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

Iris Murdoch

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
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

Death Different Pursue See Worth
Let us not waste love, it is rare enough.
IRIS MURDOCH

Enough Love Rare Wasted
Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
IRIS MURDOCH

Difficult Love Oneself Reality
Every artist is an unhappy lover. And unhappy lovers want to tell their story.
IRIS MURDOCH

Art Happiness Love Poet Story
Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wavelength of ours all they hear is a continuous scream.
IRIS MURDOCH

Distance Ourselves People
So we live; a spirit that broods and hovers over the continual death of time, the lost meaning, the unrecaptured moment, the unremembered face, until the final chop that ends all our moments and plunges that spirit back into the void from which it came.
IRIS MURDOCH

Death Live Moments Spirit Time
Jealousy is the most dreadfully involuntary of all sins.
IRIS MURDOCH

Crime Sin Spiritual
We 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?
IRIS MURDOCH

Fantasy Guilty Judgement Ourselves Sin World
I think being a woman is like being Irish, Everyone says you’re important and nice, but you take second place all the time.
IRIS MURDOCH

Important Myself Nice Place Thinking Time Woman
The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular body and its indifference to substitutes is one of life’s major mysteries.
IRIS MURDOCH

Body Human Life Mystery Oneself
Freedom may be a value in politics, but it is not a value in morals.
IRIS MURDOCH

Freedom Moral Politics Value
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
People have obsessions and fears and passions which they don’t admit to. I think every character is interesting and has extremes. It’s the novelist privilege to see how odd everyone is.
IRIS MURDOCH

Character. Priviledge Fear Myself Passion People Thinking
Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out.
IRIS MURDOCH

Action Philosophy Talk
Starting a novel is opening a door on a misty landscape; you can still see very little but you can smell the earth and feel the wind blowing.
IRIS MURDOCH

Book Feeling Start Yourself

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

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

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