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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.

Iris Murdoch

Those who hope, by retiring from the world, to earn a holiday from human frailty, in themselves and others, are usually disappointed.
IRIS MURDOCH

Disappoint Hope Human World
We need a moral philosophy which can speak significantly of Freud and Marx and out of which aesthetic and political views can be generated. We need a moral philosophy in which the concept of love, so rarely mentioned now, can once again be made central.
IRIS MURDOCH

Moral Need Philosophy Politics
I felt a deep grief that crouched and stayed still as if it was afraid to move.
IRIS MURDOCH

Deep Feeling Grief Myself Stay
Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is.
IRIS MURDOCH

Beautiful Break Up Fall Forget Love
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
Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved.
IRIS MURDOCH

Darkness Imagination
Time, like the sea, unties all knots.
IRIS MURDOCH

Deep Philosophy Sea Time
There is no beyond, there is only here, the infinitely small, infinitely great and utterly demanding present.
IRIS MURDOCH

Beyond Greatness Present
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
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.
IRIS MURDOCH

Art Doubt Happiness Impossible Life Live
What a test that is: more than devotion, admiration, passion. If you long and long for someone’s company you love them.
IRIS MURDOCH

Company Love Passion Yourself
I’ve felt as if I didn’t exist, as if I were invisible, miles away from the world, miles away. You can’t imagine how much alone I’ve been all my life.
IRIS MURDOCH

Alone Existence Imagination Life Myself World
Anything that consoles is fake.
IRIS MURDOCH

Fake One Liner
Of course reading and thinking are important but, my God, food is important too.
IRIS MURDOCH

Food God Important Reading Thinking
Of course this chattering diary is a facade, the literary equivalent of the everyday smiling face which hides the inward ravages of jealousy, remorse, fear and the consciousness of irretrievable moral failure. Yet such pretenses are not only consolations but may even be productive of a little ersatz courage.
IRIS MURDOCH

Courage Failure Hide Literature Moral Smile
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

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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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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Popular Authors

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