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There is no beyond, there is only here, the infinitely small, infinitely great and utterly demanding present.

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
Great
Demanding
Infinitely
Utterly
Beyond
Present
Small

More quotes by Iris Murdoch

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Only lies and evil come from letting people off.
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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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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Of course reading and thinking are important but, my God, food is important too.
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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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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Oh the piercing sadness of life in the midst of its ordinariness!
Iris Murdoch
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Perhaps misguided moral passion is better than confused indifference.
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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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.
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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All our failures are ultimately failures in love.
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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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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Not to have been born is undoubtedly best, but sound sleep is second best.
Iris Murdoch
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As we live our precarious lives on the brink of the void, constantly coming closer to a state of nonbeing, we are all too often aware of our fragitlity.
Iris Murdoch
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Dogs are very different from cats in that they can be images of human virtue. They are like us.
Iris Murdoch
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Real worship involves waiting.
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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Music relates sound and time and so pictures the ultimate edges of human commmunications.
Iris Murdoch