“... to Jerusalem’s Mayor, Ehud Olmert, Sacks challenged Barak’s decision with another of his self-important questions: ‘is it conceivable that the Jews of any generation could give away the holy of holies of the Jewish soul? None of us, not even a democratically elected Government of Israel, has the authority to abandon the prayers and dreams of a ...”

“... exercise of any nice feelings on her part. No doubt there is more to her than the frivolous and self-absorbed spendthrift depicted in her late husband’s diary; but he was evidently determined to show this picture to the world if it would boost sales. Similarly, their daughter Petronella must have acquired some competence in becoming a successful ...”

“... half the length of the epic Clara, and a rich, flamboyant, mannered book, written with condensed, self-conscious stylishness, dazzling with images and sensations and violence, and daring you to resist it from its first outrageous sentence: ‘Francisco Solano López put his penis inside Eliza Lynch on a lovely spring day in Paris, in 1854.’ Clara is ...”

“... refined. He is a spectator, reluctant to obtrude on the world he describes with any importunate self-concern. His ‘way of seeing’ is supposed to emerge through description; ‘the object infused with the subject’ will refract the speaker’s feeling. But when he looks on the things of the world, Doty has, for the most part, only one ...”

“... herself quoting Luce Irigaray and Hélène Cixous. She/they were doing away with the old humanist self as ‘constructed’, in one of the book’s most-quoted passages, ‘on the model of the self-contained powerful phallus’. Now, she says: ‘I don’t think I can have believed this when I wrote it. I don’t understand ...”

“... of Castiglione, who obsessively posed for the photographer Pierson in a startling range of self-chosen costumes and attitudes. In an image reminiscent of Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills, Fini poses melodramatically in the shadowy recesses of a bed with her black-stockinged legs prominently on display; in another, she emerges confrontationally from a ...”

“... authorised the action, had it been asked. Even in the absence of a UN resolution, the right of self-defence allows a country to make a necessary and proportionate response. The US suffered a devastating attack, Osama bin Laden claimed responsibility, the Taliban endorsed his acts and refused to surrender him. Only two countries opposed the ...”

“... but in a painful, deeply embarrassing way. One of the white girls approaches Arnetta, ‘full of self-importance’, saying: ‘See, I’m a Brownie.’ The emotional impact is intense enough for the reader to accept what might seem a rather obvious lesson: white girls can be Brownies too. On the bus home, some of the Brownies try to hang onto their status ...”

“... of hunters and filled many domestic pots. Hanna picks up strongly on the couple’s growing self-confidence, which was shown in the way they coped with the altered circumstances of their lives. Paul was obviously better placed to widen his horizons through his close contact with men from other backgrounds and other parts of France. He learned how to ...”

“... sources follow their own varied agendas, from Seneca, who links Maecenas’ lack of stylistic self-control in his writings with his reputation for loose morals, to Martial and Juvenal, for whom he represents a lost, more privileged age.Philologists have diligently collected the fragments of Maecenas’ own work, but these are just as hard to be sure ...”

“... A telling reproach, whatever one’s view of souls. A fine teacher! He knew the proper medicine. Self-righteousness would never be the same, It ceased to be a right. He could never keep his pipe alight, Smouldering matches rained about him. Once he gave it up, to discipline the spirit. His aunties told us over tea and cake:     ‘Because he burnt a hole ...”

“... Liverpudlian’ plays self-mockingly on the idea of ‘pool’. I was born in Liverpool. I would be flattering myself if I claimed that you need to be a comedian to survive there. But Liverpudlians do, like punsters, switch things about: they breathe through their mouths and talk through their noses. They are physiological, existential twisters ...”

“... soil, dig, drill, and lay it down; That’s why the villain loves the villanelle. The enamoured self is soft and needs a shell Though mentors and tormentors seem to frown; Because it’s hard, you want to do it well. Sportsmen and travellers are inclined to tell The scores and challenges that didn’t get them down; Not why the villain loves the ...”

“... extremely vague, even in the so-called Act XXX of 1836. The campaign was also an opportunity for self-aggrandisement on the part of some Company officials, most conspicuously Sleeman, who published the so-called ‘standard work on thuggee’, Ramaseeana, or a vocabulary of the peculiar language used by the Thugs (1836). According to a report he wrote in May ...”

“... of the war and the reconstruction of French academic life and institutions, Febvre got his chance. Self-publicising was part of the plan. ‘Cite ourselves,’ he commanded around 1950, ‘don’t lose the opportunity to cite ourselves, to propagate what is essential, that is to say, our keywords. The threefold division of Braudel: milieu, collective ...”