black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Her eyes, which refused to meet mine, had the defensive coldness of those who are determined to lose hope.

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

Goodness Magic People Perfection Spiritual World
People have disappointed me and deceived me and let me down.
IRIS MURDOCH

Disappoint Myself People
What a test that is: more than devotion, admiration, passion. If you long and long for someone’s company you love them.
IRIS MURDOCH

Company Love Passion Yourself
Every man needs two women, a quiet home-maker, and a thrilling nymph.
IRIS MURDOCH

Man Need Quiet Relationship Woman
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

Character. Priviledge Fear Myself Passion People Thinking
There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship.
IRIS MURDOCH

Comfortable Relationship
How huge it is, how empty, this great space for which I have been longing all my life. Still no letters.
IRIS MURDOCH

Empty Greatness Life Space
There is no beyond, there is only here, the infinitely small, infinitely great and utterly demanding present.
IRIS MURDOCH

Beyond Greatness Present
Jealousy is the most dreadfully involuntary of all sins.
IRIS MURDOCH

Crime Sin Spiritual
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

Live Ourselves Philosophy
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
Violence is born of the desire to escape oneself.
IRIS MURDOCH

Born Desire Escape Oneself Violence
Perhaps there was an intimacy which did not need words.
IRIS MURDOCH

Love Need Togetherness Word
Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved.
IRIS MURDOCH

Darkness Imagination
The theatre is certainly a place for learning about the brevity of human glory: oh all those wonderful glittering absolutely vanished pantomime! Now I shall abjure magic and become a hermit : put myself in a situation where I can honestly say that I have nothing else to do but to learn to be good.
IRIS MURDOCH

Goodness Honesty Human Learning Magic Place Wonderful
I feel half faded away like some figure in the background of an old picture.
IRIS MURDOCH

Fade Feeling Myself Old Photograph

Her eyes, which refused to meet mine, had the defensive coldness of those who are determined to lose hope.

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Her eyes, which refused to meet mine, had the defensive coldness of those who are determined to lose hope.

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