80 Quotes & Sayings By Iris Murdoch

I know how much you grieve over those who are under your care: those you try to help and fail, those you cannot help. Have faith in God and remember that He will is His own way and in His own time complete what we so poorly attempt. Often we do not achieve for others the good that we intend but achieve something, something that goes on from our effort. Good is an overflow. Where we generously and sincerely intend it, we are engaged in a work of creation which may be mysterious even to ourselves - and because it is mysterious we may be afraid of it. But this should not make us draw back. God can always show us, if we will, a higher and a better way; and we can only learn to love by loving. Remember that all our failures are ultimately failures in love. Imperfect love must not be condemned and rejected but made perfect. The way is always forward, never back. . Iris Murdoch

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. Iris Murdoch

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

Dora was stunned by this information. She stopped. 'Do you mean' she said, 'that they're completely imprisoned in there?' Mrs. Marks laughed. 'Not imprisoned, my dear, ' she said. 'They are there of their own free will. This is not a prison. It is on the contrary a place which it is very hard to get into, and only the strongest achieve it. Like Mary in the parable, they have chosen the better part. Iris Murdoch

The past and the present are after all so close, so almost one, as if time were an artificial teasing out of a material which longs to join, to interpenetrate, and to become heavy and very small like some of those heavenly bodies scientists tell us of. Iris Murdoch

Every persisting marriage is based on fear', said Peregrine. 'Fear is fundamental, you dig down in human nature and what's at the bottom? Mean spiteful cruel self-regarding fear, whether it makes you to put the foot in it or whether it makes you to cower... Iris Murdoch

To anyone who will take the trouble to become attached to her she will immediately give a devoted, generous, imaginative and completely uncapricious attention, which is still a calculated avoidance of self-surrender. This is no doubt another reason why she never went into films; her private life must be an almost full-time activity. This has the sad result too that her existence is one long act of disloyalty; and when I knew her she was constantly involved in secrecy and lying in order to conceal from each of her friends the fact that she was so closely bound to all the others. Iris Murdoch

Existentialism, in both its Continental and its Anglo-Saxon versions, is an attempt to solve the problem without really facing it: to solve it by attributing to the individual an empty, lonely freedom, a freedom, if he wishes, to 'fly in the face of the facts'. What it pictures is indeed the fearful solitude of the individual marooned upon a tiny island in the middle of a sea of scientific facts, and morality escaping from science only by a wild leap of the will. But our situation is not like this. Iris Murdoch

There was something factitious and brittle and thereby utterly feminine about her charm which made me want to crush her, even to crunch her. She had a slight cast in one eye which gives her gaze a strange concentrated intensity. Her eyes sparkle, almost as if they were actually emitting sparks. She is electric. And she could run faster in very high-heeled shoes than any girl I ever met. Iris Murdoch

But very few ordeals are redemptive and I doubt if the descent into hell teaches anything new. It can only hasten processes which are already in existence, and usually this just means that it degrades. You see, in hell one lacks the energy for any good change. This indeed is the meaning of hell. Iris Murdoch

Only the very greatest art invigorates without consoling. Iris Murdoch

I am in favour of illusion, not alienation... Drama must create a factitious spell-binding present moment and imprison the spectator in it. The theatre apes the profound truth that we are extended beings who yet can only exist in the present. Iris Murdoch

Artists are indeed unlikely to be good, goodness would silence them. Iris Murdoch

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. Iris Murdoch

The most essential and fundamental aspect of culture is the study of literature, since this is an education in how to picture and understand human situations. Iris Murdoch

Even if readers claim that they 'take it all with a grain of salt', they do not really. They yearn to believe, and they believe, because believing is easier than disbelieving, and because anything which is written down is likely to be 'true in a way'. Iris Murdoch

It was extremely difficult to keep up any pace over the rocks since they were so unpredictable and devoid of reason. Their senselessness had never so much impressed me. Iris Murdoch

There was a feeling as if I carried a small leaden coffin in the place of my heart Iris Murdoch

There are mysterious agencies of the human mind which, like roving gases, travel the world, causing pain and mutilation, without their owners having any full awareness, or even any awareness at all, of the strength and the whereabouts of these exhalations.. So it is that we can be terrors to each other, and people in lonely rooms suffer humiliation and even damage because of others in whose consciousness perhaps they scarcely figure at all. Iris Murdoch

