“... the familiar argument against this theory doesn’t itself make sense. There’s no escape from self-defeat once we see that to say that a statement corresponds to a fact in the world requires us to state what that fact is. (This is why the deeply disappointing disquotational theory of truth, that ‘S is true’ if and only if S is true, is thought to be ...”

“... onto the floral carpet. The effect was both emotive and grotesque, an overblown rhetoric of grief. Self-aggrandising tributes to a man who had been, for years, a chemically palliated zombie; a man whose humanity had died with his victims. In a sense, he couldn’t die: he was dead already, estranged from himself. Victim and servant of the voices in his ...”

“... all are framed within an idealistic commitment to ‘liberty’ at home and abroad. It’s a self-satisfied view of America’s global significance which prompts a snort of derision from Chomsky, who takes a side-swipe at an earlier attempt by Robert Tucker to define ‘America’s historic purpose’. The complacency underpinning The Imperial Temptation ...”

“... or agitation.’ Delicately, Gilmour allows us to find our own present-day examples of this self-serving tendency, while supplying plenty from the 18th century. Sir Robert Walpole, effective prime minister from 1722 to 1742, was both joyously corrupt and a ruthless exponent of one-party government, yet he seems genuinely to have believed that all ...”

“... proper way of dealing with nationalists and momentously decided that in the spirit of enlightened self-interest it was best to enlist their co-operation in various aspects of administration. The men-on-the-spot were never at home with this approach. Co-operation with Africans did not come naturally to them, and some detected a whiff of cynicism in the new ...”

“... she or someone else lived I might have been worth something.’ The book does not end with this self-pitying note, however. On the last page (before appendices and index) Leonard places Thomson’s translation of ‘Childhood’, a poem dedicated by Heine to his own sister. It recalls himself and her as children playing at being old, worn-out people and ...”

“... to an audience. Such writing is conspicuous for its puritan theatricality – the term is not self-contradictory – for it carries always the preacher’s sense of speaking to and through a deeply attentive audience. Both critic and preacher demand complete attentive assent, an act of faith. Once that assent is given, the performance can begin, but it ...”

“... plainly even than this, however: his paid-for advertising slots include a sound-bite in which a self-consciously shirt-sleeved Riordan is telling business-folk, none of whom is black, that ‘to get jobs, we’ve got to make LA safe.’ It’s fair to assume he’s not talking about making the city safe for the likes of Rodney King to drive in. Riordan’s ...”

“... nobody sketched by Steel. In Saul’s view, the most striking feature of Richard’s rule was its self-conscious quality. Other kings had sought to portray their powers and authority in impressive terms but Richard created for himself a new image of kingship, distanced from the criticism of his subjects by an aura of liturgical solemnity. Portraits displayed ...”

“... with his un-English, un-American accent, and reinvented as an estrangement. John Updike is a self-confessed fan, but Joyce Carol Oates, who is not, has also conducted a wonderfully ingenious argument with Nabokov in several novels including The Childwold in 1976 and her Chappaquiddick novella, Black Water, in 1992, where the question of who was in the ...”

“... it so hard to keep track. Sometimes it is hard to see where Rosenblum’s stereotypes end and the self-presentation begins. The Spanish are all laid-back, friendly and talkative until you start asking for details about their trees, at which point, fearing for their subsidies, they quickly dry up. They have endless lunches and present themselves as simple ...”

“... the life of the man preferred by the girl he loves. Dickens had made a great impression as the self-sacrificer, and was probably right in thinking, as he wrote to an old friend, that if he had played Carton, he ‘could have done something with his life and death’. His attempt to set up a dramatisation in Paris fell foul of the censor and he had to ...”

“... points to the depth of the divisions between the lives of men and women in the early 19th century. Self-improvement was for all, and one of the pioneering features of the Unitarian faith was its insistence that intellectual training should be available to both men and women. But the dangers and trials of life were thought to be largely men’s ...”

“... Russian leather. Vallejo is even more merciless with Silva’s acquaintances, and the embroidered, self-serving and frequently inconsistent accounts they gave of him once it was clear that his fame would last – Miguel de Unamuno wrote a much-reprinted prologue to the first metropolitan Spanish edition of his poems, published in Barcelona in 1908. Vallejo’s ...”

“... involve a recurring set of dilemmas. Here’s one: what would be a good name for the knowing and self-assured woman all his heroes fall for? Armadillo’s answer is Flavia, a name not just Italian but Roman, patrician – a name embodying a test, in fact, because its bearer insists on being called ‘Flahvia’ rather than ‘Flayvia’, the wrong ...”