Iris Murdoch Quotes

126 quotes in 1553 categories

• Reading and writing and the preservation of language and its forms and the kind of eloquence and the kind of beauty which the language is…
• Every human soul has seen, perhaps before their birth pure forms such as justice, temperance, beauty and all the great moral qualities which we hold…
• Yes, of course, there's something fishy about describing people's feelings. You try hard to be accurate, but as soon as you start to define such…
• As we live our precarious lives on the brink of the void, constantly coming closer to a state of nonbeing, we are all too often…
• For most of us, for almost all of us, truth can be attained, if at all, only in silence. It is in silence that the…
• Education doesn’t make you happy. Nor does freedom. We don’t become happy just because we’re free – if we are. Or because we’ve been educated…
• We defend ourselves with descriptions and tame the world by generalizing.
• To lose somebody is to lose not only their person but all those modes and manifestations into which their person has flowed outwards; so that…
• The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.
• There is a gulf fixed between those who can sleep and those who cannot. It is one of the greatest divisions of the human race.
• Coffee, unless it is very good and made by somebody else, is pretty intolerable at any time.
• Of course reading and thinking are important but, my God, food is important too.
• Every artist is an unhappy lover. And unhappy lovers want to tell their story.
• Starting a novel is opening a door on a misty landscape; you can still see very little but you can smell the earth and feel…
• One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats, and if some of these can be inexpensive and quickly procured so much…
• Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved
• What a test that is: more than devotion, admiration, passion. If you long and long for someone’s company you love them.
• Our actions are like ships which we may watch set out to sea, and not know when or with what cargo they will return to…
• We are all the judges and the judged, victims of the casual malice and fantasy of others, and ready sources of fantasy and malice in…
• I feel half faded away like some figure in the background of an old picture.

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