"For a good man to realize that it is better to be whole than to be good is to enter on a strait and narrow path compared to which his previous rectitude was flowery license."

John Middleton Murry Literature See all quotes by John Middleton Murry →

quotekg

React to this quote

More by John Middleton Murry

“Whatever may have been our final judgment on the strange novel of M. Marcel Proust, 'Du Côté de chez Swann,' which appeared in the year before the war—and the book at least had this obviously in common with a great work of literature, that it lent itself to judgment on many different planes—the persistent element in all our changing opinions was that it marked the arrival of a new sensibility. We were being made aware in new ways, induced to perceive existence in new relations.”

“Letters from John Middleton Murry to Lord and Lady Glenavy in theGeorge Lazarus Collection”

Resonant Thoughts

"would require some better consolation than the doctrine of Adam Smith on the true Principles of demand and supply and the danger of Government interference."

— Robert Peel

Politics1788–1850

#truth

"That both the Gilgamesh Epic and the Odyssey deal with the episodic wanderings of a hero, would not be sufficiently specific to establish a genuine relation between them. But when both epics begin wit…"

— Cyrus H. Gordon

1908–2001

#truth

"Science makes no pretension to eternal truth or absolute truth; some of its rivals do. That science is in some respects inhuman may be the secret of its success in alleviating human misery and mitigat…"

— Eric Temple Bell

Mathematics1883–1960

#truth