Quote

A letter is a barrier, a reprieve, a charm against the world, an almost infallible method of acting at a distance.

Iris Murdoch

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
World
Letter
Barriers
Charm
Letters
Method
Distance
Reprieve
Almost
Barrier
Acting
Infallible

More quotes by Iris Murdoch

Image
We are all prisoner, but the name of our cure is not freedom
Iris Murdoch
Image
A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.
Iris Murdoch
Image
we are such inward secret creatures, that inwardness the most amazing thing about us, even more amazing than our reason. but we cannot just walk into the cavern and look around. most of what we think we know about our minds is pseudo-knowledge. we are all such shocking poseurs, so good at inflating the importance of what we think we value.
Iris Murdoch
Image
... a less than perfect meddling in the spiritual world can breed monsters for other people.
Iris Murdoch
Image
It's easier to sell junk when you're known than works of genius when you're unknown.
Iris Murdoch
Image
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
Image
Only the very greatest art invigorates without consoling.
Iris Murdoch
Image
Only love has clear vision. Hatred has cloudy vision. When we hate we know not what we do.
Iris Murdoch
Image
Time can divorce us from the reality of people, it can separate us from people and turn them into ghosts. Or rather it is we who turn them into ghosts or demons. Some kinds of fruitless preoccupations with the past can create such simulacra, and they can exercise power, like those heroes at Troy fighting for a phantom Helen.
Iris Murdoch
Image
evil soon makes tools out of those who don't hate it.
Iris Murdoch
Image
Good writing is full of surprises and novelties, moving in a direction you don't expect.
Iris Murdoch
Image
Human affairs are not serious, but they have to be taken seriously.
Iris Murdoch
Image
Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.
Iris Murdoch
Image
It was like hunting fish with an underwater gun, a sport which he had once been foolish enough to try. At one moment there is the fish - graceful, mysterious, desirable and free - and the next moment there is nothing but struggling and blood and confusion.
Iris Murdoch
Image
Reading and writing and the preservation of language and its forms and the kind of eloquence and the kind of beauty which the language is capable of is terribly important to the human beings because this is connected to thought.
Iris Murdoch
Image
I see myself as Rhoda, not Mary Tyler Moore.
Iris Murdoch
Image
In philosophy if you aren't moving at a snail's pace you aren't moving at all.
Iris Murdoch
Image
Art is brief. (Not in a temporal sense.) [...] Words are for concealment. Art is concealment.
Iris Murdoch
Image
The chief requirement of the good life, is to live without any image of oneself.
Iris Murdoch
Image
We must live by the light of our own self-satisfaction, through that secret vital busy inwardness which is even more remarkable than our reason.
Iris Murdoch