“... the sake of the country’ was over, the volunteers went back to their books or banks in a haze of self-congratulation, surely agreeing with the newspaper that proclaimed: ‘Truly, we are an amazing people.’ There is at once something admirable and terrible about the mindset revealed in this episode. On the one hand, volunteers showed a level of ...”

“... high vocation. Both do justice to his enormous talents, and both draw attention to the excessive self-confidence that led him at times to overestimate his own prowess as a negotiator, though Ventresca also stresses Pacelli’s contrasting proneness to bouts of chronic indecision. Both believe him to have been a great pope, while recognising that his choice ...”

“... rarely fully admit to themselves or others the degree to which they rely on secondary and self-interested sources. The problem is compounded because people caught up in newsworthy events often convince themselves that they know more than they do. Survivors of suicide bombings in Baghdad would describe to me in minute detail the bomber’s facial ...”

“... about the truest form of Christian worship, his advice was clear: ‘search the scriptures thy self,’ he said, with ‘constant meditation upon what thou readest, & earnest prayer to God to enlighten thine understanding’. He was convinced the Bible was, essentially, a sacred text, and he sought to honour his maker by studying it closely, every ...”

“... is drained of the capacity to love: he is ‘Pericles of Tired’, exhausted, off the pace, self-loathing (‘the sound of his own voice in his ears saying stuff disgusts him’). Like Shakespeare’s prince, Richard has lost his wife and daughter, but he has conversations in his head with the child he last saw thirty years ago. He asks her about ...”

“... as mixed as the methods: the connections range from the inspired to the whimsical. An instance of self-aware pseudomorphism is a gallery curated by the American painter Amy Sillman; titled ‘The Shape of Shape’, it is a mélange of 71 works, some old, some new, by 71 artists, some familiar, some not, that feature mostly abstract forms suggestive of body ...”

“... seized on every opportunity to secure not just better living conditions but more autonomy and self-expression for themselves and (especially) for their children. But he shows too that they wanted to do that, if they could, while preserving neighbourliness and solidarity – while insisting, indeed, that solidarity and aspiration were not antagonistic ...”

“... you see that a very different process is at work, in which the arms lobby on each side has self-interestedly sought capital and bureaucratic advantage while enlisting its counterpart on the other side as a justification for its own ambition. In other words, they enjoy a mutually profitable partnership. In the early 1960s the US navy’s newly ...”

“... consequences such ‘small special points’ might have. As he wrote in the characteristically self-effacing preface, ‘the subject may appear an insignificant one, but we shall see that it possesses some interest; and the maxim de minimis non curat lex [‘the law does not concern itself with trifles’] does not apply to science.’ Nor does it apply to ...”

“... face of pressure from Beijing, several new organisations emerged, led by young people advocating self-determination or outright independence for Hong Kong. These groups launched a campaign aimed at ‘reclaiming’ (guangfu) local places. Young people who’d been involved in the Umbrella Movement began to connect social welfare issues and disputes over ...”

“... herself with nettles, nor beat the front of her body, nor lacerate herself with cuts’. These self-inflicted tortures are like treats to be rationed, and are permissible only with authorisation. The​ Ancrene Wisse is unsettling in a number of ways. The experience of reading it is sensuous. Its rhythmic, alliterative language delights the ear and ...”

“... the rest of the Company’s; or if you have any design to draw us into Expence, you will find your self deceiv’d, for we are not Persons to be led by the Nose into such an Inconveniency.The string of puns here – some helpfully indicated by italics – draws the reader’s attention away from the dignity of the argument. The club’s members are right to be ...”

“... one of the few still alive at the end, is 12-year-old Peter, who the author readily admitted was a self-portrait, not least in his reluctance to be a Hitler Youth. The family home is a large estate, the Georgenhof, once affluent, less so since the war began, its vistas somewhat spoiled by the housing development over the road, where a man called Drygalski, the ...”

“... briefly, somebody we’ve lost. Nikolai thinks the idea is naff – the premise of ‘a mediocre self-help book’ cooked up by a ‘middling delusionist’ who also happens to be his mother. ‘The essence of growing up,’ he explains in the first of their dialogues, ‘is to play hide and seek with one’s mother successfully.’ There’s nothing like ...”

“... What if the Habsburg Empire formed a true community of sentiment, and even became a vehicle for self-determination, just as much as the nation-states that replaced it? That is the provocative argument of Pieter Judson’s history. To accept the idea that only ethnic nations can elicit the devotion of their members, Judson argues, is to buy into a ...”