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

More quotes by Iris Murdoch

Image
What makes you imagine ... that anything of importance can be taught in a school?
Iris Murdoch
Image
Love can't always do work. Sometimes it just has to look into the darkness.
Iris Murdoch
Image
Those who hope, by retiring from the world, to earn a holiday from human frailty, in themselves and others, are usually disappointed.
Iris Murdoch
Image
We are such inward secret creatures, that inwardness is the most amazing thing about us, even more amazing than our reason.
Iris Murdoch
Image
It's easier to sell junk when you're known than works of genius when you're unknown.
Iris Murdoch
Image
Perhaps misguided moral passion is better than confused indifference.
Iris Murdoch
Image
Oh the piercing sadness of life in the midst of its ordinariness!
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
Dogs are very different from cats in that they can be images of human virtue. They are like us.
Iris Murdoch
Image
Real misery cuts off all paths to itself.
Iris Murdoch
Image
Art is brief. (Not in a temporal sense.) [...] Words are for concealment. Art is concealment.
Iris Murdoch
Image
Freedom is not choosing that is merely the move that we make when all is already lost. Freedom is knowing and understanding and respecting things quite other than ourselves.
Iris Murdoch
Image
Possibly, more people kill themselves and others out of hurt vanity than out of envy, jealousy, malice or desire for revenge.
Iris Murdoch
Image
I have used the word attention, which I borrow from Simone Weil, to express the idea of a just and loving gaze directed upon individual reality. I believe this to be the characteristic and proper mark of the active moral agent.
Iris Murdoch
Image
Jealousy comes from self-love rather than from true love.
Iris Murdoch
Image
We are all prisoner, but the name of our cure is not freedom
Iris Murdoch
Image
We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.
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
Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is.
Iris Murdoch