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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
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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
Child
Adult
Littles
Bitter
Little
Misery
Children
Despair
Even
Adults
Childhood
Understood
Bottomless
Probably
Compared
More quotes by Iris Murdoch
We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.
Iris Murdoch
The chief requirement of the good life, is to live without any image of oneself.
Iris Murdoch
Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is.
Iris Murdoch
to be understood is not a human right. Even to understand oneself is not a human right.
Iris Murdoch
... a less than perfect meddling in the spiritual world can breed monsters for other people.
Iris Murdoch
Art is brief. (Not in a temporal sense.) [...] Words are for concealment. Art is concealment.
Iris Murdoch
Of course men play roles, but women play roles too, blanker ones. They have, in the play of life, fewer good lines.
Iris Murdoch
To be a complete victim may be another source of power.
Iris Murdoch
We are all the judges and the judged, victims of the casual malice and fantasy of others, and ready sources of fantasy and malice in our turn. And if we are sometimes accused of sins of which we are innocent, are there not also other sins of which we are guilty and of which the world knows nothing?
Iris Murdoch
There is nothing like early promiscuous sex for dispelling life's bright mysterious expectations.
Iris Murdoch
Art and psychoanalysis give shape and meaning to life and that is why we adore them, but life as it is lived has no shape and meaning.
Iris Murdoch
Good writing is full of surprises and novelties, moving in a direction you don't expect.
Iris Murdoch
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
Real worship involves waiting.
Iris Murdoch
Our actions are like ships which we may watch set out to sea, and not know when or with what cargo they will return to port.
Iris Murdoch
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
Freedom may be a value in politics, but it is not a value in morals.
Iris Murdoch
Not to have been born is undoubtedly best, but sound sleep is second best.
Iris Murdoch
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
Human affairs are not serious, but they have to be taken seriously.
Iris Murdoch