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Jealousy is the most dreadfully involuntary of all sins.

Iris Murdoch

One should go easy on smashing other people’s lies. Better to concentrate on one’s own.
IRIS MURDOCH

Easy Lie Oneself People
The most essential and fundamental aspect of culture is the study of literature, since this is an education in how to picture and understand human situations.
IRIS MURDOCH

Education Fundamental Human Literature Understand
We defend ourselves with descriptions and tame the world by generalizing.
IRIS MURDOCH

Defend Ourselves World
One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats, and if some of these can be inexpensive and quickly procured so much the better.
IRIS MURDOCH

Better Happiness Life Oneself Quick Secret
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
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

Moral Need Philosophy Politics
Of course this chattering diary is a facade, the literary equivalent of the everyday smiling face which hides the inward ravages of jealousy, remorse, fear and the consciousness of irretrievable moral failure. Yet such pretenses are not only consolations but may even be productive of a little ersatz courage.
IRIS MURDOCH

Courage Failure Hide Literature Moral Smile
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
Of course reading and thinking are important but, my God, food is important too.
IRIS MURDOCH

Food God Important Reading Thinking
That doesn’t sound like you, you ride every wave. There is one that will drown me
IRIS MURDOCH

Inspirational Myself Oneself Sound Yourself
But one must do something about the past. It doesn’t just cease to be. It goes on existing and affecting the present, and in new and different ways, as if in some other dimension it too were growing.
IRIS MURDOCH

Different Existence Growth Past Present
Her eyes, which refused to meet mine, had the defensive coldness of those who are determined to lose hope.
IRIS MURDOCH

Determination Eyes Herself Hope
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
The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.
IRIS MURDOCH

Civilization Growth Heart Man Transportation
Every man needs two women, a quiet home-maker, and a thrilling nymph.
IRIS MURDOCH

Man Need Quiet Relationship Woman
What I needed with all my starved and silent soul was just that particular way of shouting back at the world.
IRIS MURDOCH

Myself Need Silence Soul World

Jealousy is the most dreadfully involuntary of all sins.

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Jealousy is the most dreadfully involuntary of all sins.

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