“... leaves shiver silent chimes beyond the glass brings either the rapture [my children . . .] or self-criticism  of one who comes with a theory [. . . are an economy of scarcity] of myself there is no more evidence to admit – only consistent with limestone’s incessant weeping cave a madonna’s ...”

“... If one turns to what China Diary actually is, one has to say that it is a mildly narcissistic, self-indulgent ramble, quite pleasant to read, and with occasional flashes of insight. Thus Spender remarks that ‘there are times in China when the tourists seem totally disconnected from the places they are visiting... like the plug of the television set in ...”

“... money to a diamond-smuggling stranger from Sierra Leone, who promptly took off with it, as any self-respecting diamond-smuggler would. Whereupon our intrepid autobiographer swore a mighty oath against the smugglers, and rounded up a small army of mercenaries from the bars of Monrovia, who were apparently so impressed with his air of command that they ...”

“... all summer, has often asked himself. We know this because Cummings’s sprawling and fantastically self-revealing blog (still live at the time of writing) is punctuated with thoughts about Bismarck. For Cummings, Bismarck is the sacred monster of tactical politics, the genius statesman whose political moves repeatedly surprised and wrong-footed friends and ...”

“... on the move’, were also the result of a desire to turn the tables on the world. Made to feel self-conscious about her appearance as a child, as an adult she ensured that everyone else should be conscious of it too. Clothes come between the naked self and the world, as does writing. Where the dividing line is drawn ...”

“... Sitwell from 1916. Laura Knight, three years earlier, had been condemned by the Telegraph for a self-portrait with a nude model that lacked ‘the higher charm of the “eternal feminine”’. A few such notable nudes aside, there is a tendency to allegorise lesbian desire in objects and interiors: as in Ethel Sands’s The Chintz Couch of 1911, or the ...”

“... There are artfully self-conscious moments in Raúl Ruiz’s Time Regained (1999) which distract us briefly from the film’s amazing achievement: to reveal the last volume of Proust’s intellectual monument (and by implication the rest of the work) for the intricate social soap opera it also is, a universe of stars appropriately represented by Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Béart and others ...”

“... Elizabeth Leveson-Gower thought it ‘almost a sin’ to see it disappear below the paint. He was self-taught and it was drawing, not painting, that brought the child prodigy to the attention of his father’s patrons in the Black Bear, a coaching inn on the London to Bath road. ‘Not merely the wonder of his family but of the times, for his astonishing ...”

“... shared with the painter Ben Nicholson. The show vividly conjures the studio’s crowded, exuberant self-confidence. Paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculptures, textile designs, collages: all the things they made invent a specific aesthetics of intimacy, a shared exploration of what it means to love and be loved, to feel close and yet distinct, to ...”

“... the two paintings by Gentileschi – A Sibyl is the other one – and his daughter Artemisia’s self-portrait. Without these the exhibition would be significant; with them it is magnificent. As well as paintings there are rooms of drawings. A few, like Michelangelo’s Fall of Phaeton and A Children’s Bacchanal, were presentation pieces, and thus ends in ...”

“... not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation. Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavour.The first and second of these examples assume that Israel, apart from being a Jewish state, is a country like any other and so open only to criticism resembling ...”

“... I pray​ every day that super-intelligent aliens will come to earth and save us from self-destruction, so when an 800-metre-long cigar-shaped object was found to have hurtled into our solar system I felt a stirring of hope. It was picked up on 19 October by the Pan-STARRS (Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System) at the University of Hawaii’s Astronomical Institute ...”

“... the book appeared, ‘for I can only call it that.’ In fact it was an instance of the benign self-interest that makes a far-sighted publisher succeed. As poet laureate Betjeman was worth his weight in Bovril. Over its long life John Murray produced not only new books, but whole new genres. The famous red Murray’s handbooks were the original foreign ...”

“... and example. The mother is closer to Mycroft than we might think, and one of her lessons is that self comes first and last, however much we may be tempted by the idea of sacrifice for others. Enola, debating this with herself and us, thinks the advice is often correct, but can’t always be followed. If she followed it, she would have left the marquess to ...”