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 MURDOCHBut one must do something about the past. It doesn’t just cease to be. It goes on existing and affecting the present, and in new and different ways, as if in some other dimension it too were growing.
More Iris Murdoch Quotes
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I feel I’m at the end of something – everything is going to be different – and terrible.
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We defend ourselves with descriptions and tame the world by generalizing.
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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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There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship.
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In philosophy if you aren’t moving at a snail’s pace you aren’t moving at all.
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But one must do something about the past. It doesn’t just cease to be. It goes on existing and affecting the present, and in new and different ways, as if in some other dimension it too were growing.
IRIS MURDOCH -
Only the very greatest art invigorates without consoling.
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Time, like the sea, unties all knots.
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White magic is black magic. A less than perfect meddling in the spiritual world can breed monsters for other people, and demons used for good can hang around and make mischief afterwards.
IRIS MURDOCH -
Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out.
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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.
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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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I feel half faded away like some figure in the background of an old picture.
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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.
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Hegel says that Truth is a great word and the thing is greater still. With Dave we never seemed to get past the word.
IRIS MURDOCH