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Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch Quotes

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Famous Iris Murdoch Quotes

“Then I felt too that I might take this opportunity to tie up a few loose ends, only of course loose ends can never be properly tied, one is always producing new ones. Time, like the sea, unties all knots. Judgements on people are never final, they emerge from summings up which at once suggest the need of a reconsideration. Human arrangements are nothing but loose ends and hazy reckoning, whatever art may otherwise pretend in order to console us.”

PeopleNeedsHumansMayArtEndsMightOrderCoursesOpportunityFeltSeaFinalsJudgementTiesTiedArrangementsKnotsConsoleReckoningHazyLoose EndsSumming UpReconsideration
Author:Iris Murdoch
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“I hate solitude but I am afraid of intimacy. The substance of my life is a private conversation with myself and to turn it into a dialogue would be equivalent to self-destruction. The company I need is the company which a pub or a cafe will provide. I have never wanted a communion of souls.”

NeedsSoulSelfHardEnoughWould BeWantedLife IsHateTurnsCompanySolitudeConversationDestructionI HateOneselfDialogueIntimacySubstanceTelling The TruthCommunionSelf DestructionPubsCafes
Author:Iris Murdoch
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“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.”

NeedsMadePhilosophyPoliticalSpeakViewsMoralConceptsAestheticMoral PhilosophyPolitical ViewConcept Of Love
Book:Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature
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“Time can divorce us from the reality of people, it can separate us from people and turn them into ghosts. Or rather it is we who turn them into ghosts or demons. Some kinds of fruitless preoccupations with the past can create such simulacra, and they can exercise power, like those heroes at Troy fighting for a phantom Helen.”

PeopleKindRealityPastTurnsFightingHeroExerciseDivorceGhostDemonPhantomsPreoccupationHelen
Book:The Sea, The Sea
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“we are such inward secret creatures, that inwardness the most amazing thing about us, even more amazing than our reason. but we cannot just walk into the cavern and look around. most of what we think we know about our minds is pseudo-knowledge. we are all such shocking poseurs, so good at inflating the importance of what we think we value.”

ThinkingKnowsMindLooksReasonValuesWalksSecretCreaturesImportanceInwardShockingAmazing ThingsMost AmazingPseudoCaverns
Book:A Severed Head, The Black Prince, The Sea, The Sea
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“Yes, of course, there's something fishy about describing people's feelings. You try hard to be accurate, but as soon as you start to define such and such a feeling, language lets you down. It's really a machine for making falsehoods. When we really speak the truth, words are insufficient. Almost everything except things like "pass the gravy" is a lie of a sort. And that being the case, I shall shut up. Oh, and... pass the gravy.”

PeopleTryingHardFeelingsLyingCoursesSpeakLanguageCasesMachinesAccurateFalsehoodShut UpDescribingSpeak The TruthInsufficientGravyFishy
Author:Iris Murdoch
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“Education doesn’t make you happy. Nor does freedom. We don’t become happy just because we’re free – if we are. Or because we’ve been educated – if we have. But because education may be the means by which we realize we are happy. It opens our eyes, our ears, tells us where delights are lurking, convinces us that there is only one freedom of any importance whatsoever, that of the mind, and gives us the assurance – the confidence – to walk the path our mind, our educated mind, offers.”

IfsGivingMindMayMeanDoeEyeRealizingWalksPathOffersEarsImportanceDelightEducatedConvinceAssuranceMake You HappyLurkingConvince UsEducated Mind
Author:Iris Murdoch
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“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?”

IfsKnowsWorldSometimesTurnsSinFantasyReadyJudgingSourceVictimInnocentGuiltyJudgedAccusedCasualMaliceSchadenfreude
Book:Nuns and Soldiers
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“Love is the source of our greatest errors; but when it is even partially refined it is the energy and the passion of the soul in its search for Good, the force that joins us to Good and joins us to the world through Good. Its existence is the unmistakable sign that we are spiritual creatures, attracted by excellence and made for the Good. It is a reflection of the warmth and light of the sun.”

WorldLoveLifeMadeSoulLightSpiritualPassionEnergyForceLove IsExistenceSunSourceCreaturesReflectionErrorsExcellenceLove LifeWarmthRefined
Book:The Sovereignty of Good
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