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The most interesting things are always happening behind one.

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
Behind
Interesting
Always
Things
Happenings
Happening
Behinds

More quotes by 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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The cry of equality pulls everyone down.
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?
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
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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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It was like hunting fish with an underwater gun, a sport which he had once been foolish enough to try. At one moment there is the fish - graceful, mysterious, desirable and free - and the next moment there is nothing but struggling and blood and confusion.
Iris Murdoch
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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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Human affairs are not serious, but they have to be taken seriously.
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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The most potent and sacred command which can be laid upon any artist is the command: wait.
Iris Murdoch
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The sin of pride may be a small or a great thing in someone's life, and hurt vanity a passing pinprick, or a self-destroying or ever murderous obsession.
Iris Murdoch
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The notion that one can liberate another soul from captivity is an illusion of the very young.
Iris Murdoch
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... half the world starves. What a planet. And the eating, if you're lucky enough to do any. Stuffing pieces of dead animals into a hole in your face. Then munch, munch, munch. If there's anybody watching, they must be dying of laughter.
Iris Murdoch
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How different each death is, and yet it leads us into the self-same country, that country which we inhabit so rarely, where we see the worthlessness of what we have long pursued and will so soon return to pursuing.
Iris Murdoch
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We re all muddlers. The thing is to see is when one's got to stop muddling.
Iris Murdoch
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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
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to be understood is not a human right. Even to understand oneself is not a human right.
Iris Murdoch
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Being good is just a matter of temperament in the end.
Iris Murdoch
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Good writing is full of surprises and novelties, moving in a direction you don't expect.
Iris Murdoch
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We must live by the light of our own self-satisfaction, through that secret vital busy inwardness which is even more remarkable than our reason.
Iris Murdoch