Iris Murdoch: Trending quotes

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Iris Murdoch: 122 quotes21 likes

“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

“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 book The Bell

Source: The Bell

“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.”

Iris Murdoch book The Bell

Source: The Bell

“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.”

Iris Murdoch book The Sea, the Sea

Source: The Sea, the Sea

“Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wave-length of ours all they hear is a continuous scream.”

Iris Murdoch book The Message to the Planet

The Message to the Planet (1989) p. 509.

“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.”

Iris Murdoch book The Red and the Green

Source: The Red and the Green

“What a test that is: more than devotion, admiration, passion. If you long and long for someone’s company you love them.”

Iris Murdoch book The Sea, the Sea

Source: The Sea, the Sea

“We defend ourselves with descriptions and tame the world by generalizing.”

Iris Murdoch book The Black Prince

Source: The Black Prince

“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.”

Iris Murdoch

“I feel half faded away like some figure in the background of an old picture.”

Iris Murdoch book A Severed Head

Source: A Severed Head

“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.”

Iris Murdoch book Nuns and Soldiers

Source: Nuns and Soldiers

“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 book The Sea, the Sea

Source: The Sea, the Sea

“What I needed with all my starved and silent soul was just that particular way of shouting back at the world.”

Iris Murdoch book The Sea, the Sea

Source: The Sea, the Sea

“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.”

Iris Murdoch book The Sea, the Sea

Source: The Sea, the Sea

“youth is a marvelous garment”

Iris Murdoch book The Bell

Source: The Bell

“The chief requirement of the good life… is to live without any image of oneself.”

Iris Murdoch book The Bell

The Bell (1958), ch. 9; 2001, p. 119.

“But fantasy kills imagination, pornography is death to art.”

Iris Murdoch book The Message to the Planet

The Message to the Planet (1989) p. 43.

“Stuart was not dismayed by his sexual feelings about the boy.”

Iris Murdoch book The Good Apprentice

The Good Apprentice (1985), p. 247.

“Whit Meynell was a sociologist; he had got into an intellectual muddle early on in life and never managed to get out.”

Iris Murdoch book The Philosopher's Pupil

The Philosopher's Pupil (1983) p. 165.