea that a ...”

“... at pictures within the tradition. He was in effect an insider. Rousseau’s case was different. Self-taught, he had been schooled in no tradition and had no authority to rebel against. As he had no contribution to make to its dialectic it is not surprising to find him on a siding in the diagrams that map the history of Modernism. He seems to have seen no ...”

“... of modern sensibility, lie at the heart of Heidegger’s doctrine of being. The festive ‘self-opening’ of man’s spirit to the radiant pressures of existence, to the neighbourhood of agencies more ancient and powerful than himself, a neighbourhood peculiarly graphic in high art and literature, is implicit in the Heideggerian term which Carne-Ross ...”

“... works merit insertion: Spedding’s Bacon, for example, and perhaps Masson’s Milton. The self-denying ordinance which has led to the inclusion of so few primary sources could be breached more frequently. The section on political thought (where Machiavelli is repeatedly accorded a curious, almost Scottish spelling) could be stiffened. I ...”

“... record as a practical revolutionary was pathetic: trust in quite the wrong people, and hopeless, self-indulgent incompetence about details large and small. His prose was lazy and pretentious: ‘Psychology, statistics and the entire course of history show that ...’ It was not altogether accidental that Bakunin’s appeal went down best in Italy, where the ...”

“... quite sure. Bate does have two searching pages on the padlock: but the ‘facts’ are by no means self-evident in their nature or in their bearing. Bate says that only Mrs Thrale’s ‘half-playful’ remark about sparing the rod supplies sexual innuendo: Johnson’s own letter, in French, he sees as positively innocent in its ‘infantilism’. There are ...”