That favorite subject, Myself.

Boswell’s wry phrase crystallizes a self-aware truth about human attention: the mind repeatedly returns to the self as its most “favorite” topic. Read as comic self-accusation, it acknowledges vanity and self-preoccupation while also hinting at the inevitability of introspection—especially in a writer whose work depends on observing and recording experience. The clipped, epigrammatic form (“That favorite subject, Myself.”) heightens the irony: it sounds like a label one might attach to a recurring theme. In a quotations context, it often functions as a concise admission of ego, but it can also be taken more neutrally as a recognition that self-examination is a primary engine of memoir, diary, and moral reflection.