The Obama administration was elected with such high hopes and had such a lofty self-conception.
He is small and compact, with boyish freckles on his nose, but discusses his music with lofty self-assurance, almost professorially.
Many of the game's greatest hitters were just as ornery as Bonds, maintaining a lofty self-opinion and motivating themselves by real or perceived slights.
Susan Sontag's "Notes on Camp" holds itself at a lofty, self-regarding remove from its determinedly hip subject matter, but Bangs never held anything at arm's length in his life; he was rushing headlong into the sea of the world, arms thrown wide open, to embrace it, to drown in it.
Freada Kapor Klein, a founding partner at the social-impact investment firm Kapor Capital and a co-founder of Project Include, which promotes inclusiveness in Silicon Valley, told me that both of these problems are bound up with the industry's lofty self-conception.
Her seemingly picture-perfect marriage to Rick Ross, an actor, and her devotion to their two daughters (now 10 and 7), whose real-life demands on her attention bring her down to earth from the lofty self-absorption of the diva.
We routinely take action inconsistent with our self-concept and expressed principles -- and casually lie, deceive, harm, and steal -- often in increments so minute and mundane so as not shatter our loftier self-portrait.
Now, in a highly significant move, a distinguished group of writers, led by Andrew Kidd of the Aitken & Alexander literary agency, has declared, if not war on the Man Booker prizes, then at least an imminent secession from their lofty and self-appointed sovereignty.
Although the term "value-driven commercial brand" sounds lofty and self-promoting, straight out of a Business School textbook, Zhao hopes to cook the junzi values -- community, leadership and balance -- into the very bings themselves.
Brian France says his opposition to franchising stems from something loftier than self-interest.