People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us. Iris Murdoch

While the light remains, ' said Carde, speaking slowly in his high deliberate voice, 'only do not forsake the joy of life. If you shall have given all your kisses, you will give too few. And as leaves fall from withered wreaths which you may see spread upon the cups and floating there, so for us, who now as lovers hope for so much, perhaps tomorrow's day will close the doom. Iris Murdoch

Marian was suddenly overcome by an appalling crippling panic. She was very frightened at the idea of arriving. But it was more than that. She feared the rocks and the cliffs and the grotesque dolmen and the ancient secret things. Her two companions seemed no longer reassuring but dreadfully alien and even sinister. She felt, for the first time in her life, completely isolated and in danger. She became in an instant almost faint with terror. She said, as a cry for help, ‘I’m feeling terribly nervous’.‘ I know you are, ’ said Scottow.(…)Marian was appalled at the sudden quietness. But the insane panic had left her. She was frightened now in an ordinary way, sick in her stomach, shy, tongue-tied, horribly aware of the onset of a new world. . Iris Murdoch

Amo amas amat amamus amatis amant amavi amavisti amavit amavimus amavistis amaverunt amavero amaveris amaverit… Everything was love. Everything will be love. Everything has been love. Everything would be love. Everything would have been love. Ah, that was it, the truth at last. Everything would have been love. The huge eye, which had become an immense sphere, was gently breathing, only it was not an eye nor a sphere but a great wonderful animal covered in little waving legs like hairs, waving oh so gently as if they were under water. All shall be well and all shall be well said the ocean. So the place of reconciliation existed after all, not like a little knot hole in a cupboard but flowing everywhere and being everything. I had only to will it and it would be, for spirit is omnipotent only I never knew it, like being able to walk on the air. I could forgive. I could be forgiven. I could forgive. Perhaps that was the whole of it after all. Perhaps being forgiven was just forgiving only no one had ever told me. There was nothing else needful. Just to forgive. Forgiving equals being forgiven, the secret of the universe, do not whatever you do forget it. The past was folded up and in the twinkling of an eye everything had been changed and made beautiful and good. Iris Murdoch

I felt a deep grief that crouched and stayed still as if it was afraid to move. Iris Murdoch

Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved Iris Murdoch

He felt, in a way so familiar as to be almost dreary, the chosen victim of the gods, the self-admitted traitor, the one destined for judgment. Iris Murdoch

I feel half faded away like some figure in the background of an old picture. Iris Murdoch

... male company, sheer complicit male company: the complicity of males which is like, indeed is, a kind of complicity in crime, in chauvinism, in getting away with things, in just gluttonously enjoying the present even if hell is all around. Iris Murdoch

It was a piece of thoroughly picturesque and proper violence. I like a violent man, really, a man who's a bit of a brute in a decent straightforward way. Iris Murdoch

The past and present are after all so close, almost one, as if time were an artificial teasing out of a material which longs to join, to interpenetrate, and to become heavy and very small like some of those heavenly bodies scientists tell us of. Iris Murdoch

Trains induce such terrible anxiety. They image the possibility of total and irrevocable failure. They are also dirty, rackety, packed with strangers, an object lesson in the foul contingency of life: the talkative fellow-traveller, the possibility of children. Iris Murdoch

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

One forgot, one forgot. What hold had one on the past? The present moment was a little travelling in darkness. Iris Murdoch

What a queer gamble our existence is. We decide to do A instead of B and then the two roads diverge utterly and may lead in the end to heaven and to hell. Only later one sees how much and how awfully the fates differ. Yet what were the reasons for the choice? They may have been forgotten. Did one know what one was choosing? Certainly not. Iris Murdoch

It is necessary to write, that much is clear, and to write in a way quite unlike any way which I have employed before. Iris Murdoch

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. Iris Murdoch

All the time when I speak to you, even now, I'm saying not precisely what I think, but what will impress you and make you respond. That's so even between us - and how much more it's so where there are stronger motives for deception. In fact, one's so used to this one hardly sees it. The whole language is a machine for making falsehoods. 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

I hate solitude, but I'm afraid of intimacy. The substance of my life is a private conversation with myself which to turn into a dialogue would be equivalent to self-destruction. The company which I need is the company which a pub or a cafe will provide. I have never wanted a communion of souls. It's already hard enough to tell the truth to oneself. Iris Murdoch

Violence is born of the desire to escape oneself. Iris Murdoch

Our actions are like ships which we may watch set out to sea, and not know when or with what cargo they will return to port. Iris Murdoch

