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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

I have nobody in the world. I’ll kill myself. That’s best. Everyone will say, It’s for the best that she killed herself, she’s better off dead. I hate myself so much I could spend hours and hours just screaming with hatred and with the pain of it, oh the pain of it.
IRIS MURDOCH

Best Hate Kill Myself Pain World
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 can only learn to love by loving.
IRIS MURDOCH

Learning Love
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
Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved.
IRIS MURDOCH

Darkness Imagination
Reading and writing and the preservation of language and its forms and the kind of eloquence and the kind of beauty which the language is capable of is terribly important to the human beings because this is connected to thought.
IRIS MURDOCH

Connection Important Kind Language Reading Writing
Coffee, unless it is very good and made by somebody else, is pretty intolerable at any time.
IRIS MURDOCH

Food Goodness Tolerance
People have disappointed me and deceived me and let me down.
IRIS MURDOCH

Disappoint Myself People
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

Action Future Ourselves Sea
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
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
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 MURDOCH

Book Feeling Start Yourself
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
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
I think being a woman is like being Irish, Everyone says you’re important and nice, but you take second place all the time.
IRIS MURDOCH

Important Myself Nice Place Thinking Time Woman
How different each death is, and yet it leads us into the self-same country, that country which we inhabit so rarely, where we see the worthlessness of what we have long pursued and will so soon return to pursuing.
IRIS MURDOCH

Death Different Pursue See Worth

The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular body and its indifference to substitutes is one of life’s major mysteries.

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The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular body and its indifference to substitutes is one of life’s major mysteries.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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