Quote

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.

Iris Murdoch

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Iris Murdoch
Age: 79 †
Born: 1919
Born: July 15
Died: 1999
Died: February 8
Author
Biographer
Novelist
Philosopher
Poet
Professor
Prosaist
Writer
Dublin city
Jean Iris Murdoch
Dame Iris Murdoch
Moral
Realization
Love
Individual
Extremely
Difficult
Individuals
Art
Perception
Reality
Discovery
Oneself
Certain
Morality
Real
Essence
Morals
Something

More quotes by Iris Murdoch

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In philosophy if you aren't moving at a snail's pace you aren't moving at all.
Iris Murdoch
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No love is entirely without worth, even when the frivolous calls to the frivolous and the base to the base.
Iris Murdoch
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A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.
Iris Murdoch
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There is nothing like early promiscuous sex for dispelling life's bright mysterious expectations.
Iris Murdoch
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Being good is just a matter of temperament in the end.
Iris Murdoch
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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.
Iris Murdoch
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Marriage isn't a tram. It doesn't have to get anywhere.
Iris Murdoch
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A letter is a barrier, a reprieve, a charm against the world, an almost infallible method of acting at a distance.
Iris Murdoch
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The most potent and sacred command which can be laid upon any artist is the command: wait.
Iris Murdoch
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We must live by the light of our own self-satisfaction, through that secret vital busy inwardness which is even more remarkable than our reason.
Iris Murdoch
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Remember that the secret of all learning is patience and that curiosity is not the same thing as a thirst for knowledge.
Iris Murdoch
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What makes you imagine ... that anything of importance can be taught in a school?
Iris Murdoch
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We are all prisoner, but the name of our cure is not freedom
Iris Murdoch
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Time can divorce us from the reality of people, it can separate us from people and turn them into ghosts. Or rather it is we who turn them into ghosts or demons. Some kinds of fruitless preoccupations with the past can create such simulacra, and they can exercise power, like those heroes at Troy fighting for a phantom Helen.
Iris Murdoch
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we are such inward secret creatures, that inwardness the most amazing thing about us, even more amazing than our reason. but we cannot just walk into the cavern and look around. most of what we think we know about our minds is pseudo-knowledge. we are all such shocking poseurs, so good at inflating the importance of what we think we value.
Iris Murdoch
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Probably no adult misery can be compared with a child's despair.
Iris Murdoch
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The talk of lovers who have just declared their love is one of life's most sweet delights. Each vies with the other in humility, in amazement at being so valued. The past is searched for the first signs and each one is in haste to declare all that he is so that no part of his being escapes the hallowing touch.
Iris Murdoch
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The bereaved cannot communicate with the unbereaved.
Iris Murdoch
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Good writing is full of surprises and novelties, moving in a direction you don't expect.
Iris Murdoch
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The bottomless bitter misery of childhood: how little even now it is understood. Probably no adult misery can be compared with a child's despair.
Iris Murdoch