black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

We defend ourselves with descriptions and tame the world by generalizing.

Iris Murdoch

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
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 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 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
That doesn’t sound like you, you ride every wave. There is one that will drown me
IRIS MURDOCH

Inspirational Myself Oneself Sound Yourself
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
Anything that consoles is fake.
IRIS MURDOCH

Fake One Liner
This sort of quiet gazing, which was like a feeding of the heart.
IRIS MURDOCH

Heart Quiet See
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
Coffee, unless it is very good and made by somebody else, is pretty intolerable at any time.
IRIS MURDOCH

Food Goodness Tolerance
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
Guilt keeps people imprisoned in themselves.
IRIS MURDOCH

Guilty One Liner People Prison
We can only learn to love by loving.
IRIS MURDOCH

Learning Love
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
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
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

Flower Joy Mad People Thinking Time

We defend ourselves with descriptions and tame the world by generalizing.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

We defend ourselves with descriptions and tame the world by generalizing.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Iris Murdoch Quotes