I don’t think I can marry, I’m not fit for it, I’m not real enough. That’s the trouble. I’m a puppet that’s realised what’s wrong with itself and it’s horrible. I’m propped up somewhere all alone, watching the real people go past. I’m propped up crying in a corner.

Iris Murdoch

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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

Alive Happiness Human Time
Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one’s luck.
IRIS MURDOCH

Amazing Commitment Marriage Oneself Writing
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

Flower Joy Mad People Thinking Time
One should go easy on smashing other people’s lies. Better to concentrate on one’s own.
IRIS MURDOCH

Easy Lie Oneself People
Anything that consoles is fake.
IRIS MURDOCH

Fake One Liner
There is no beyond, there is only here, the infinitely small, infinitely great and utterly demanding present.
IRIS MURDOCH

Beyond Greatness Present
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
Love is the Extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
IRIS MURDOCH

Difficult Love Oneself Reality
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
An experience is richest not talked of.
IRIS MURDOCH

Experience Rich
We are all prisoner, but the name of our cure is not freedom.
IRIS MURDOCH

Deep Freedom Philosophy Prison
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
So we live; a spirit that broods and hovers over the continual death of time, the lost meaning, the unrecaptured moment, the unremembered face, until the final chop that ends all our moments and plunges that spirit back into the void from which it came.
IRIS MURDOCH

Death Live Moments Spirit Time
Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved.
IRIS MURDOCH

Darkness Imagination
Emotions really exist at the bottom of the personality or at the top. in the middle they are acted. This is why all the world is a stage.
IRIS MURDOCH

Act Emotion Existence Personality World
Every persisting marriage is based on fear’, said Peregrine. ‘Fear is fundamental, you dig down in human nature and what’s at the bottom? Mean spiteful cruel self-regarding fear, whether it makes you to put the foot in it or whether it makes you to cower.
IRIS MURDOCH

Fear Fundamental Human Marriage Nature
I’ve felt as if I didn’t exist, as if I were invisible, miles away from the world, miles away. You can’t imagine how much alone I’ve been all my life.
IRIS MURDOCH

Alone Existence Imagination Life Myself World
Only take someone’s hand in a certain way, even look into their eyes in a certain way, and the world is changed forever.
IRIS MURDOCH

Change Eyes Forever Hands World
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
Time, like the sea, unties all knots.
IRIS MURDOCH

Deep Philosophy Sea Time
In philosophy if you aren’t moving at a snail’s pace you aren’t moving at all.
IRIS MURDOCH

Philosophy Speed
People have disappointed me and deceived me and let me down.
IRIS MURDOCH

Disappoint Myself People
What an extraordinary satisfaction there is in cleaning things! (Does the satisfaction depend on ownership? I suspect so.
IRIS MURDOCH

Extraordinary Myself Satisfaction
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
Those who hope, by retiring from the world, to earn a holiday from human frailty, in themselves and others, are usually disappointed.
IRIS MURDOCH

Disappoint Hope Human World
We defend ourselves with descriptions and tame the world by generalizing.
IRIS MURDOCH

Defend Ourselves World
However life, unlike art, has an irritating way of bumping and limping on, undoing conversions, casting doubt on solutions, and generally illustrating the impossibility of living happily or virtuously ever after.
IRIS MURDOCH

Art Doubt Happiness Impossible Life Live

I don’t think I can marry, I’m not fit for it, I’m not real enough. That’s the trouble. I’m a puppet that’s realised what’s wrong with itself and it’s horrible. I’m propped up somewhere all alone, watching the real people go past. I’m propped up crying in a corner.

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I don’t think I can marry, I’m not fit for it, I’m not real enough. That’s the trouble. I’m a puppet that’s realised what’s wrong with itself and it’s horrible. I’m propped up somewhere all alone, watching the real people go past. I’m propped up crying in a corner.

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Popular Authors

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