“... campaign for ‘scientific method in philosophy’, and Rudolf Carnap, writing in a self-consciously Russellian vein, claim that ‘the new type of philosophy has arisen in close contact with the work of the special sciences, especially mathematics and physics. Consequently they have taken the strict and responsible orientation of the scientific ...”

“... of Harrison’s first and fourth watches are perfectly understandable in this light: it was never self-evident that voyages across the Atlantic, or up the Channel or in Maskelyne’s rooms in Greenwich, represented accurately enough the conditions any clock would encounter in everyday use on the high seas. To get this kind of accuracy it was also crucial to ...”

“... at the beginning, Sarah Good denied everything, Sarah Osborne accused Sarah Good. The self-owned witch Tituba has consequently become, in the ever-swelling literature about the horrors of Salem, the catalyst for the tragedy: hers was the original, circumstantial account which proved witchcraft was at work in the afflictions of the accusers. As the ...”

“... cold and hard as Sharp is held to have been do not destroy themselves in alcoholic depression and self-loathing. That kind of behaviour is surely evidence more of emotional turmoil. The world of Edwardian leftish journalism inhabited by Sharp was dominated by two opposed currents. A clutch of Liberal papers, headed by the Nation and the Westminster ...”

“... anti-revisers that they are merely instances of theatrical sophistication, the work of intrusive, self-indulgent actors. And there are certainly cases where that kind of explanation is more plausible than it is here. Conflicts of opinion naturally get sharper when the decisions that have to be made involve the substance of Othello, Lear or Hamlet. They call ...”

“... businessmen are delighted to hear that the chaotic political world awaits their intervention. The self-congratulation reaches a peak with the next speaker. Eberhard von Koerber is the president of ABB Europe, a multinational electrical engineering company presently employing 220,000 people. In his introduction, Dr Guntern shoots out metaphors as from a ...”

“... back to in a moment – seem to be wrong, or inappropriate, appropriateness being held to lie in a self-evident match between their sound and their sense. For Socrates, and for those who have thought like him in the many centuries since, the arbitrariness of the sign is an affliction, brought about by the incompetence of the first namer(s). Mimologics (now ...”

“... meant he could be demobbed earlier than he had hoped. For Cobb, the most important meanings are self-referential (even selfish), local, ungeneralisable, private. As he struggles to write the last pages of these mémoires d’outre-tombe, the sentences start to shorten and become less baroque, the syntax to slacken; the world of the real is invaded by an ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... grain of what they liked to call ‘healthy popular feeling’. The death penalty became ‘racial self-defence’. Even before the radicalising impact of war, executions became more numerous, more arbitrary and more triumphalist. After 1939, tens of thousands of quasi-judicial killings were sanctioned by regular courts, ‘special courts’ and military ...”

“... understand the notion of scruple, can’t contemplate the possibility of anything other than self-interest governing the world. Mrs Thatcher didn’t cause this mentality, didn’t herself entirely espouse it, although she did benefit by it, and she did give it a lot of air. I think of the child in Auden’s ‘The Shield of Achilles’ who has never ...”

“... in a regime of coitus interruptus were involved in essentially the same “game” of sexual self-restraint as those practising the various forms of conscious abstinence.’ This is an unorthodox and arresting way to see the matter, but surprisingly persuasive – in the tradition of Peter Laslett’s penetrating commonsense insights. Couples do not have ...”

“... the currency in which professional worth is measured. In a tenure review, or job interview, at a self-respecting American university ‘refereed articles’ count heavily. In humanities subjects (English, history, modern languages) they don’t carry the same weight. This disciplinary difference was at the heart of the Sokal affair. What Sokal was up in arms ...”