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We defend ourselves by descriptions and tame the world by generalizing.

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
World
Generalizing
Descriptions
Tame
Description
Defend

More quotes by Iris Murdoch

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Only lies and evil come from letting people off.
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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It was like hunting fish with an underwater gun, a sport which he had once been foolish enough to try. At one moment there is the fish - graceful, mysterious, desirable and free - and the next moment there is nothing but struggling and blood and confusion.
Iris Murdoch
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... half the world starves. What a planet. And the eating, if you're lucky enough to do any. Stuffing pieces of dead animals into a hole in your face. Then munch, munch, munch. If there's anybody watching, they must be dying of laughter.
Iris Murdoch
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Love can't always do work. Sometimes it just has to look into the darkness.
Iris Murdoch
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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
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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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Jealousy comes from self-love rather than from true love.
Iris Murdoch
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Freedom is not choosing that is merely the move that we make when all is already lost. Freedom is knowing and understanding and respecting things quite other than ourselves.
Iris Murdoch
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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
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Words are the most subtle symbols which we possess and our human fabric depends on them.
Iris Murdoch
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Every artist is an unhappy lover.
Iris Murdoch
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The sending of a letter constitutes a magical grasp upon the future.
Iris Murdoch
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Being good is just a matter of temperament in the end.
Iris Murdoch
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Falling out of love is very enlightening. For a short while you see the world with new eyes.
Iris Murdoch
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A death is the most terrible of facts.
Iris Murdoch
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for most of us the space between 'dreaming on things to come' and 'it is too late, it is all over' is too tiny to enter.
Iris Murdoch
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To be a complete victim may be another source of power.
Iris Murdoch
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We are such inward secret creatures, that inwardness is the most amazing thing about us, even more amazing than our reason.
Iris Murdoch
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It's easier to sell junk when you're known than works of genius when you're unknown.
Iris Murdoch