Enter that paragon of self-reliance, the entrepreneur.
Unlike his profligate Shakespearean namesake, Hal is a paragon of self-discipline and moral rectitude, and Clara, ever the compliant partner, offers sexual anodyne for his battlefront traumas.
There's no doubt of their efficaciousness: each of us at the Book Bench has grown into a veritable paragon of self-control.
From Oakland, California, he is extremely handsome, a bit of a player, and seems to have been placed on this earth in order to make Drake look like a paragon of self-effacement and modesty in comparison.
Kieran Culkin doesn't look much like his famous brother, Macaulay; instead, he has the air of a baby Robert Downey Jr. Andy Dick has gone over the top and beyond as a high school drama teacher who makes Chris Elliott's 30-something newsboy on "Get a Life" seem like a paragon of self-knowledge.
Julie White and Tom Irwin portray these paragons of self-importance with admirable verve, though that, alas, is not enough to make them likable.
Many of his heroines are paragons of self-sacrifice, but Ms. Yamada was his muse when he started introducing harder-edged and more willful women into his work.
Young men (and some women) also tend to go abroad as missionaries, usually after rigorous study of a foreign language (Mr Romney learned French, Mr Huntsman Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan).Many missionaries become paragons of self-discipline, with their trademark white shirts and ties and a teetotalling, non-smoking, caffeine-free and abstinent Mormon work ethic.
Which is where Rudyard Kipling came in, thundering out of the forgotten jungle, the moustachioed paragon of Victorian self-reliance.
The truly peculiar thing about "Twilight," of course, is that the figure presented here as a paragon of masculine self-control is not, in fact, human and drinks blood.
So, you show up expecting a paragon of sangfroid and self-confidence.
