Iris Murdoch Quotes - Page 5

Quotes about:

• I am not famous for anything in particular. I am just famous.

  Iris Murdoch

  Particular

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

  4 Copy quote

• In philosophy if you aren't moving at a snail's pace you aren't moving at all.

  Iris Murdoch

  Philosophy, Moving, Pace

  Iris Murdoch (1999). “Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature”, p.500, Penguin

  28 Copy quote

• So we live; a spirit that broods and hovers over the continual death of time, the lost meaning, the unrecaptured moment, the unremembered face, until the final chop that ends all our moments and plunges that spirit back into the void from which it came.

  Iris Murdoch

  Finals, Void, Faces

  Iris Murdoch (1977). “Under the Net”, p.205, Penguin

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• It is difficult in life to be good, and difficult in art to portray goodness. Perhaps we don't know much about goodness.

  Iris Murdoch

  Art, Goodness, Difficult

  Iris Murdoch (2003). “From a Tiny Corner in the House of Fiction: Conversations with Iris Murdoch”, p.224, Univ of South Carolina Press

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• Nothing is more beautifully and acceptably self-assertive than good singing.

  Iris Murdoch

  Self, Singing, Assertive

  Iris Murdoch (1987). “The Unicorn”, p.107, Penguin

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• evil soon makes tools out of those who don't hate it.

  Iris Murdoch

  Hate, Evil, Tools

  Iris Murdoch (1962). “An Unofficial Rose: A Novel”

  6 Copy quote

• ... a less than perfect meddling in the spiritual world can breed monsters for other people.

  Iris Murdoch

  Spiritual, People, Perfect

  Iris Murdoch (2001). “The Sea, The Sea”, p.369, Penguin

  5 Copy quote

• youth is a marvelous garment

  Iris Murdoch

  Youth, Garments, Marvelous

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• We are all prisoner, but the name of our cure is not freedom

  Iris Murdoch

  Names, Cures, Prisoner

  Iris Murdoch (1987). “The Unicorn”, p.76, Penguin

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• 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

  Country, Self, Long

  Iris Murdoch (2001). “The Sea, The Sea”, p.400, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• 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 in honour. We are moved towards what is good by the faint memory of these forms, simple and calm and blessed, which we saw once in a pure, clear light, being pure ourselves.

  Iris Murdoch

  Memories, Blessed, Simple

  "Fictional character: Iris Murdoch". "Iris", www.imdb.com. 2001.

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• The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man.

  Iris Murdoch

  Men, Cycling, Riding A Bicycle

  IRIS MURDOCH (1965). “THE RED AND THE GREEN”

  16 Copy quote

• 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

  Passion, Character, Thinking

  "Fictional character: Iris Murdoch". "Iris", www.imdb.com. 2001.

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• Coffee, unless it is very good and made by somebody else, is pretty intolerable at any time.

  Iris Murdoch

  Coffee, Made, Very Good

  Iris Murdoch (2001). “The Sea, The Sea”, p.90, Penguin

  6 Copy quote

• I think the novel is essentially a comic form (tragedy is for the theatre), not meaning by that full of jokes, but that it is about the absurd detail of human life, the way in which one cannot fully understand what is happening. Life is muddle and jumble and ends inconclusively, and when this is presented with great comic art the sorrows of human life can be truthfully conveyed; one is moved by the spectacle, and feels that something truthful has been told in a magic way.

  Iris Murdoch

  Art, Thinking, Magic

  11 Copy quote

• I live, I live, with an absolutely continuous sense of failure. I am always defeated, always. Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea. The years pass and one has only one life. If one has a thing at all one must do it and keep on and on and on trying to do it better.

  Iris Murdoch

  Failure, Book, Years

  Iris Murdoch (2003). “The Black Prince”, p.156, Penguin

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• We re all muddlers. The thing is to see is when one's got to stop muddling.

  Iris Murdoch

  Disorder

  Iris Murdoch (2008). “A Word Child”, p.362, Random House

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• We need a moral philosophy which can speak significantly of Freud and Marx and out of which aesthetic and political views can be generated. We need a moral philosophy in which the concept of love, so rarely mentioned now, can once again be made central.

  Iris Murdoch

  Philosophy, Views, Political

  Iris Murdoch (1999). “Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature”, p.337, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• There is nothing like early promiscuous sex for dispelling life's bright mysterious expectations.

  Iris Murdoch

  Sex, Expectations, Mysterious

  Iris Murdoch (2008). “A Word Child”, p.3, Random House

  6 Copy quote

• People who boast of happy marriages are, I submit, usually self-deceivers, if not actually liars.

  Iris Murdoch

  Marriage, Liars, Self

  Iris Murdoch (2003). “The Black Prince”, p.89, Penguin

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• The bereaved cannot communicate with the unbereaved.

  Iris Murdoch

  Communicate

  Iris Murdoch (1988). “AN Accidental Man”, p.161, Penguin

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• I think philosophy is extremely good training for anyone who wants to do anything. Although that is an idea which people may speak scornfully of now, I think it does teach one to

  Iris Murdoch

  Philosophy, Thinking, Ideas

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• 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 in losing a beloved one may find so many things, pictures, poems, melodies, places lost too: Dante, Avignon, a song of Shakespeare's, the Cornish sea.

  Iris Murdoch

  Song, Sea, May

  Iris Murdoch (1976). “A Severed Head”, p.57, Penguin

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• to be understood is not a human right. Even to understand oneself is not a human right.

  Iris Murdoch

  Understood, Humans, Oneself

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• 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.

  Iris Murdoch

  Marriage, Selfish, Giving

  Iris Murdoch (1976). “A Severed Head”, p.13, Penguin

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