Iris Murdoch Quotes - Page 4

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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.

Iris Murdoch

Sleep, Race, Division

Iris Murdoch (2002). “Nuns and Soldiers”, p.35, Penguin

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

Iris Murdoch

Passion, Long, Tests

Iris Murdoch (2001). “The Sea, The Sea”, p.46, Penguin

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Almost any tale of our doings is comic. We are bottomlessly comic to each other. Even the most adored and beloved person is comic to his lover. The novel is a comic form. Language is a comic form, and makes jokes in its sleep. God, if He existed, would laugh at His creation. Yet it is also the case that life is horrible, without metaphysical sense, wrecked by chance, pain and the close prospect of death. Out of this is born irony, our dangerous and necessary tool.

Iris Murdoch

Pain, Sleep, Laughing

Iris Murdoch (2003). “The Black Prince”, p.80, Penguin

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But fantasy kills imagination, pornography is death to art.

Iris Murdoch

Death, Art, Imagination

Iris Murdoch (1990). “The Message to the Planet”, New York, N.Y., U.S.A. : Penguin Books

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All our failures are ultimately failures in love.

Iris Murdoch

Failure

The Bell ch. 19 (1958)

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You cannot have both truth and what you call civilisation.

Iris Murdoch

Truth, Civilisation

Iris Murdoch (1976). “A Severed Head”, p.52, Penguin

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Perhaps misguided moral passion is better than confused indifference.

Iris Murdoch

Confused, Passion, Moral

Iris Murdoch (1988). “The book and the brotherhood”, Viking, 1988

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... half the world starves. What a planet. And the eating, if you're lucky enough to do any. Stuffing pieces of dead animals into a hole in your face. Then munch, munch, munch. If there's anybody watching, they must be dying of laughter.

Iris Murdoch

Laughter, Animal, Choices

Iris Murdoch (2001). “A Fairly Honourable Defeat”, p.54, Penguin

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True love gallops, it flies, it is the swiftest of all modes of thought, swifter even than hate and fear.

Iris Murdoch

Hate, Hate And Fear

Iris Murdoch (2002). “Nuns and Soldiers”, p.289, Penguin

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Being good is just a matter of temperament in the end.

Iris Murdoch

Literature, Matter, Goodness

Iris Murdoch (1978). “The Nice and the Good”, p.103, Penguin

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We must live by the light of our own self-satisfaction, through that secret vital busy inwardness which is even more remarkable than our reason.

Iris Murdoch

Light, Self, Secret

Iris Murdoch (1999). “A Severed Head, The Black Prince, The Sea, The Sea”

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The notion that one can liberate another soul from captivity is an illusion of the very young.

Iris Murdoch

Soul, Captivity, Illusion

Iris Murdoch (1956). “The flight from the enchanter”, Viking Pr

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Real misery cuts off all paths to itself.

Iris Murdoch

Real, Cutting, Suffering

Iris Murdoch (2003). “The Black Prince”, p.127, Penguin

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Every man needs two women: a quiet home-maker, and a thrilling nymph.

Iris Murdoch

Women, Home, Two

Iris Murdoch (1990). “The Message to the Planet”, New York, N.Y., U.S.A. : Penguin Books

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Mathematics is good for the soul, getting things right enlivens a sense of truth, efforts to understand automatically purify desires.

Iris Murdoch

Effort, Soul, Desire

Iris Murdoch (1994). “Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals”, p.159, Penguin

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... when caught unawares I usually tell the truth, and what's duller than that?

Iris Murdoch

Telling The Truth, Caught

Iris Murdoch (1977). “Under the Net”, p.16, Penguin

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The bottomless bitter misery of childhood: how little even now it is understood. Probably no adult misery can be compared with a child's despair.

Iris Murdoch

Children, Childhood, Despair

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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

Literature, Moral, Truth Is

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No love is entirely without worth, even when the frivolous calls to the frivolous and the base to the base.

Iris Murdoch

Love, Romance, Frivolous

Iris Murdoch (2009). “The Nice And The Good”, p.333, Random House

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Upon the demon-ridden pilgrimage of human life, what next I wonder.

Iris Murdoch

Next, Wonder, Demon

Iris Murdoch (2001). “The Sea, The Sea”, p.412, Penguin

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I just enjoy translating, it's like opening one's mouth and hearing someone else's voice emerge.

Iris Murdoch

Voice, Mouths, Hearing

Iris Murdoch (1977). “Under the Net”, p.18, Penguin

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Only the very greatest art invigorates without consoling.

Iris Murdoch

Art, Consoling

Iris Murdoch (1999). “Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature”, p.295, Penguin

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Art and psychoanalysis give shape and meaning to life and that is why we adore them, but life as it is lived has no shape and meaning.

Iris Murdoch

Art, Giving, Shapes

Iris Murdoch (1987). “The Unicorn”, p.80, Penguin

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There is no triumph of good, and if there were it would not be a triumph of good.

Iris Murdoch

Triumph, Ifs

Iris Murdoch (2003). “The Black Prince”, p.103, Penguin

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Time can divorce us from the reality of people, it can separate us from people and turn them into ghosts. Or rather it is we who turn them into ghosts or demons. Some kinds of fruitless preoccupations with the past can create such simulacra, and they can exercise power, like those heroes at Troy fighting for a phantom Helen.

Iris Murdoch

Hero, Divorce, Fighting

Iris Murdoch (2001). “The Sea, The Sea”, p.296, Penguin

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Iris Murdoch

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Born: July 15, 1919
Died: February 8, 1999
Occupation: Author
Cite this Page: Citation

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