From Under the Net, Iris Murdoch

I used to talk a lot with Dave myself about abstract things. I was pleased, when I first got to know him, to hear that he was a phillosopher, and I thought that he might tell me some important truths. But somehow we never seemed to get anywhere, andmost of our conversations consisted of my saying something and Dave's saying he didn't understand me and my saying it again and Dave's getting very impatient. It took me some time to realize that when Dave said he didn't understand, what he meant was that what I said was nonsense.

...

Dave does extramural work for the university, and collects about him many youths who have a part-time interest in truth. Dave's pupils adore him, but there is a permanent fight on between him and them. They aspire like sunflowers. They are all natural metaphysicians, or so Dave says in a tone of disgust. This seems to be a wonderful thing to be, but it inspires in Dave a passion of opposition. To Dave's pupils the world is a mystery; a mystery to which it should be reasonably possible to discover a key. They key would be something of the sort that could be contained in a book of some eight hundred pages. To find the key would not necessarily be a simple matter, but Dave's pupils felt sure that the dedication of between four and ten hours a week, excluding university vacations, should suffice to find it. They do not conceive that the matter should be either more simple or more complex than that.