“... impulse could create. As late as the 20th century, the Skoptsy sect in Russia was still preaching self-mutilation as the godly response to sexual cravings. Christian authorities in every age have defended their teachings by reference to the Bible. MacCulloch patiently explains the many problems with this, in a fashion that will no doubt leave biblical ...”

“... Too often in history, it was argued, the vigilance and civic virtue required to sustain republican self-rule had dissipated, and the ensuing corruption, chaos and division had paved a path to dictatorship for a Caesar or a Cromwell. Republican government wasn’t thought compatible with territorial extent on the American scale. Small city-states had proved ...”

“... I was being paid to say what was there, not to critique it; but, where I could, I inserted a self-deprecating inflection, leaving my tongue in the great man’s cheek. These days, I usually get a couple of weeks with the manuscript before recording, to check pronunciations, especially pertinent with, for example, Brazilian Portuguese, which can be a ...”

“... crazy parties, leopardskin pants and a pony-tail. But now her parents are puzzled. Where is their self-centred daughter? She hasn’t gone to town. Come on. You come down. * The publican wants God as a partner, the businessman, the wife, oh the girl with scars on her wrists taking her baby to God the shiftless drunk no one trusts who lives in a packing shed ...”

“... more like Creon – wrote that is for what Hegel calls the daylight gods – the gods of free self-conscious social – social and political – life the gods if you like of middle-class conversation its Fabian certainties its brisk of course that’s often slightly off course like the old Belfast story – that over-troped sea-chestnut of the liner and ...”

“... but before the camera sees her above water she has turned into another person: her grown-up self, swimming in a different latitude. She is Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), from Spectre, now living happily with a retired Bond in Jamaica. I’m not sure what to make of this shift of twenty years or so between shots, but it’s certainly memorable, and ...”

“... bonnacon is shown expelling faeces, a feat which, the inscription notes, it commonly performs in self-defence.The map’s humanoid creatures are some of its most compelling. There are dog-headed men (seemingly engaged in conversation) as well as a ‘monocule’ or Sciapod: a man with only one foot, extended into the air. He cuts a lonely figure, as does the ...”

“... part of the war on terror. The US elevation of Zarqawi to the front rank of al-Qaida leaders was self-fulfilling. To many Iraqis and Muslims wanting to fight the US, he became a symbol of resistance. His notoriety made it easy for him to raise money. In December 2004, Osama bin Laden declared that he was head of al-Qaida in Iraq. ‘The Islamists often seem ...”

“... on themes from Hogarth, which included some wonderful late flourishes, role-playing (many are self-portraits) and memorable images. The florid iconography and symbolism of the Café Deutschland series spills over into the late works, but without the political imperative the vitality somehow dwindles. One of the most striking paintings in the Ashmolean ...”

“... merit, most of them gratuitously concerned with the Second World War and so helping to sustain the self-justifying national myth: Women of the Second World War, Animals in War, Bomber Command etc. Then there is the Armed Forces Memorial in the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, unveiled in 2007: an impressive circular structure in which a diluted ...”

“... general human and animal condition. This is less true of the other work in the show, in which the self-deprecating humour extends to the teasing deprecation of some of his fellow artists and indeed the viewer. One of the ways in which Shrigley offends against the tenets of much contemporary art practice is that he admits to presenting a persona in his ...”

“... manifestations, because they are so humble, so daily, because people don’t use them as a form of self-definition, and because the differences between them are real: a Crunchie is not just a differently packaged Mars bar – it’s a genuinely different thing. Consumers will have sincerely held differing opinions about their merits. Added to this is the fact ...”

“... more persuasively to us from the margins of the technological landscape.’ In the catalogue Will Self writes of Ballard’s ability to see the nature of what has grown up around us: ‘Bleak man-made landscapes, technological, social and environmental developments and their psychological effects – these are aspects of the dystopian society we all live in ...”

“... budgets to individual GP practices); the replacement of health authorities by ‘NHS trusts’ (self-governing accounting centres with borrowing powers, and their own finance, human resources and PR departments) and the splitting of purchasers from providers (the planning and delivery of services was to be undertaken by separate bodies, with the money ...”

“... asymmetry that fractured the psychological monotony, touching some faultline in his subject’s self-possession. He must surely be a fool – this guileless, posh young Londoner, this obverse of Ingres’s Monsieur Bertin – to allow himself to be so immobilised. See how, in his slouch, his figure balloons away from that absurd little apex of a head, his ...”