Home / Authors / Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch Quotes

Author

Iris Murdoch was an Irish-Canadian philosopher and author, born on July 15, 1919, in Dublin, Ireland, and passed away on February 8, 1999. She is celebrated for her philosophical novels that intertwine moral and ethical dilemmas with complex narratives. Murdoch's work has left a lasting impact on the literary world, particularly in the latter half of the 20th century.

Famous Iris Murdoch Quotes

“Yet it all seemed inevitable and perhaps it was. Is it fruitless to think about the past and build up coherent pictures of how one's life went wrong?”

Life Regret Inevitable Iris Murdoch The Past The Nice And The Good

Book:The Nice and the Good

Source: The Nice and the Good

“I thought it might make him despair of life, but he has despaired anyway.”

Life Despair Hopeless Iris Murdoch The Message To The Planet Fatalistic

Book:The Message To The Planet

Source: The Message To The Planet

“I don't think she's had much of a life." "Well, a life is a life." "What does that mean?" "One never knows. I daresay most lives are rotten. It's only when one's young one expects otherwise.”

Life Youth Disappointment Dialogue Iris Murdoch Disillusioned The Sea The Sea Reality Vs Expectations

Book:The Sea, The Sea

Source: The Sea, The Sea

“Priscilla is in hell. Well, we all are. Life is torture, consciousness is torture. All our little devices are just morphia to stop us from screaming . . . We're each of us screaming away in our own private padded cell.”

Life Suffering Consciousness Hell Metaphor Torture Distraction Iris Murdoch The Black Prince Tortuous

Book:The Black Prince

Source: The Black Prince

“This was everything that I wanted to be done with, the relaxed banality of life without goals.”

Life Ambition Goals Moving On Iris Murdoch The Black Prince Banality Directionless

Book:The Black Prince

Source: The Black Prince

“And so my life has become tiny and mean and incomplete and I must begin it again without comfort and without magic.”

Life Magic Sad Unhappy Iris Murdoch Henry And Cato Diminished Comfortless

Book:Henry and Cato

Source: Henry and Cato

“And she looked at her life and seemed to understand it and to grieve over it as if it were already over.”

Life Understanding Sad Iris Murdoch Resigned Self Evaluation Henry And Cato

Book:Henry and Cato

Source: Henry and Cato

“Human life is short, we don't exist all that much. A pale brief flicker in the dark.”

Life Metaphor Mortality Iris Murdoch The Message To The Planet

Book:The Message To The Planet

Source: The Message To The Planet

“I felt at times, it is hard to describe this, almost mad with guilt, with a sort of general guilt about my whole life.”

Life Regret Guilt Guilty Iris Murdoch The Black Prince Self Reproach

Book:The Black Prince

Source: The Black Prince

“Why after two years at that university, he left to study sociology in Birmingham, no one knew clearly. He suddenly, as he said, 'couldn't stand Cambridge'. He wanted to get closer to something — perhaps life. But life continued to reject him.”

Life Rejection Iris Murdoch Searching The Green Knight Dropping Out

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“Was this strange mode of life to go on and on?”

Life Trapped Iris Murdoch Unending The Green Knight On And On

Author:Iris Murdoch

“He lay on his back listening to his mother's quiet snoring and thinking how increasingly awful his life was becoming. It was as if he were being squeezed out of the world.”

Life Iris Murdoch Outcast The Green Knight Dejected Worsening

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“I don't know what love can do for the terrible things of life.”

Love Life Terrible Iris Murdoch The Green Knight

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“Everything in his life now seemed to signal: too late.”

Life Too Late Iris Murdoch The Green Knight

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“I just can't live an ordinary life, I can't pass the time. I can't organise myself, I don't have ordinary motives any more. I can't even manage my body, when I go to bed I don't know where to put my arms.”

Life Humor Depression Iris Murdoch The Green Knight Apathetic Unmotivated

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“But I've had such a rotten life. People like me are a problem.”

Life Problem Iris Murdoch Unfortunate Bad Life Henry And Cato

Book:Henry and Cato

Source: Henry and Cato

“Oh my life is so awful, it's just so awful to be me, you don't know what it's like waking every morning and finding the whole horror of being yourself still there.”

Life Identity Horror Depression Unhappy Awful Trapped Iris Murdoch Self Loathing The Black Prince

Book:The Black Prince

Source: The Black Prince

“I'm not like other people, my life just doesn't work, it never has.”

Life Iris Murdoch Alienation Difference Lament Unlucky The Black Prince Outsider

Book:The Black Prince

Source: The Black Prince

“Life is horrible, horrible, horrible, said the philosopher.”

