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Iris Murdoch Quotes about Love

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We can only learn to love by loving.

We can only learn to love by loving.

Iris Murdoch
Love, Deep Romantic, True Love
Iris Murdoch (2001). “The Bell”, p.193, Penguin

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

Iris Murdoch
Love, Inspirational, Real
"Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature".

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.

Iris Murdoch
Love, Life, Spiritual
Iris Murdoch (2013). “The Sovereignty of Good”, p.100, Routledge

Intense mutual erotic love, love which involves with the flesh all the most refined sexual being of the spirit, which reveals and perhaps even ex nihilo creates spirit as sex, is comparatively rare in this inconvenient world.

Iris Murdoch
Love, Sex, Erotic
Iris Murdoch (1984). “The Sacred and Profane Love Machine”, p.195, Penguin

It is in the capacity to love, that is to SEE, that the liberation of the soul from fantasy consists. The freedom which is a proper human goal is the freedom from fantasy, that is the realism of compassion. What I have called fantasy, the proliferation of blinding self-centered aims and images, is itself a powerful system of energy, and most of what is often called 'will' or 'willing' belongs to this system. What counteracts the system is attention to reality inspired by, consisting of, love.

Iris Murdoch
Love, Powerful, Reality

Love can't always do work. Sometimes it just has to look into the darkness.

Iris Murdoch
Love, Darkness, Looks
Iris Murdoch (1978). “The Nice and the Good”, p.172, Penguin

We need a moral philosophy in which the concept of love, so rarely mentioned now by philosophers, can once again be made central.

Iris Murdoch
Love, Philosophy, Needs
Iris Murdoch (1999). “Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature”, p.337, Penguin

No love is entirely without worth, even when the frivolous calls to the frivolous and the base to the base.

Iris Murdoch
Love, Romance, Frivolous
Iris Murdoch (2009). “The Nice And The Good”, p.333, Random House

Falling out of love is very enlightening. For a short while you see the world with new eyes.

Iris Murdoch
Love, Fall, Memorable

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

Iris Murdoch
Love, Life, Fall
Iris Murdoch (1976). “A Severed Head”, p.132, Penguin

Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved

Iris Murdoch
Love, Grief, Saying Goodbye
Iris Murdoch (1984). “The Sacred and Profane Love Machine”, p.31, Penguin

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
Love, Change, Fall
Iris Murdoch (1977). “Henry and Cato”, Viking Pr

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