“... Aeneid) of 1490, just a couple of years before he died, he opens with a brief, poignant self-description ‘sittyng in my studye where as laye many dyuerse paunflettis and bookys’. A bibliophile who had done so much to help spread the craze in England, he still thought in terms apposite to the manuscript culture into which he had been ...”

“... produce poets. Howe’s New England is a crucible of philosophy and theodicy, ambition and self-coruscation and frugality. One need look no further than the arresting juxtaposition of epigraphs with which she begins The Birth-Mark (1993), her critical study of early American literature. A passage from Hawthorne’s short story about facial ...”

“... military force at will, with no legitimating arguments beyond the pathological fiction of its self-proclaimed superiority.What does all this mean for Venezuela? For now, the post-Maduro regime looks a lot like Maduro’s: his vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, was immediately sworn in as acting president. There are widespread rumours, fanned by the White ...”

“... realities behind the tables and figures. Unfortunately, contrary to the views expressed in many self-congratulatory publications – Bronowski’s Ascent of Man is a recent example – man was a late starter and is slow in learning. It is only during the last few thousand years that his control of the environment has been sufficient to advance his health ...”

“... by their own inhabitants in Kampala and other towns were a grim foretaste of the political self-destruction in store, which culminated in last December’s election. In a typical Ugandan political paradox, faith in the election was such that virtually everyone voted, even if they had to queue for a day to do so, but the results read over Uganda Radio ...”

“... felt to be inadequate and inappropriate, and there was a tendency to turn to a more impersonal, self-authenticating ‘technical vocabulary’. It seemed to guarantee a kind of ‘object-ive’ writing which was otherwise constantly imperilled by all the other literature-soaked rhetorics currently available. A neat chapter on the explorer John Charles ...”

“... the midday sun. It would be a mistake to think of Marquez’s literary universe as an invented, self-referential, closed system. He is not writing about Middle Earth, but about the one we all inhabit. Macondo exists. That is its magic.It sometimes seems, however, that Marquez is consciously trying to foster the myth of ‘Garcialand’. Compare the first ...”

“... a central organising committee of booksellers and publishers based in London who rely on small, self-motivating committees around the country. But would we really want a single, centrally-organised event that for one week in 52 would bring books to the centre of our national life? We’ve been going about things differently, and perhaps not only because of ...”

“... make me wonder whether I ought to pursue her (she is called Rachel N ... and I suspect is coolly self-centred like most women that I fall for).’ In 1939: ‘If I make any money in America ... then I may look round for a wife.’ In 1943: ‘In July 41, I met a girl called S ... Harry thought I might like her, & brought her to Cambridge one weekend ... She ...”

“... from revelation, as the inescapable conclusions of the rational mind drawing upon certain self-evident first principles’. The question, in the first instance Vitoria’s question in lectures that circulated widely before his death in 1546, was whether the dominion over the Indians could be justified in this way. Vitoria was certain that the civil ...”

“... psychological claims is often, Charvet suggests, either de Beauvoir’s discussions of women’s self-definition as dependent or passive or Marcuse’s claims about the ‘surplus’ repression which traditional families inflict, but which life in abundant societies does not require. Radical feminists point towards the possibility of an androgynous future in ...”

“... early found that no one can make a living simply by being a good writer, Colette became an expert self-publicist, for which she had a natural turn. A major item in her stock-in-trade was to put herself over as someone who knew, from experience, everything there was to know about sex. Since she disliked her brothers, she no doubt pounced on her stepson as her ...”

“... than a robot that carried around its own blueprint? Or might it be endowed with some degree of self-awareness? The contents of consciousness are limited: thoughts flow serially, one at a time, and each seems to be the product of much implicit work we have no direct awareness of. The modern conception of thinking as computation has solidly supported the ...”

“... an argument, a question. At times he seems to argue that the Japanese have no conception of self, on the evidence of the shosetsu (for which ‘novel’ is the inevitable but not wholly accurate translation). Like other fresh studies, Accomplices of Silence has irritated the complacent and has still to receive the sincerest form of flattery. On the ...”

“... learn all the wrong lessons – essentially that they can get away with almost any amount of self-indulgent behaviour and still win. Victories create a new set of myths – in the current case that Labour owes everything to Blair and the new yuppie style. Actually, Labour would have won crushingly under Cook or Brown in 1997. And, of course, whatever the ...”