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A middling talent makes for a more serene life.

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
Middling
Serene
Talent
Makes
Life

More quotes by Iris Murdoch

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It is not enough that I succeed, everyone else must fail.
Iris Murdoch
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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?
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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.
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The chief requirement of the good life, is to live without any image of oneself.
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You cannot have both truth and what you call civilisation.
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Of course reading and thinking are important but, my God, food is important too.
Iris Murdoch
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The most interesting things are always happening behind one.
Iris Murdoch
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A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.
Iris Murdoch
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We defend ourselves by descriptions and tame the world by generalizing.
Iris Murdoch
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Intense mutual erotic love, love which involves with the flesh all the most refined sexual being of the spirit, which reveals and perhaps even ex nihilo creates spirit as sex, is comparatively rare in this inconvenient world.
Iris Murdoch
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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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Freedom may be a value in politics, but it is not a value in morals.
Iris Murdoch
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Human affairs are not serious, but they have to be taken seriously.
Iris Murdoch
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Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is.
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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On connecting: Where does one person end and another person begin?
Iris Murdoch
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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.
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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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 bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.
Iris Murdoch