Life Philosophy Philosopher Horrible Philosophy Of Life Pessimism Iris Murdoch Negativity Nihilism The Black Prince

Book:The Black Prince

Source: The Black Prince

“I know that human life is horrible. I know that it is utterly unlike art. I have no religion except my own task of being. Conventional religions are dream stuff. Always a world of fear and horror lies but a millimetre away. Any man, even the greatest, can be broken in a moment and has no refuge. Any theory which denies this is a lie.”

Life Religion Iris Murdoch Worldview Pessimist The Black Prince Nihilist

Book:The Black Prince

Source: The Black Prince

“Life can be sudden.”

Life Iris Murdoch The Nice And The Good Sudden

Book:The Nice and the Good

Source: The Nice and the Good

“That is no doubt how the story ought to end, with the seals and the stars, explanation, resignation, reconciliation, everything picked up into some radiant bland ambiguous higher significance, in calm of mind, all passion spent. 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; so I thought I might continue the tale a little longer in the form once again of a diary, though I suppose that, if this is a book, it will have to end, arbitrarily enough no doubt, in quite a short while.”

Life Art Iris Murdoch Ending The Sea The Sea Meta Postscript

Book:The Sea, The Sea

Source: The Sea, The Sea

“My God, that bloody casket has fallen on the floor! Some people were hammering in the next flat and it fell off its bracket. The lid has come off and whatever was inside it has certainly got out. Upon the demon-ridden pilgrimage of human life, what next I wonder?”

Life Iris Murdoch Demons Ending The Sea The Sea Last Lines What Next

Book:The Sea, The Sea

Source: The Sea, The Sea

“But with her I would have been faithful, with her my whole life would have been different, less rootless, less empty.”

Life Iris Murdoch The Sea The Sea In Another Life

Book:The Sea, The Sea

Source: The Sea, The Sea

“She was her death now, that death which she had so much striven to emulate in life, which she had studied and practised and loved. She had succeeded, and death and she had converged into a single point. Who knew if that was victory or defeat? His last vision was of the white veil that hid her now. After all, and at last, she had become utterly private.”

Life Death Suicide Iris Murdoch Suicidal Private The Unicorn

Book:The Unicorn

Source: The Unicorn

“Art and psychoanalysis give shape and meaning to life and that is why we adore them, but life as it is lived has no shape and meaning, and that is what I am experiencing just now.”

Life Art Meaning Meaningless Iris Murdoch Psychoanalysis The Unicorn Shapeless

Book:The Unicorn

Source: The Unicorn

“Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is.”

Love Life Matter Fall Forget Love Is Falling In Love Charming Keep Moving Forgetting Someone

Book:A Severed Head

Source: A Severed Head

“We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.”

World Life Reality Life Is Fantasy Illusion Tasks Fantasy Worlds Beirut Fantasy Life

Author:Iris Murdoch

“The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular body and its indifference to substitutes is one of life's major mysteries.”

Life Humans Body Differences Marriage Relationship Mystery Particular Majors Absolutes Indifference Substitutes Yearning Human Body Funny Relationship

Book:The Black Prince

Source: The Black Prince

“The sin of pride may be a small or a great thing in someone's life, and hurt vanity a passing pinprick, or a self-destroying or ever murderous obsession.”

Life May Self Hurt Sin Pride Passing Great Things Obsession Passings Vanity Destroying Sin Of Pride

Author:Iris Murdoch

“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.”

World Love Life Made Soul Light Spiritual Passion Energy Force Love Is Existence Sun Source Creatures Reflection Errors Excellence Love Life Warmth Refined

Book:The Sovereignty of Good

Source: The Sovereignty of Good

About the Author

Born: July 15, 1919
Died: February 8, 1999
Known for: Author
Quotes: 941

Popular Topics

People Ifs Thinking Knows Men World Way Want Love Life Inspirational Needs Giving Feels Should Writing Trying Years Mind Firsts

Books & Sources

The Black PrinceRelated source material

The Message To The PlanetRelated source material

The Green KnightRelated source material

The Nice and the GoodRelated source material

The Sea, The SeaRelated source material

The Sacred and Profane Love MachineRelated source material

A Severed HeadRelated source material

Henry and CatoRelated source material

The UnicornRelated source material

A Fairly Honourable DefeatRelated source material

Similar Authors

D. H. LawrenceBrowse related quotes
Honore de BalzacBrowse related quotes
Mason CooleyBrowse related quotes
Yevgeny ZamyatinBrowse related quotes
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheBrowse related quotes
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich SchlegelBrowse related quotes
Manuel PuigBrowse related quotes
Irwin ShawBrowse related quotes
Franz KafkaBrowse related quotes
Guillermo Cabrera InfanteBrowse related quotes