The phrase 'delicate self' is correct and usable in written English.
You could use it to describe someone who is careful when it comes to their emotions and feelings. For example, "She was always gentle and nurturing with her delicate self."
Coetzee's delicate self-mockery threatens to become condescending, and "Youth" 's repeated rhetorical questions verge on burlesque.
The structure's matt-black form was deliberately unremarkable, and the garden itself no more than a delicate, self-effacing haze of flower heads and greenery.
Rumours are there will be both a covers album and an album of original material, hopefully including the delicate, self-penned Without a Word.
Whatever he performs at this annual Colchester show, be it a lecture or a set by his delicate self-built mechanical birds, you can guarantee it will be funny and illuminating, weaving in elements of spoken word, electronic manipulations, and curious DIY sound-making devices.
There was a sense that the economic troubles of industrial nations could only be resolved by building new architecture and that, too, only by delicate, self-sacrificing cooperation.
I selected delicate self-cutting because it is one of the most frequently observed (and reported) forms of self-mutilation and because of the instances of cutting in popular media.
A BBC article buries this term in a list without comment: '[t]he practice of self-harming is known by other names – self-inflicted violence, self-injury, delicate cutting, self-abuse or self-mutilation' (Erlam, 2010).
In February 2012, he called Harris-Perry a "fake and a fraud," which may have had something to do with a 2011 column she wrote calling him a "self-aggrandizing" man who "offers thin criticism of President Obama and stunning insight into the delicate ego of the self-appointed black leadership class that has been largely supplanted in recent years".
The rest of "Hairspray" is less delicate and self-conscious.
Even the most understated of long nails dictate delicate and self-censoring behavior.
Esther Inglis, in a delicate miniature self-portrait from 1624, presents herself drawing, one hand holding the page steady, the other hovering above it, pen poised.
