black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

I feel I’m at the end of something – everything is going to be different – and terrible.

Iris Murdoch

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

Lose Person Photograph Poem Sea
Only the very greatest art invigorates without consoling.
IRIS MURDOCH

Art Greatness
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

Greatness Human Race
Every artist is an unhappy lover. And unhappy lovers want to tell their story.
IRIS MURDOCH

Art Happiness Love Poet Story
For most of us, for almost all of us, truth can be attained, if at all, only in silence. It is in silence that the human spirit touches the divine.
IRIS MURDOCH

Divine Human Silence Touch Truth
This sort of quiet gazing, which was like a feeding of the heart.
IRIS MURDOCH

Heart Quiet See
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

Fantasy Guilty Judgement Ourselves Sin World
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

Escape Life Love Talk Value
Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea.
IRIS MURDOCH

Book Ideas Perfection
Jealousy is perhaps the most involuntary of all strong emotions. It steals consciousness, it lies deeper than thought. It is always there, like a blackness in the eye, it discolours the world.
IRIS MURDOCH

Black Emotional Lie Strong World
We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality says Iris Murdoch. But given the state of the world, is it wise?
IRIS MURDOCH

Fantasy Greatness Illusion Life Live Reality Wisdom World
Art and psychoanalisis give shape and meaning to life and that’s why we adore them. However, life as it is lived has no shape nor meaning, and that’s what I am experiencing right now.
IRIS MURDOCH

Art Experience Life Live Right
Coffee, unless it is very good and made by somebody else, is pretty intolerable at any time.
IRIS MURDOCH

Food Goodness Tolerance
A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.
IRIS MURDOCH

Important Rain
Violence is born of the desire to escape oneself.
IRIS MURDOCH

Born Desire Escape Oneself Violence
Love doesn’t think like that. All right, it’s blind as a bat- Bats have radar. Yours doesnt seem to be working.
IRIS MURDOCH

Love Right Thinking Yourself

I feel I’m at the end of something – everything is going to be different – and terrible.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

I feel I’m at the end of something – everything is going to be different – and terrible.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Iris Murdoch Quotes