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 MURDOCHThose who hope, by retiring from the world, to earn a holiday from human frailty, in themselves and others, are usually disappointed.
More Iris Murdoch Quotes
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People have disappointed me and deceived me and let me down.
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Freedom may be a value in politics, but it is not a value in morals.
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We can only learn to love by loving.
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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.
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Guilt keeps people imprisoned in themselves.
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Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one’s luck.
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An experience is richest not talked of.
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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 -
What an extraordinary satisfaction there is in cleaning things! (Does the satisfaction depend on ownership? I suspect so.
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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.
IRIS MURDOCH -
Her eyes, which refused to meet mine, had the defensive coldness of those who are determined to lose hope.
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I just enjoy translating, it’s like opening one’s mouth and hearing someone else’s voice emerge.
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Only take someone’s hand in a certain way, even look into their eyes in a certain way, and the world is changed forever.
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How huge it is, how empty, this great space for which I have been longing all my life. Still no letters.
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One of the secrets of a happy life is continous small treats.
IRIS MURDOCH