Iris Murdoch quotes - page 3

Only the very greatest art invigorates without consoling. (Iris Murdoch)
Those who hope, by retiring from the world, to earn a holiday from human frailty, in themselves and others, are usually disappointed.
Iris Murdoch
The novel, the novel proper that is, is about people's treatment of each other, and so it is about human values.
Iris Murdoch
We know that the real lesson to be taught is that the human person is precious and unique; but we seem unable to set it forth except in terms of ideology and abstraction.
Iris Murdoch
He felt neither guilt nor distress at the pleasure with which he was now filled by the proximity of this young creature, and when he discovered in himself even physical symptoms of his inclination he did not take fright, but continued cheerfully and serenely to see Nick whenever the ordinary run of his duties suggested it, congratulating himself upon the newly achieved solidity and rational calm of his spiritual life.
Iris Murdoch
The role of philosophy might be said to be to extend and deepen the self-awareness of mankind.
Iris Murdoch
All metaphysical theories are inconclusively vulnerable to positivist attack.
Iris Murdoch
The only satisfied rationalists today are blinkered scientists or Marxists.
Iris Murdoch
To eat, teeth must meet.
Iris Murdoch
Every man needs two women: a quiet home-maker, and a thrilling nymph.
Iris Murdoch
Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary and everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self. (Iris Murdoch)
Literature could be said to be a sort of disciplined technique for arousing certain emotions.
Iris Murdoch
Philosophy! Empty thinking by ignorant conceited men who think they can digest without eating!
Iris Murdoch
No love is entirely without worth, even when the frivolous calls to the frivolous and the base to the base.
Iris Murdoch
In philosophy if you aren't moving at a snail's pace you aren't moving at all.
Iris Murdoch
One doesn't have to get anywhere in a marriage. It's not a public conveyance.
Iris Murdoch
We shall be better prepared for the future if we see how terrible, how doomed the present is.
Iris Murdoch
The priesthood is a marriage. People often start by falling in love, and they go on for years without realizing that love must change into some other love which is so unlike it that it can hardly be recognized as love at all.
Iris Murdoch
Moralistic is not moral. And as for truth - well, it's like brown - it's not in the spectrum. Truth is so generic.
Iris Murdoch
The sin of pride may be a small or a great thing in someone's life, and hurt vanity a passing pinprick or a self-destroying or even murderous obsession.
Iris Murdoch
One should go easy on smashing other people's lies. Better to concentrate on one's own. (Iris Murdoch)
What I needed with all my starved and silent soul was just that particular way of shouting back at the world.
Iris Murdoch
One of the secrets of a happy life is continous small treats.
Iris Murdoch
We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality" says Iris Murdoch. But given the state of the world, is it wise?
Iris Murdoch
The most essential and fundamental aspect of culture is the study of literature, since this is an education in how to picture and understand human situations.
Iris Murdoch