“... and down-to-earth witticisms: he notices Lincoln’s almost physical need for laughter. In his self-restraint, Gore Vidal does not even make a great scene of the killing. The rage of Lincoln’s adherents has been vividly described by Walt Whitman, with the cry of ‘Murder!’ ringing through the playhouse, the white-faced widow shouting in her box, the ...”

“... like that of ‘the Daily Telegraph or some other “quality” paper’. Another reason is his self-assurance in his sense of rhythm. Comparing the old and new Prayer Books, he writes: ‘Perhaps only a trained palate would observe the difference here, and markedly prefer the older version ... As to rhythm, the Confession drags along like a lump of dead ...”

“... of them, mask an underlying simplicity, uniformity and rationality. Faced with this immense (but self-imposed) undertaking, the modern philosopher of language has equipped himself with a number of intellectual tools, of which the sharpest appears to be a radical distinction between two kinds or levels of meaning. He distinguishes between the ‘sense’ of ...”

“... blighters, the Stoics’ – must denote for them a poetry of political compromise and impotence. Self-accusing as he is, Walcott would probably concur. ‘Praise had bled my lines white of any anger,’ he writes in a poem from his new sequence, and promptly demonstrates this by treating the events of 1981 as the stuff of decorative analogy – leaves ...”

“... that the attempt to create images of heroism will often give way to the acceptance of that deep self-mockery which is at the root of the stage-Irish figure. Both local and international literary practitioners in Ireland know this well. It would be possible to list them in sets in relation to their repudiation or acceptance of that mockery and the roles it ...”

“... the world of space and time. Its symbol is the shared meal; the passport to it is freedom through self-knowledge. Some of this private teaching is to be found in the Fourth Gospel, more perhaps in the Gnostic tradition. (A Gnostic despair of the created world is heard more than once in Stewart’s book.) The last section of the book deals with the events of ...”

“... many of you have no doubt stood in the amphitheatre at Ostia, marvelling,’ declaims Mark in self-parody, for his sermons are always pitched over the heads of his parishioners. Sister Dew, eagerly scrambling upwards to test the acoustics, falls and has to be tended by Edwin. ‘In his veterinary practice he specialised in the treatment of small ...”

“... a few hectares in Calabria, a Dublin street, an English village, a youth will grow to knowledge of self, kin, country, finally enlarge to the extent of the world whose distant occupants may well seem to his patriotic mind a congeries of eccentrics who have yet to learn the full sweetness of his native air. By contrast, nationalism is not private, personal or ...”

“... deferred gratification, leisure rather than work, good form rather than the undisguised pursuit of self-interest were the boundaries of a tried and tested value system. Why toil in the counting-house? ‘Lat Austyn have his swynk to hym reserved!’ The aristocratic ideal was particularly attractive because, if necessary, it could be acquired on the ...”

“... Furet as by those of Albert Soboul. To turn to what might be called the daily round (and how self-annulling it is) of governmental activity: in the economic field, the ideological rigidity of the chosen path may be contrasted with the timely pragmatism of those who have to carry it out. Rigidity of orientation or principle: no one is quite sure of the ...”

“... similarly restrict their astrologers to finding excuses. The Greeks invented ‘the rule of human self-reliance’ – a momentous step indeed. True, Finley knows well that the reality might fall short of the ideal. The fact that everybody could speak in the Assembly did not mean that ‘the ordinary citizen would have wished, or dared, to take the floor, or ...”

“... merely into his colleagues’ frailties, but also into the chaotic, unprincipled, sentimental and self-interested forces which are the true inflators of public expenditure. Part of his excuse for dwelling with such apparent distaste on so many close colleagues (this one an abominable bully, that one an ingratiating but manic populist, another a commercial ...”

“... rhyming ‘persona’ with ‘landowner’ but Thomas’s ‘face ... Shining with pleasant self-esteem’ is surely a fresher rendering of the squire’s physiognomy, and the same might be said of other passages in the two versions. My small acquaintance with Russian does not extend to the subtler nuances, but I suspect that in these and other ...”

“... said that literature, her kind of literature (literature with a capital ‘L’), was frivolous, self-indulgent, élitist. That its study was irrelevant and mandarin. That those who studied it were incapable of recognising the true richness of life, preferring instead the rarefied air of artificial heights. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘don’t take it so ...”

“... was more or less skilled) was, but was not, radically-inclined. Samuel Smiles was a Scotsman, and self-help and thrift were in his native air, inspiring the growth of co-operative societies and a most significant Temperance Movement, which arguably played the same role in the origins and early days of the Labour Party as Non-conformity did in England. The ...”