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It is difficult in life to be good, and difficult in art to portray goodness. Perhaps we don't know much about goodness.

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
Art
Much
Good
Life
Portray
Goodness
Perhaps
Difficult

More quotes by Iris Murdoch

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Being good is just a matter of temperament in the end.
Iris Murdoch
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I have used the word attention, which I borrow from Simone Weil, to express the idea of a just and loving gaze directed upon individual reality. I believe this to be the characteristic and proper mark of the active moral agent.
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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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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The chief requirement of the good life, is to live without any image of oneself.
Iris Murdoch
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All art deals with the absurd and aims at the simple. Good art speaks truth, indeed is truth, perhaps the only truth.
Iris Murdoch
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Real worship involves waiting.
Iris Murdoch
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Of course men play roles, but women play roles too, blanker ones. They have, in the play of life, fewer good lines.
Iris Murdoch
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... a less than perfect meddling in the spiritual world can breed monsters for other people.
Iris Murdoch
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The cry of equality pulls everyone down.
Iris Murdoch
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Jealousy comes from self-love rather than from true love.
Iris Murdoch
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The most essential and fundamental aspect of culture is the study of literature, since this is an education in how to picture and understand human situations.
Iris Murdoch
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The very madness of the scheme protects it.
Iris Murdoch
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We defend ourselves by descriptions and tame the world by generalizing.
Iris Murdoch
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Those who hope, by retiring from the world, to earn a holiday from human frailty, in themselves and others, are usually disappointed.
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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He was a sociologist he had got into an intellectual muddle early on in life and never managed to get out.
Iris Murdoch
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Not to have been born is undoubtedly best, but sound sleep is second best.
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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Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wavelength of ours all they hear is a continuous scream.
Iris Murdoch