Quote

Starting a novel is opening a door on a misty landscape you can still see very little but you can smell the earth and feel the wind blowing.

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
Stills
Landscape
Earth
Opening
Still
Smell
Littles
Starting
Little
Door
Feel
Doors
Feels
Wind
Misty
Novel
Blowing

More quotes by Iris Murdoch

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People who boast of happy marriages are, I submit, usually self-deceivers, if not actually liars.
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Language is a machine for making falsehoods.
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There is no beyond, there is only here, the infinitely small, infinitely great and utterly demanding present.
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Only lies and evil come from letting people off.
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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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On connecting: Where does one person end and another person begin?
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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.
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We need a moral philosophy in which the concept of love, so rarely mentioned now by philosophers, can once again be made central.
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A middling talent makes for a more serene life.
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Possibly, more people kill themselves and others out of hurt vanity than out of envy, jealousy, malice or desire for revenge.
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We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.
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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.
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Most real relationships are involuntary.
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Marriage isn't a tram. It doesn't have to get anywhere.
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Love can't always do work. Sometimes it just has to look into the darkness.
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Art is brief. (Not in a temporal sense.) [...] Words are for concealment. Art is concealment.
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Art is not cozy and it is not mocked. Art tells the only truth that ultimately matters. It is the light by which human things can be mended. And after art there is, let me assure you all, nothing.
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The sending of a letter constitutes a magical grasp upon the future.
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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.
Iris Murdoch
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Of course reading and thinking are important but, my God, food is important too. How fortunate we are to be food-consuming animals. Each meal should be a treat and one ought to bless every day which brings with it a good digestion and the precious gift of hunger.
Iris Murdoch