Iris Murdoch quotes - page 2

I see myself as Rhoda, not Mary Tyler Moore. (Iris Murdoch)
Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real. Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality. View quote
Iris Murdoch
We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality. View quote
Iris Murdoch
In almost every marriage there is a selfish and an unselfish partner. A pattern is set up and soon becomes inflexible, of one person always making the demands and one person always giving way. View quote
Iris Murdoch
The chief requirement of the good life... is to live without any image of oneself. View quote
Iris Murdoch
We defend ourself with descriptions and tame the world by generalizing. View quote
Iris Murdoch
Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self. To be damned is for one's ordinary everyday mode of consciousness to be unremitting agonizing preoccupation with self. View quote
Iris Murdoch
Serious reflexion about one's own character will often induce a curious sense of emptiness; and if one knows another person well, one may sometimes intuit a similar void in him. (This is one of the strange privileges of friendship.) View quote
Iris Murdoch
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 human spirit touches the divine. View quote
Iris Murdoch
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 port. View quote
Iris Murdoch
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 the better. (Iris Murdoch)
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. View quote
Iris Murdoch
emotions really exist at the bottom of the personality or at the top. in the middle they are acted. this is why all the world is a stage. View quote
Iris Murdoch
Every artist is an unhappy lover. And unhappy lovers want to tell their story. View quote
Iris Murdoch
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 the wind blowing. View quote
Iris Murdoch
What a test that is: more than devotion, admiration, passion. If you long and long for someone's company you love them. View quote
Iris Murdoch
People have obsessions and fears and passions which they don't admit to. I think every character is interesting and has extremes. It's the novelist privilege to see how odd everyone is. View quote
Iris Murdoch
I feel half faded away like some figure in the background of an old picture. View quote
Iris Murdoch
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 aware of our fragitlity. View quote
Iris Murdoch
How different each death is, and yet it leads us into the self-same country, that country which we inhabit so rarely, where we see the worthlessness of what we have long pursued and will so soon return to pursuing. View quote
Iris Murdoch
youth is a marvelous garment. (Iris Murdoch)
Stuart was not dismayed by his sexual feelings about the boy. View quote
Iris Murdoch
Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea. View quote
Iris Murdoch
Jealousy is the most dreadfully involuntary of all sins. View quote
Iris Murdoch
Of course reading and thinking are important but, my God, food is important too. View quote
Iris Murdoch