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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

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 felt a deep grief that crouched and stayed still as if it was afraid to move.
IRIS MURDOCH

Deep Feeling Grief Myself Stay
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
Art and psychoanalisis give shape and meaning to life and that’s why we adore them. However, life as it is lived has no shape nor meaning, and that’s what I am experiencing right now.
IRIS MURDOCH

Art Experience Life Live Right
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
There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship.
IRIS MURDOCH

Comfortable Relationship
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

Alone Enough Marriage Myself Past Reality Thinking Wrong
Only the very greatest art invigorates without consoling.
IRIS MURDOCH

Art Greatness
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.
IRIS MURDOCH

Greatness Human Race
Freedom may be a value in politics, but it is not a value in morals.
IRIS MURDOCH

Freedom Moral Politics Value
Coffee, unless it is very good and made by somebody else, is pretty intolerable at any time.
IRIS MURDOCH

Food Goodness Tolerance
For most of us, for almost all of us, truth can be attained, if at all, only in silence. It is in silence that the human spirit touches the divine.
IRIS MURDOCH

Divine Human Silence Touch Truth
The talk of lovers who have just declared their love is one of life’s most sweet delights. Each vies with the other in humility, in amazement at being so valued. The past is searched for the first signs and each one is in haste to declare all that he is so that no part of his being escapes the hallowing touch.
IRIS MURDOCH

Escape Life Love Talk Value
I feel half faded away like some figure in the background of an old picture.
IRIS MURDOCH

Fade Feeling Myself Old Photograph
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
One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats, and if some of these can be inexpensive and quickly procured so much the better.
IRIS MURDOCH

Better Happiness Life Oneself Quick Secret

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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