“... the prey of one’s own presumptuous energy.’ The play of this syntax has about it an untiring self-consciousness that is positively Jamesian. The ‘one’ who speaks does so on behalf of the generality of poets, is any poet. Yet he is also a particular poet. And for that poet to claim anything ‘darkly and impetuously’ is at one and the same time to ...”

“... from the human norm. ‘Foolish girl that I was,’ she cries out again when she considers her self-will and her passions. Looking back on her failure to be anything more than a deviant, she eventually elects to see herself as nothing less than a damned soul – damnation is a kind of fame – and mysteriously speaks at the end of her story of being ...”

“... body of verse he has produced in between there are a good many poems tinctured by the same kind of self-justifying self-deprecation. He very soon ceased to make tremendous statements, preferring on the whole to notice whatever seems to deserve that favourite epithet ‘odd’, and to meditate on the trouvaille. The Middle of ...”

“... playwright, soon-to-be-failed gossip columnist (he had a brief career on the Mail on Sunday) and self-proclaimed former brothel-keeper. From then on, it was clear that the spoof was not going to work again. There followed opus three, Henry Root’s World of Knowledge, in which the retired wet fish tycoon switched genres from belles lettres to reference. This ...”

“... he remarked at the time to an analyst friend, with an odd note of admiration and possibly self-recognition. Like Huston, he began to see Freud’s discovery of the unconscious as a highly cinematic descent into hell. They even agreed on the incredible proposition that the imaginary young patient – Cecily – should be played by Marilyn ...”

“... to morality are for that reason clearer and more cogent. So-called personality is a matter of self-interest: bees in a hive have no moral problems. Examining their own world and using their own vocabulary, empirical and linguistic philosophers quite naturally and rightly come to such conclusions. Hume could perceive only a bundle of sensations, and Parfit ...”

“... blueprint for a regenerated society, and what Shelley is concerned about here is the tactics of self-preservation in an obstinately unregenerated society ... It may be objected that Prometheus plans to retire from a regenerated world, but the point there is that Prometheus and Asia have no business in such a world, for they are immortals. Prometheus’ job ...”

“... reform. The Thirties attitude was at once more political and less so. This was the period when self-consciously progressive intellectuals, many of them decidedly unpolitical in the traditional sense, were driven by guilt and romantic despair to join the Communist Party. They felt not merely uncomfortable about the existence of poverty, but personally ...”

“... industrial change in which we are now caught up. This is why trade unions in Britain require self-reform, and a new role. Was it not Sir Thomas More who predicted in the 16th century that if the Catholic Church did not reform itself from within it would be reformed from without? And so it was. One of my proud possessions is a copy of the history of the ...”

“... his subjects back their humanity. He shares with us more than their suffering – he reveals their self-respect. It is a measure of Britain’s crisis that the political travelogue survives as a genre despite the high technology and mobility of our ubiquitous media. Now as ever, wordsmiths take to the hinterland to find ‘the people’ – not least ...”

“... did not last long. When the Liberal Administration which came to power in 1906 set about restoring self-government to the former Boer republics, Kipling gave up hope. ‘Isn’t it a holy mess? Less than 5 years after a big war the enemy are given control of the revenues and administration of the conquered country!’ A letter of July 1908 speaks of his recent ...”

“... Cancer must sell almost as many books as cookery: not just old-fashioned self-help guides to detection or prevention, tips on how to survive the chemotherapy or colostomy (now lavishly illustrated with the kinds of photograph that were once allowed only in medical textbooks), but also a vast range of new-style ‘cancer journals ...”

“... this state can be painful, if only because the likes of Casaubon have ‘an equivalent centre of self’ that cannot be ignored. As George Eliot knew, and as McGinn remarks, ‘you have to work to get it right.’ Persons of comparably liberal tendencies will have little difficulty with most of what he says. He dismisses ‘taboo morality’ as ...”

“... that cite the medical or anecdotal literature – gobbets of prose which capture her sense of self, swallowed whole and regurgitated. From the dust-jacket on (Hornbacher is pictured, skinny and sad-eyed), the book has an air of perverse exhibitionism, as if writing about her thinness is a way of keeping her illness alive, albeit in a transmuted ...”

“... his feelings were genuine’ – and ending his story with a bout of masturbation and compulsive self-harming. Henrik’s coda would make a useful introduction to Don Bartlett’s translation of the first instalment of My Struggle, which Knausgaard’s British publishers have called A Death in the Family. In addition to explaining the aura of mystery that ...”