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
“What was to change many lives happened, and happened very fast in the next moments.” — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
He was a sociologist; he had got into an intellectual muddle early on in life and never managed to get out. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
The chief requirement of the good life, is to live without any image of oneself. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
“It had occurred, it had happened , and could never in his life be unhappened, never removed, a huge deadly black scar… — 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
The sin of pride may be a small or a great thing in someone's life, and hurt vanity a passing pinprick, or… — 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
“The chief requirement of the good life', said Michael, 'is that one should have some conception of one's capacities. One must know… — 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
I hate solitude, but I'm afraid of intimacy. The substance of my life is a private conversation with myself which to turn… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
I live, I live, with an absolutely continuous sense of failure. I am always defeated, always. Every book is the wreck of… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
Love is the source of our greatest errors; but when it is even partially refined it is the energy and the passion… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
“I may add here that one of the secrets of my happy life is that i have never made the mistake of… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
“The division of one day from the next must be one of the most profound peculiarities of life on this planet. We… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
There is nothing like early promiscuous sex for dispelling life's bright mysterious expectations. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
As we live our precarious lives on the brink of the void, constantly coming closer to a state of nonbeing, we are… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular body and its indifference to substitutes is one of life's major mysteries. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats, and if some of these can be inexpensive and quickly… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
“The substance of my life is a private conversation with myself which to turn into a dialogue would be equivalent to self-destruction.” — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
“We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality" says Iris Murdoch.… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
Eating reveals the characteristic grossness of the human race and also the in-built failure of its satisfactions. We arrive eager, we stuff… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
I hate solitude but I am afraid of intimacy. The substance of my life is a private conversation with myself and to… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
... he felt himself to be one of them, who can live neither in the world nor out of it. They are… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
“What a queer gamble our existence is. We decide to do A instead of B and then the two roads diverge utterly… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
When does one ever know a human being? Perhaps only after one has realized the impossibility of knowledge and renounced the desire… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
“Toby had received, though not yet digested, one of the earliest lessons of adult life: that one is never secure. At any… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
The talk of lovers who have just declared their love is one of life's most sweet delights. Each vies with the other… — 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
