Quotes by Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch

Anglo-Irish novelist and philosopher

Lived from: 1919 - 1999

Category: Philosophers | Writers (Contemporary) Country: FlagUnited Kingdom

Born: 15 july 1919 Died: 8 february 1999

  • I think being a woman is like being Irish. Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the same.
  • 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.
  • The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular body and its indifference to substitutes is one of life's major mysteries.

Quotes 1 till 20 of 30.

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  • Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is.
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  • A good man often appears gauche simply because he does not take advantage of the myriad mean little chances of making himself look stylish. Preferring truth to form, he is not constantly at work upon the façade of his appearance.
    ― Iris Murdoch
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  • I think being a woman is like being Irish. Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the same.
    ― Iris Murdoch
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  • A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.
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  • All art is a struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous.
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  • Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.
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  • Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved.
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  • But fantasy kills imagination, pornography is death to art.
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  • Every man needs two women, a quiet home-maker, and a thrilling nymph.
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  • Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self. To be damned is for one's ordinary everyday mode of consciousness to be unremitting agonizing preoccupation with self.
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  • He was a sociologist; he had got into an intellectual muddle early on in life and never managed to get out.
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  • Human affairs are not serious, but they have to be taken seriously.
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  • I daresay anything can be made holy by being sincerely worshipped.
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  • 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.
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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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  • Literature could be said to be a sort of disciplined technique for arousing certain emotions.
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  • Moralistic is not moral. And as for truth - well, it's like brown - it's not in the spectrum. Truth is so generic.
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  • No love is entirely without worth, even when the frivolous calls to the frivolous and the base to the base.
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  • People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.
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  • Perhaps misguided moral passion is better than confused indifference.
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Questions and Answers

What are the most famous quotes from Iris Murdoch?

The two most famous quotes from Iris Murdoch are:

  • "Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is."
  • "A good man often appears gauche simply because he does not take advantage of the myriad mean little chances of making himself look stylish. Preferring truth to form, he is not constantly at work upon the façade of his appearance."

When did Iris Murdoch live?

Iris Murdoch was born in 1919 and died in the year 1999.