Iris Murdoch Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• The very madness of the scheme protects it.

  Iris Murdoch

  Madness, Schemes, Protect

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• Perhaps misguided moral passion is better than confused indifference.

  Iris Murdoch

  Confused, Passion, Moral

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

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  5 Copy quote

• All our failures are ultimately failures in love.

  Iris Murdoch

  Failure

  The Bell ch. 19 (1958)

  13 Copy quote

• Music relates sound and time and so pictures the ultimate edges of human commmunications.

  Iris Murdoch

  Sound, Humans, Relate

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

  7 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

• for most of us the space between 'dreaming on things to come' and 'it is too late, it is all over' is too tiny to enter.

  Iris Murdoch

  Dream, Opportunity, Space

  Iris Murdoch (2003). “The Black Prince”, p.25, Penguin

  6 Copy quote

• Of course reading and thinking are important but, my God, food is important too.

  Iris Murdoch

  Reading, Thinking, Important

  Iris Murdoch (2001). “The Sea, The Sea”, p.30, Penguin

  9 Copy quote

• All artists dream of a silence which they must enter, as some creatures return to the sea to spawn.

  Iris Murdoch

  Dream, Artist, Sea

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

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  9 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

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  8 Copy quote

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

  Iris Murdoch

  Self, Singing, Assertive

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

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  15 Copy quote

• 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

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  94 Copy quote

• 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

  10 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

• 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

• youth is a marvelous garment

  Iris Murdoch

  Youth, Garments, Marvelous

  8 Copy quote

• The sending of a letter constitutes a magical grasp upon the future.

  Iris Murdoch

  Writing, Letters

  Iris Murdoch (2008). “The Philosopher's Pupil”, p.422, Random House

  5 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

  4 Copy quote

Page 4 of 8

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin