Iris Murdoch Quotes - Page 5

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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

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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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• 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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• 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

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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”

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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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• 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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• 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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• Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is.

  Iris Murdoch

  Love, Life, Fall

  Iris Murdoch (1976). “A Severed Head”, p.132, Penguin

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• We are all the judges and the judged, victims of the casual malice and fantasy of others, and ready sources of fantasy and malice in our turn. And if we are sometimes accused of sins of which we are innocent, are there not also other sins of which we are guilty and of which the world knows nothing?

  Iris Murdoch

  Judging, World, Fantasy

  Iris Murdoch (2002). “Nuns and Soldiers”, p.490, Penguin

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• Freedom is not choosing; that is merely the move that we make when all is already lost. Freedom is knowing and understanding and respecting things quite other than ourselves.

  Iris Murdoch

  Moving, Knowing, Understanding

  Iris Murdoch (1999). “Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature”, p.284, Penguin

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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• In a happy marriage there is a continuous dense magnetic sense of communication.

  Iris Murdoch

  Communication, Happy Marriage, Dense

  Iris Murdoch (2001). “A Fairly Honourable Defeat”, p.223, Penguin

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• 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

  Void, States, Precarious

  Iris Murdoch (2002). “Nuns and Soldiers”, p.14, Penguin

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• Those who hope, by retiring from the world, to earn a holiday from human frailty, in themselves and others, are usually disappointed.

  Iris Murdoch

  Holiday, World, Frailty

  Iris Murdoch (2001). “The Bell”, p.77, Penguin

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• Falling out of love is very enlightening. For a short while you see the world with new eyes.

  Iris Murdoch

  Love, Fall, Memorable

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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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• ... 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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• I daresay anything can be made holy by being sincerely worshipped.

  Iris Murdoch

  Worship, Holy, Made

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

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• The talk of lovers who have just declared their love is one of life's most sweet delights. Each vies with the other in humility, in amazement at being so valued. The past is searched for the first signs and each one is in haste to declare all that he is so that no part of his being escapes the hallowing touch.

  Iris Murdoch

  Sweet, Humility, Past

  Iris Murdoch (2001). “The Bell”, p.92, 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

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