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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

I’ve been so unhappy for years, so unhappy, I don’t understand how a human being can be so unhappy all the time and still be alive.
IRIS MURDOCH

Alive Happiness Human Time
What an extraordinary satisfaction there is in cleaning things! (Does the satisfaction depend on ownership? I suspect so.
IRIS MURDOCH

Extraordinary Myself Satisfaction
I feel I’m at the end of something – everything is going to be different – and terrible.
IRIS MURDOCH

Different End Feeling Myself
Jealousy is the most dreadfully involuntary of all sins.
IRIS MURDOCH

Crime Sin Spiritual
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
Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved.
IRIS MURDOCH

Darkness Imagination
A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.
IRIS MURDOCH

Important Rain
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
How huge it is, how empty, this great space for which I have been longing all my life. Still no letters.
IRIS MURDOCH

Empty Greatness Life Space
Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out.
IRIS MURDOCH

Action Philosophy Talk
One of the secrets of a happy life is continous small treats.
IRIS MURDOCH

Food Greatness Happiness Oneself Reward Secret
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
Anything that consoles is fake.
IRIS MURDOCH

Fake One Liner
The 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.
IRIS MURDOCH

Education Fundamental Human Literature Understand
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
To lose somebody is to lose not only their person but all those modes and manifestations into which their person has flowed outwards; so that in losing a beloved one may find so many things, pictures, poems, melodies, places lost too: Dante, Avignon, a song of Shakespeare’s, the Cornish sea.
IRIS MURDOCH

Lose Person Photograph Poem Sea
Guilt keeps people imprisoned in themselves.
IRIS MURDOCH

Guilty One Liner People Prison
Perhaps there was an intimacy which did not need words.
IRIS MURDOCH

Love Need Togetherness Word
Jealousy is perhaps the most involuntary of all strong emotions. It steals consciousness, it lies deeper than thought. It is always there, like a blackness in the eye, it discolours the world.
IRIS MURDOCH

Black Emotional Lie Strong World
One should go easy on smashing other people’s lies. Better to concentrate on one’s own.
IRIS MURDOCH

Easy Lie Oneself People
I took a deep breath, however, and followed my rule of never speaking frankly to women in moments of emotion. No good ever comes of this.
IRIS MURDOCH

Breathe Emotional Goodness Moments Myself Rule Woman
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
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.
IRIS MURDOCH

Fear Fundamental Human Marriage Nature
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.
IRIS MURDOCH

Act Emotion Existence Personality World
Every man needs two women, a quiet home-maker, and a thrilling nymph.
IRIS MURDOCH

Man Need Quiet Relationship Woman
Coffee, unless it is very good and made by somebody else, is pretty intolerable at any time.
IRIS MURDOCH

Food Goodness Tolerance
Love doesn’t think like that. All right, it’s blind as a bat- Bats have radar. Yours doesnt seem to be working.
IRIS MURDOCH

Love Right Thinking Yourself

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.

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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.

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Popular Authors

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