I am looking out of my window in an anxious and resentful state of mind, oblivious to my surroundings, brooding perhaps on some damage done to my prestige. Then suddenly I observe a hovering kestrel. In a moment everything is altered. The brooding self with its hurt vanity has disappeared. There is nothing now but kestrel. And when I return to thinking of the other matter it seems less important Iris Murdoch

But it was just luck really if the girls survived. You're like a man firing a machine gun into a supermarket who happens not to become a murderer. Iris Murdoch

If even a dog's tooth is truly worshipped it glows with light. The venerated object is endowed with power, that is the simple sense of the ontological proof. And if there is art enough a lie can enlighten us as well as the truth. What is the truth anyway, that truth? As we know ourselves we are fake objects, fakes, bundles of illusions. Can you determine exactly what you felt or thought or did? Iris Murdoch

The death of God has set the angels free. And they are terrible. There are principalities and powers. Angels are the thoughts of God. Now he had been dissolved into his thoughts which are beyond our conception in their nature and their multiplicity and their power. God was at least the name of something which we thought was good. Now even the name has gone and the spiritual world is scattered. There is nothing any more to prevent the magnetism of many spirits. Iris Murdoch

That's how vile i am! I live Ireland, I breathe Ireland, and Christ how I loathe it, I wish I were a bloody Scot, that's how bloody awful it is being Irish! Iris Murdoch

Love doesn't think like that. All right, it's blind as a bat--'' Bats have radar. Yours doesn't seem to be working. Iris Murdoch

We can only learn to love by loving. Iris Murdoch

Sartre turns love into a ‘battle between two hypnotists in a closed room’. Iris Murdoch

However, on one occasion, several years ago, I was idiot enough to take a dose of LSD. (I did it to please a woman.) I had what is known as a 'bad trip'. It was a very bad trip. I shall not attempt to describe what I experienced on that dreadful and rather shameful occasion. (I will only add: it concerned entrails.) In fact it would be extremely hard, even impossible, to put it properly into words. It was something morally, spiritually horrible, as if one's stinking inside had emerged and become the universe: a surging emanation of dark half-formed spiritual evil, something never ever to be escaped from. 'Undetachable, ' I remember, was a word which somehow 'came along' with the impression of it. In fact the visual images involved were dreadfully clear and, as it were, authoritative ones and they are rising up in front of me at this moment, and I will not write about them. Of course i never took LSD again. Iris Murdoch

But jealousy is a dreadful thing, Jessica. It is the most natural to us of the really wicked passions and it goes deep and envenoms the soul. It must be resisted with every honest cunning and with the deliberate thinking of generous thoughts, however abstract and empty these may seem in comparison with that wicked strength.. There is no merit, Jessica, in a faithfulness which is poison to you and captivity to him. . Iris Murdoch

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

But death is not easy, and life can win by simulating it. Iris Murdoch

We brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out. Iris Murdoch

Never seen the sea! How could anyone not have seen the sea? Surely the sea must somehow belong to the happiness of every child. Iris Murdoch

God lives and works in history. The outward mythology changes, the inward truth remains the same. Iris Murdoch

Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out. Iris Murdoch

We are clay and nothing is real for us except the uncanny womb of Being into which we shall return. Iris Murdoch

I'm the absolute queen bee of unrequited love. Iris Murdoch

As we live our precarious lives on the brink of the void, constantly coming closer to a state of nonbeing, we are all too often aware of our fragitlity. Iris Murdoch

The most potent and sacred command which can be laid upon any artist is the command: wait. Iris Murdoch

Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real. Iris Murdoch

Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wavelength of ours all they hear is a continuous scream. Iris Murdoch

Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is. Iris Murdoch

The cry of equality pulls everyone down. Iris Murdoch

Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary and everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self. Iris Murdoch

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

In almost every marriage there is a selfish and an unselfish partner. A pattern is set up and soon becomes inflexible, of one person always making the demands and one person always giving way. Iris Murdoch

The priesthood is a marriage. People often start by falling in love, and they go on for years without realizing that love must change into some other love which is so unlike it that it can hardly be recognized as love at all. Iris Murdoch

One doesn't have to get anywhere in a marriage. It's not a public conveyance. Iris Murdoch

Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods. Iris Murdoch

All art is a struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous. Iris Murdoch

There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship. Iris Murdoch

Every man needs two women: a quiet home-maker, and a thrilling nymph. Iris Murdoch