The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular body and its indifference to substitutes is one of life’s major mysteries.
IRIS MURDOCHWe are all the judges and the judged, victims of the casual malice and fantasy of others, and ready sources of fantasy and malice in our turn. And if we are sometimes accused of sins of which we are innocent, are there not also other sins of which we are guilty and of which the world knows nothing?
More Iris Murdoch Quotes
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Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea.
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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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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.
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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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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 -
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 -
Anything that consoles is fake.
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Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is.
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Every artist is an unhappy lover. And unhappy lovers want to tell their story.
IRIS MURDOCH -
In philosophy if you aren’t moving at a snail’s pace you aren’t moving at all.
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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 -
People have disappointed me and deceived me and let me down.
IRIS MURDOCH -
We defend ourselves with descriptions and tame the world by generalizing.
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Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wavelength of ours all they hear is a continuous scream.
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






