"My principal motive is the belief that we can still make admirable sense of our lives even if we cease to have... an ambition of transcendence."

-- Richard Rorty

#Ambition Quotes #Belief Quotes #Transcendence Quotes

“Unrecognized alcoholism is the ruling pathology among writers and intellectuals.”

Source : Diana Trilling (1993). “The Beginning of the Journey: The Marriage of Diana and Lionel Trilling”, Harcourt
“I was never a good student. I had to be dragged into kindergarten. It was hard to sit and listen to somebody talk. I wanted to be out, educated by experience and adventure, and I didn't know how to express that.”
“In the 1960s we were fighting to be recognized as equals in the marketplace, in marriage, in education and on the playing field. It was a very exciting, rebellious time.”
“You are one of my nicest thoughts.”
“The art of being agreeable frequently miscarries through the ambition which accompanies it. Wit, learning, wisdom,--what can more effectually conduce to the profit and delight of society? Yet I am sensible that a man may be too invariably wise, learned, or witty to be agreeable; and I take the reason of this to be, that pleasure cannot be bestowed by the simple and unmixed exertion of any one faculty or accomplishment.”
“For one, the nonverbal aspects of music are the most important to me. Then, whatever sort of emotion the music carries, intrinsically, dictates the images that unfold, lyrically. Topical writers usually have the topic before they begin writing the song, but, for me, it's the other way around.”
“Those eerie diamond eyes shifted over to her and she stilled, as if he's willed her to do so. There was a moment of silence. And then in a rough voice the man whose life she saved spoke four words that changed everything...changed her life, changed her destiny: "She. Comes. With. Me.”
“We can only learn to love by loving.”

Source : Iris Murdoch (2001). “The Bell”, p.193, Penguin

You may also like:

Donald Davidson
Philosopher
Gianni Vattimo
Italian Politician
Hilary Putnam
Philosopher
Jacques Derrida
Philosopher
John Dewey
Philosopher
Jurgen Habermas
Philosopher
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Philosopher
Martin Heidegger
Philosopher
Michel Foucault
Philosopher