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 MURDOCHThe 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.
More Iris Murdoch Quotes
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Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved.
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Of course reading and thinking are important but, my God, food is important too.
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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.
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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.
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There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship.
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Those who hope, by retiring from the world, to earn a holiday from human frailty, in themselves and others, are usually disappointed.
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Love is the Extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
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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.
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We defend ourselves with descriptions and tame the world by generalizing.
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Every man needs two women, a quiet home-maker, and a thrilling nymph.
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Perhaps there was an intimacy which did not need words.
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We are all prisoner, but the name of our cure is not freedom.
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Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea.
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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.
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What a test that is: more than devotion, admiration, passion. If you long and long for someone’s company you love them.
IRIS MURDOCH