The Black Prince Quotes

“Happiness must exist. It can't all be made of pain. But what is happiness made of?”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“I had been confronted (at last) with a sizeable ordeal labelled with my name. This was not something to be wasted.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“There are people who occasion in one, as it seems automatically, obsessive egoistic anxiety and preoccupying resentment. When confronted with such people one should if possible run: or else deaden the mind to them. (Or behave in some 'saintly' manner not here relevant.)”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“A letter is a barrier, a reprieve, a charm against the world, an almost infallible method of acting at a distance.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“What dangerous machines letters are. Perhaps it is as well that they are going out of fashion. A letter can be endlessly reread and reinterpreted, it stirs imagination and fantasy, it persists, it is red-hot evidence.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“Onurunuzu kaybetmenize sebep olan insanları kolay affedemiyorsunuz.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“Art is a vain and hollow show, a toy of gross illusions, unless it points beyond itself and moves ever whither it points.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“I can browse indefinitely in a stationer’s shop, indeed there is hardly anything in a good stationer’s which I do not like and want.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“...any artist knows that the space between the stage where the work is too unformed to have committed itself and the stage where it is too late to improve it can be as thin a a needle.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“Being a real person oneself is
a matter of setting up limits and drawing lines and saying no. I don't want to
be a nebulous bit of ectoplasm straying around in other people's lives. That
sort of vague sympathy with everybody precludes any real understanding of
anybody."
"The sympathy needn't be vague--"And it precludes any real loyalty to
anybody."
"One must know the details, justice, after all--"
"I detest chatter and gossip. One must hold one's tongue. Even sometimes
just not think about people. Real thoughts come out of silence.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince