Best Iris Murdoch Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 8

“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

“Do you think she'll change?" "Hope nothing." "Is there a cure?" "Only art. Or more love." "I should die of more love.”

Love Art Hope Change Dialogue Iris Murdoch Cure The Nice And The Good Lovesick Don T Hold Your Breath

Book:The Nice and the Good

Source: The Nice and the Good

“I want to be cut off from people like Marloe. Being a real person oneself is a matter of setting up limits and drawing lines and saying no. I don't want to be a nebulous bit of ectoplasm straying around in other people's lives. That sort of vague sympathy with everybody precludes any real understanding of anybody . . . And it precludes any real loyalty to anybody.”

Understanding Relationships Loyalty Boundaries Iris Murdoch Loner The Black Prince Discerning Setting Limits

Book:The Black Prince

Source: The Black Prince

“Of course one never knows about other people's loves, and I would certainly never know about James's.”

Love Iris Murdoch The Sea The Sea Other People Private Loves Unknowable

Book:The Sea, The Sea

Source: The Sea, The Sea

“To find someone — oh yes — that is the problem. To have mutual love, that is so difficult indeed.”

Partnership Iris Murdoch Romantic Love The Green Knight Mutual Love Find Someone To Love

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“I did love her in a way, but it was under the sign of doom.”

Love Iris Murdoch Doom Doomed Love Henry And Cato Starcrossed Lovers

Book:Henry and Cato

Source: Henry and Cato

“But now more often the old stale hopeless weariness overcame him: the black sickness which almost no one else, certainly not his nearest dearest friends, could understand at all. The idea of giving up the world, which had given him for a time so much life-energy, appeared now as a sort of fake suicide, a ghastly play-image of his death. This fatal falseness-of-heart was what perhaps Father Damien, on further acquaintance, had now seen in him.”

Death Depression Suicide Isolated Iris Murdoch Misunderstood The Green Knight Recluse Lack Of Understanding Hermit

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“She thought, I am becoming a recluse. Yes, that's it, that is the way.”

Iris Murdoch The Message To The Planet Recluse Reclusive

Book:The Message To The Planet

Source: The Message To The Planet

“I told you I was going to retire from the world. That's still on. You remember that.”

Humor Dialogue Iris Murdoch The Green Knight Recluse

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“One might have all sorts of reasons for avoiding people. It's none of our business.”

Iris Murdoch Avoidance The Green Knight Antisocial Misanthropic Reclusive

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“What was to change many lives happened, and happened very fast in the next moments.”

Iris Murdoch The Green Knight Narration Life Altering Authorial Viewpoint

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“I'm being led — on some dark way.”

Dark Iris Murdoch The Message To The Planet Led

Book:The Message To The Planet

Source: The Message To The Planet

“I'm sorry I was awful. I'm so full of terrors.”

Apology Iris Murdoch Torment Terrors

Book:The Sacred and Profane Love Machine

Source: The Sacred and Profane Love Machine

“She thought, I shall die of misery and pain.”

Pain Death Depression Misery Iris Murdoch The Green Knight

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“But oh — time has become such a torture, a slow torture. One tries to capture a piece of time that lies ahead and is full of light . . . but thinking about that just makes this awful black time even blacker.”

Time Torture Boredom Iris Murdoch The Green Knight Slow

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“All that had seemed impossible, too late, a dream, had suddenly become possible, even natural and inevitable.”

Iris Murdoch The Green Knight Reversal Of Fortune

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“Those were the tortures of the night. The tortures of the day consisted in pretending to eat, pretending to play, pretending to be happy, passing the hours, enduring the sympathetic looks and the loving remarks.”

Depression Iris Murdoch The Green Knight Faking It Tortures Torturous

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“Well, it's such an adventure we shall talk about it forever!”

Adventure Memorable Story Iris Murdoch The Green Knight

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“Moy thought, I shall make no more masks, something is over forever. Anyway, she thought, this time next year I shall probably be dead.”

Forever Iris Murdoch Suicidal The Green Knight Finality Over

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“I can't see how anything can ever happen to us — I mean, I feel as if, if we leave this place, we shall crumble to pieces.”

Stuck Trapped Iris Murdoch Inaction Paralyzed The Green Knight

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“She's also in love with the 'Polish Rider'." "Who's he?" "A picture by Rembrandt.”

Art Dialogue Iris Murdoch In Love The Green Knight Rembrandt Fanciful The Polish Rider

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“Over the bed hung the picture of her beloved, the Polish Rider. He was looking, with his authoritative pensive mouth and his calm wide-apart eyes, past Moy, over her left shoulder and away into some vast distance. He was a knight upon a quest. He was brave, innocent, chaste, good.”

Art Hero Description Virtuous Iris Murdoch The Green Knight Knight Rembrandt Idealized The Polish Rider

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“Our planet is a freak which we shall destroy by our own wicked senseless activities in the next century. Our history will very soon come to an end. Now that God is dead, we are at last presented with the truth, yes, the truth remains, but it is on a short lead. Anyway, we are nothing and it matters not what we do.”

Atheist Meaningless Iris Murdoch End Of The World Nihilism Pessimistic The Green Knight Doomsday

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

“You just seem to have folded up the future." "It is folded up.”

Iris Murdoch Pessimistic The Green Knight The Future

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“There can scarcely be anything worse than surviving something which shatters your mind and leaves you obsessed with revenge.”

Revenge Iris Murdoch The Green Knight

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“Perhaps after all not to have been born is best. How near the human soul must be to nothingness if it can be so tossed.”

Soul Philosophical Iris Murdoch Nothingness Suicidal The Green Knight Nihilistic

Author:Iris Murdoch

“The wound with which she travelled vibrated within her. She thought, I shall never have what I desire. I shall become bitter and defeated and dim, and I shall never really paint, I am a freak, a crippled animal, something to be put down, put to sleep, put out of its misery.”

Depression Iris Murdoch The Green Knight Doubts Fatalistic Catastrophizing

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“Moreover, and of course, she loved him; but in Sefton's stern code her love had always been chained up, and howled fruitlessly, as indeed it did now.”

Love Iris Murdoch Unrequited Love The Green Knight Moral Code Suffer In Silence

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“I suspect the study of English literature is doing you no good, it's full of all sorts of romantic high-flown nonsense. You've been reading Shelley." "I plead guilty to that crime.”

Humor Romantic Dialogue Iris Murdoch The Green Knight English Literature Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

“It's just that I don't hope any more, I've lost my nerve.”

Hope Hopeless Iris Murdoch The Green Knight Lost Hope

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

“Sentimentally and in the soul it went on for ages, it still goes on, it goes on and on.”

Soul Eternal Iris Murdoch Sentimental Ongoing The Green Knight On And On

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“I feel so depressed. I have to be merry and bright while I just want to cry.”

Iris Murdoch Depressed The Green Knight Faking It Forced

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“She was dressed to go to bed only it was ridiculously early to go to bed. She desired to be unconscious.”

Unconscious Iris Murdoch The Green Knight

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“Lucas hated other people, and also hated himself.”

Hatred Unhappy Iris Murdoch Self Hatred The Green Knight Misanthrope

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“Nothing happened; yet there were disturbing signs and portents.”

Iris Murdoch The Green Knight Signs Foreshadowing Portents

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“But now he was dreaming, he was wildly imagining things.”

Iris Murdoch Dreaming The Green Knight Imagining Fanciful

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“As he rose to go and held Louise's hand and gazed at her he felt for a moment his old love for her taking possession of his whole being. They looked at each other. I feed upon this looking, thought Clement, but does she? I don't know, and I cannot ask. I am terrified of saying something which would wound our whole precious relationship. We are well as we are. I love her, that's all, that is my drama.”

Uncertainty Fearful Iris Murdoch Unrequited Love Inaction Gazing The Green Knight Suffering In Silence

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“Yes, my mother was on about Byron. But who wants to be like Byron? I despise him.”

Humor Dialogue Iris Murdoch The Green Knight Lord Byron

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“It is necessary at this point to recount what actually occurred, as opposed to what was generally supposed to have occurred, on that terrible evening when Lucas killed a man.”

Story Iris Murdoch The Green Knight Omniscient Narration Authorial Viewpoint

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“. . . solitary sinister men with terrible secrets — of whom Clement now and forever after must be one.”

Secrets Solitary Iris Murdoch Sinister The Green Knight Irrevocable

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“I have always wanted to kill you, ever since the moment when I learnt of your existence.”

Hatred Murder Killing Motive Iris Murdoch The Green Knight Intent Homicidal

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“Of course she had read this work many times before, but there were certain parts to which she passionately returned: so cool, so elegant, so beautiful, so terrible. As she read tears began to stream down her face.”

Book Reading Emotional Admiration Iris Murdoch Crying The Green Knight Favorite Book Rereading Tearjerker

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“It was her birthday. She thought, I am always unhappy on this day.”

Unhappy Birthday Iris Murdoch Always The Green Knight

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“I took him for a kind of buffoon. Now I see he is a devil.”

Enemy Devil Iris Murdoch Underestimated The Green Knight First Impression Buffoon

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

“So was she on the side of dragons and indifferent to the fate of princesses?”

Dragons Iris Murdoch Fairy Tales The Green Knight Tropes Princesses

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight