Definition of "itself" []

• That one identical with it: (pronoun)
• Used reflexively as the direct or indirect object of a verb or the object of a preposition: The cat scratched itself. (pronoun)
• Used for emphasis: The trouble is in the machine itself. (pronoun)
• Used in an absolute construction: Itself no great poem, it still reveals talent. (pronoun)
• Its normal or healthy condition or state: The car is acting itself again since we changed the oil. (pronoun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The end of poetry is not an after-effect, not a pleasurable memory of itself, but an immediate, constant and even unpleasant insistence upon itself…."
• "This action of fundamental life manifests itself as a _polarization_ of the internal personality: almost at a point of crystallization, around which, provided there be homogeneous material and an undisturbed environment, _the definitive form composes itself_."
• "For if itself were a bad self to begin with all such advance of _itself_ would only make it worse."