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The sin of pride may be a small or a great thing in someone's life, and hurt vanity a passing pinprick, or a self-destroying or ever murderous obsession.

Iris Murdoch

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Iris Murdoch
Age: 79 †
Born: 1919
Born: July 15
Died: 1999
Died: February 8
Author
Biographer
Novelist
Philosopher
Poet
Professor
Prosaist
Writer
Dublin city
Jean Iris Murdoch
Dame Iris Murdoch
Life
Hurt
Murderous
Small
Obsession
Someone
Passings
May
Destroying
Ever
Vanity
Self
Passing
Great
Sin
Thing
Pride

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Only the very greatest art invigorates without consoling.
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Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.
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We shall be better prepared for the future if we see how terrible, how doomed the present is.
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It is not enough that I succeed, everyone else must fail.
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Possibly, more people kill themselves and others out of hurt vanity than out of envy, jealousy, malice or desire for revenge.
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Art is not cozy and it is not mocked. Art tells the only truth that ultimately matters. It is the light by which human things can be mended. And after art there is, let me assure you all, nothing.
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Of course reading and thinking are important but, my God, food is important too.
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Our actions are like ships which we may watch set out to sea, and not know when or with what cargo they will return to port.
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The notion that one can liberate another soul from captivity is an illusion of the very young.
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Only love has clear vision. Hatred has cloudy vision. When we hate we know not what we do.
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The cry of equality pulls everyone down.
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Human affairs are not serious, but they have to be taken seriously.
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The sending of a letter constitutes a magical grasp upon the future.
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A death is the most terrible of facts.
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Those who hope, by retiring from the world, to earn a holiday from human frailty, in themselves and others, are usually disappointed.
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We are all the judges and the judged, victims of the casual malice and fantasy of others, and ready sources of fantasy and malice in our turn. And if we are sometimes accused of sins of which we are innocent, are there not also other sins of which we are guilty and of which the world knows nothing?
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The bottomless bitter misery of childhood: how little even now it is understood. Probably no adult misery can be compared with a child's despair.
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Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wavelength of ours all they hear is a continuous scream.
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Being good is just a matter of temperament in the end.
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there is a natural tribal hostility between the married and the unmarried. I cannot stand the shows so often quite instinctively put on by married people to insinuate that they are not only more fortunate but in some way more moral than you are.
Iris Murdoch