Iris Murdoch Quotes

There is no beyond, there is only here, the infinitely small, infinitely great and utterly demanding present.

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

For most of us, for almost all of us, truth can be attained, if at all, only in silence. It is in silence that the human spirit touches the divine.

One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats, and if some of these can be inexpensive and quickly procured so much the better.

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.

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

Remember that the secret of all learning is patience and that curiosity is not the same thing as a thirst for knowledge.

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

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.

We can only learn to love by loving.

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

Being in love is an exhausting business.

Love is the perception of individuals. Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.

Language is a machine for making falsehoods.

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

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.

Art and morality are, with certain provisos…one. Their essence is the same. The essence of both of them is love. Love is the perception of individuals. Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real. Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality.

The chief requirement of the good life, is to live without any image of oneself.

Man's creative struggle, his search for wisdom and truth, is a love story.

The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.

Love is the last and secret name of all the virtues.

Most real relationships are involuntary.

We are such inward secret creatures, that inwardness is the most amazing thing about us, even more amazing than our reason.

Most of our love is shabby stuff, but there is always a thin line of gold, the bit of pure love on which all the rest depends -- and which redeems all the rest.

Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.