1.I had not been elected to Phi Beta Kappa...

n.a national organization in the US whose members are elected because they have achieved a very high level in their studies at colleges or universities, or a member of this organization.

2.I had somehow thought myself a kind of academic Raskolnikov, curiously exempt from the cause-effect relationships which hampered others.

Raskolnikov 

a fictional character in Dostoevsky's novel `Crime and Punishment'; he kills old women because he believes he  is beyond the bounds of good or evil.

3...lost a certain touching faith in the totem power of good manners, clean hair, and proved competence on the Stanford-Binet scale.

Stanford-Binet scale
The Stanford-Binet(SB) - the best and most popular intelligence test is a Cognitive ability assessment used to measure intelligence (IQ). The Stanford-Binet measures five factors of cognitive ability: Fluid Reasoning, Knowledge, Quantitative Reasoning, Visual-Spatial Processing, and Working Memory. Each of these factors is tested in two separate domains, verbal and nonverbal.

4...has nothing to do with reputation, which, as Rhett Butler told Scarlett O’Hara, is something people with courage can do without.

Rhett Butler

... is a fictional character and one of the main protagonists of Gone with the Wind by Margaret itchell.     a wealthy older bachelor and a society pariah, overhears Scarlett express her love to Ashley during a barbecue at Twelve Oaks, the Wilkes'estate. Rhett admires Scarlett's willfulness and her departure from accepted propriety as well as her beauty. He pursues Scarlett, but is aware of her impetuousness, childish spite, and her fixation on Ashley. He assists Scarlett in defiance of proper Victorian mourning customs when her husband, Charles Hamilton, dies in a training camp, and Rhett encourages her hoydenish behavior (by antebellum custom) in Atlanta society. Scarlett, privately chafing from the strict rules of polite society, finds friendship with Rhett liberating.

Scarlett O’Hara

Scarlett O'Hara is an atypical protagonist, especially as a female romantic lead in fiction. When the novel opens, Scarlett is sixteen. She is vain, self-centered, and very spoiled by her wealthy parents. She can also be insecure; but is very intelligent, despite her fashionable Southern-belle pretense at ignorance and helplessness around men. She is somewhat unusual among Southern women, whom society preferred to act as dainty creatures who needed protection from their men. Scarlett is aware that she is only acting empty-headed, and resents the fashionable "necessity" of it, unlike most of her typical party-going Southern belles social set.

5.... Although the careless, suicidal Julian English in Appointment in Samara and the careless, incurably dishonest Jordan Baker in The Great Gatsby seem equally improbably candidates for self-respect, Jordan Baker had it, Julian English did not.

 Appointment in Samara

The novel describes how, over the course of three days, Julian English destroys himself with a series of impulsive acts, culminating in suicide. O'Hara never gives any obvious cause or explanation for his behavior, which is apparently predestined by his character. Facts about Julian gradually emerge throughout the novel. He is about thirty years old. He is college-educated, owns a well-established Cadillac dealership, and within the Gibbsville community belongs to the prestigious "Lantenengo Street crowd."

The Great Gatsby

The story primarily concerns the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion and obsession for the beautiful former debutante Daisy Buchanan. Considered to be Fitzgerald's magnum opus,The Great Gatsbyexplores themes of decaadence, idealism, resistance to change, social upheaval, and excess, creating a portrait of the Jazz Age or theRoaring Twenties that has been described as a cautionary tale regarding the American Dream.

6...It seemed to the nineteenth century admirable, but not remarkable, that Chinese Gordon put on a clean white suit and held Khartoum against the Mahdi;

Chinese Gordon

Gordon was born in Woolwich,London, a son of Major General Henry William Gordon (1786–1865) and Elizabeth (Enderby)Gordon (1792–1873). The men of the Gordon family had served as officers in the British Army for four generations, and as a son of a general, Gordon was brought up to be the fifth generation; the possibility that Gordon would pursue anything other than a military career seems never to have been considered by his parents. All of Gordon's brothers also became Army officers.

Mahdi

in Islam, the name given to a holy leader who, according to Muslims, will be sent by God and will make all people in the world follow Islam. Many Muslim leaders have claimed to be the Mahdi.

7.it is difficult in the extreme to continue fancying oneself Cathy in Wuthering Heights with one’s head in a Food Fair bag.

Wuthering Heights
a novel by the British writer Emily Brontë, one the the best-known books in English literature. It is a romantic and exciting story, set on the Yorkshire Moors, about the love between the two main characters, Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff.

8.To say that Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton is not to say that Napoleon might have been saved by a crash program in cricket;

Waterloo

a battle between the British and the French in 1815 in which the French leader Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated

meet your Waterloo

to fail at something that you have always been successful at until now

9. the sin of commission and omission

In Catholic teaching an omission is a failure to do something one can and ought to do. If this happens deliberately and freely, it is considered a sin.

A sin of commission is where a person commits an act which is sinful.This is as opposed to a sin of omission, where a person is aware of a good or right act which he or she should do, but fails to do so.