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Words are the most subtle symbols which we possess and our human fabric depends on them.

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
Subtle
Depends
Words
Human
Humans
Fabric
Possess
Symbols

More quotes by Iris Murdoch

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evil soon makes tools out of those who don't hate it.
Iris Murdoch
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Time can divorce us from the reality of people, it can separate us from people and turn them into ghosts. Or rather it is we who turn them into ghosts or demons. Some kinds of fruitless preoccupations with the past can create such simulacra, and they can exercise power, like those heroes at Troy fighting for a phantom Helen.
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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Falling out of love is very enlightening. For a short while you see the world with new eyes.
Iris Murdoch
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Perhaps misguided moral passion is better than confused indifference.
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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It is not enough that I succeed, everyone else must fail.
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 live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.
Iris Murdoch
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The priesthood is a marriage. People often start by falling in love, and they go on for years without realizing that love must change into some other love which is so unlike it that it can hardly be recognized as love at all.
Iris Murdoch
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We defend ourselves by descriptions and tame the world by generalizing.
Iris Murdoch
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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
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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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there is a natural tribal hostility between the married and the unmarried. I cannot stand the shows so often quite instinctively put on by married people to insinuate that they are not only more fortunate but in some way more moral than you are.
Iris Murdoch
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People who boast of happy marriages are, I submit, usually self-deceivers, if not actually liars.
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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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
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We shall be better prepared for the future if we see how terrible, how doomed the present is.
Iris Murdoch
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The very madness of the scheme protects it.
Iris Murdoch
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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