| But there will be nothing salutary about this failure if governments retreat from Europe into navel-gazing and narrow national agendas. |
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| For many people thinking is a very esoteric concept and some people would see a conference about thinking as intellectual navel-gazing. |
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| The whole business of writing about cyber-culture seems vain and navel-gazing to me. |
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| All this postmodern self-referential ironic navel-gazing is getting a bit bizarre. |
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| A photographer with a job must look outside himself, escaping from the private navel-gazing of so much contemporary art. |
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| That question will prompt much navel-gazing when the theatre's first productions appear, but looking inwards is only one way to answer it. |
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| This amounts to five hundred pages of self-obsessed navel-gazing, interspersed with intense bouts of self-loathing and lame jokes. |
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| I do want to move on from the last three days navel-gazing though. |
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| So now I can stop navel-gazing and get back to current events. |
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| Others are authored by navel-gazing college students or self-declared alcoholics detailing each wretched night's debauch. |
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| However, if we spend two-and-a-half years navel-gazing, then we will be even further away from the citizens out there. |
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| That is why I am going to avoid too much introverted institutional navel-gazing and think about action to improve the lot of our citizens. |
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| If you spoke of the Constitution, on the other hand, you were accused of navel-gazing, of being obsessed with technical aspects. |
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| We need to keep proving that we are not engaged in institutional navel-gazing and show that we are dealing with the real issues facing Europe. |
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| We must now enter a phase in which the European Union reverts from institutional navel-gazing to the adoption of a global outlook. |
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| Mr President, on a point of order: I just wanted to engage in 30 seconds of navel-gazing. |
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| After film school, I told myself it would be better to make films that have significance for audiences rather than indulging in navel-gazing. |
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| So there is a simple reason why Germany and Europe must not merely engage in navel-gazing but rather look further afield. |
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| Moreover, it is important that we should not just engage in navel-gazing but try to find solutions to the tasks facing us. |
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| She shines as the materfamilias who has passed her navel-gazing tendencies to her daughters. |
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| Thankfully, though, I believe that the Scottish art world has wider horizons than such navel-gazing, self-pitying introspection. |
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| I'm perfectly aware that even at the best of times, the above post would seem excessively introverted, self-pitying and navel-gazing. |
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| As the grey skies descend once again, reminding us all that it's still really winter, navel-gazing has become the order of the day. |
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| In my experience it tends to get frittered away on TV channel-hopping, window shopping, aimless net surfing or general navel-gazing. |
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| Wow, managing to wedge a piece of Einstein's special theory of relativity into some particularly indulgent navel-gazing. |
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| This article is a sad commentary on the state of public schools and the navel-gazing mooncalves we hire to run them. |
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| But why on earth is such theological navel-gazing necessary to determine the future of two people whose devotion for each other has been tested time and time again? |
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| It's just been a constant round of self-obsessed navel-gazing here recently, so I thought that you might like me to return to some form of banality. |
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| This is all tremendously inward-looking, navel-gazing stuff isn't it? |
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| You could call this navel-gazing, or you could agree that national identity is a vague and powerful thing, and deserves the odd moment of contemplation. |
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| Rather than indulging in what they regard as navel-gazing they intend to pursue a mindless pragmatism instead, regardless of what many of their members may think. |
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| The time for navel-gazing is over and we cannot overlook the globalisation of our economies. |
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| Think stand-up comedy meets neurotic navel-gazing. |
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| During the recent riots, navel-gazing looked particularly inappropriate. |
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| His vague exhortations reeked of navel-gazing sanctimony. |
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| We are not talking here about irresponsible or inferior countries and this is something that the Union often forgets, in its sometimes arrogant navel-gazing. |
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| The template for this book's monologues is the on-screen navel-gazing of TV contestants, and it requires of its reader a similar concern for triviality. |
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| It is issues like these rather than bureaucratic navel-gazing that must be top of our agenda if we are to become more confident, imaginative and outward looking. |
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| The tape with the self-righteous denunciations has been taken off the reel while the new tape, full of self-righteous media navel-gazing, is cued up. |
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| Elsewhere, religion's understanding of truth and selfless commitment to a wider community or cause appears preferable to today's culture of narcissism and navel-gazing. |
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| Often this self-observation is insightful and funny, but sometimes there is simply too much navel-gazing. |
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| It's not navel-gazing, not looking inwards. |
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| How many rocks did she have to kick to find such a myopic, whining, self-centered, navel-gazing group? |
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| As the title suggests, there was no room for navel-gazing introspection just a guitar-driven directness which was Dr Feelgood-like in delivery. |
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| Genuinely funny and intelligent and navel-gazing and strange, these parts might eventually add up to something truly big. |
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| Those in other countries, as well as Americans under 30, may be forgiven for thinking that a news story about a newscaster is just a spectacular bout of navel-gazing. |
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| It has surely helped to put to rest the myth that the European Union is in some way obsessed with navel-gazing and detached from citizens' real concerns. |
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| To claim that the adoption of the motion by the House will in any way whatsoever give the Quebec National Assembly some kind of legitimacy it does not already have borders on navel-gazing and egocentricity. |
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| The author so confuses the business of navel-gazing that he no longer knows whether he is an innie or an outie. |
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| I have tried to black out all traces of Pride and Prejudice, but I can never fully purge the memory of page after page of Austen's dreary, upper-class navel-gazing. |
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| Mine's a Fitbit, his is a Garmin, so to avoid confusion let's call them crushingly boring navel-gazing gadgets because these are the days of self-obsession and self-analysis. |
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| To most outside the bubble, this excessive navel-gazing is wearying, even alienating: it fosters the sense of a media class which is only interested in what people like them have said about other people like them. |
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| England have now gone 16 matches without a win at this level and a summer that promised so much will instead trigger another bout of navel-gazing. |
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