“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 even murderous obsession.”
The Philosopher's Pupil (1983) p. 76.
Context: 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 even murderous obsession. Possibly, more people kill themselves and others out of hurt vanity than out of envy, jealousy, malice or desire for revenge.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Iris Murdoch 61
British writer and philosopher 1919–1999Related quotes
“All things – great, small, good, bad, friend, enemy—should be a lesson, not an obsession.”
Annotated Drawings by Eugene J. Martin: 1977-1978
“What is not proved should not be used in court,
And even less, if someone it may hurt.”
E quel che non si sa non si de' dire,
E tanto men, quando altri n'ha a patire.
Canto XXXII, stanza 102 (tr. B. Reynolds)
Orlando Furioso (1532)
“Sometimes the only thing to do is to take the thing that you must have. Even if someone gets hurt.”
Source: Full Dark, No Stars
as quoted in The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927), p. 137
“If we may compare small things with great.”
Si parva licet componere magnis.
Book IV, line 176 (tr. Fairclough). Cf. Eclogues 1.23.
Georgics (29 BC)
