Starting a novel is opening a door on a misty landscape; you can still see very little but you can smell the earth and feel the wind blowing.
IRIS MURDOCHYouth is a marvelous garment.
More Iris Murdoch Quotes
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That doesn’t sound like you, you ride every wave. There is one that will drown me
IRIS MURDOCH -
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 -
The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular body and its indifference to substitutes is one of life’s major mysteries.
IRIS MURDOCH -
Only the very greatest art invigorates without consoling.
IRIS MURDOCH -
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 -
Coffee, unless it is very good and made by somebody else, is pretty intolerable at any time.
IRIS MURDOCH -
There is no beyond, there is only here, the infinitely small, infinitely great and utterly demanding present.
IRIS MURDOCH -
Hegel says that Truth is a great word and the thing is greater still. With Dave we never seemed to get past the word.
IRIS MURDOCH -
Our actions are like ships which we may watch set out to sea, and not know when or with what cargo they will return to port.
IRIS MURDOCH -
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 -
Youth is a marvelous garment.
IRIS MURDOCH -
Every man needs two women, a quiet home-maker, and a thrilling nymph.
IRIS MURDOCH -
Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea.
IRIS MURDOCH -
A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.
IRIS MURDOCH -
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 -
I’ve been so unhappy for years, so unhappy, I don’t understand how a human being can be so unhappy all the time and still be alive.
IRIS MURDOCH -
I took a deep breath, however, and followed my rule of never speaking frankly to women in moments of emotion. No good ever comes of this.
IRIS MURDOCH -
One of the secrets of a happy life is continous small treats.
IRIS MURDOCH -
Love is the Extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
IRIS MURDOCH -
What I needed with all my starved and silent soul was just that particular way of shouting back at the world.
IRIS MURDOCH -
Freedom may be a value in politics, but it is not a value in morals.
IRIS MURDOCH -
This sort of quiet gazing, which was like a feeding of the heart.
IRIS MURDOCH -
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 -
People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.
IRIS MURDOCH -
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 -
White magic is black magic. A less than perfect meddling in the spiritual world can breed monsters for other people, and demons used for good can hang around and make mischief afterwards.
IRIS MURDOCH