Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
Art and morality are, with certain provisos…one. Their essence is the same. The essence of both of them is love. Love is… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
All artists dream of a silence which they must enter, as some creatures return to the sea to spawn. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
“Art and psychoanalisis give shape and meaning to life and that's why we adore them. However, life as it is lived has… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
I think the novel is essentially a comic form (tragedy is for the theatre), not meaning by that full of jokes, but… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
It is difficult in life to be good, and difficult in art to portray goodness. Perhaps we don't know much about goodness. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
“I am in favour of illusion, not alienation... Drama must create a factitious spell-binding present moment and imprison the spectator in it.… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
“Good art shows us how difficult it is to be objective by showing us how differently the world looks to an objective… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
Every artist is an unhappy lover. And unhappy lovers want to tell their story. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
Art is not cozy and it is not mocked. Art tells the only truth that ultimately matters. It is the light by… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
The most potent and sacred command which can be laid upon any artist is the command: wait. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
All art is the struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
Art and psychoanalysis give shape and meaning to life and that is why we adore them, but life as it is lived… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
All art deals with the absurd and aims at the simple. Good art speaks truth, indeed is truth, perhaps the only truth. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
Then I felt too that I might take this opportunity to tie up a few loose ends, only of course loose ends… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
“The idea of attention or contemplation, of looking carefully at something and holding it before the mind, may be conveyed early on… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
“Artists are indeed unlikely to be good, goodness would silence them.” — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
Art is brief. (Not in a temporal sense.) [...] Words are for concealment. Art is concealment. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
Art is a kind of artificial memory and the pain which attends all serious art is a sense of that factitiousness. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
“I rather liked him.I asked him to come and see us.' ‘Oh Christ !’ ‘But, Bradley, you mustn’t reject people,you musn't just… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
“Art transcends selfish and obsessive limitations of personality and can enlarge the sensibility of its consumer. It is a kind of goodness… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
One doesn't have to get anywhere in a marriage. It's not a public conveyance. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
“I think being a woman is like being Irish... Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the time.” — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
emotions really exist at the bottom of the personality or at the top. in the middle they are acted. this is why all the… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
I have used the word "attention," which I borrow from Simone Weil, to express the idea of a just and loving gaze directed upon… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
Starting a novel is opening a door on a misty landscape; you can still see very little but you can smell the earth and… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
Art and morality are, with certain provisos…one. Their essence is the same. The essence of both of them is love. Love is the perception… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
being homosexual doesn't determine a man's whole character any more than being heterosexual does. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
All artists dream of a silence which they must enter, as some creatures return to the sea to spawn. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
“Oh if only I could take my mother away and never know of these things again. But it was impossible, the machine would go… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image