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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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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
Understanding
Freedom
Respecting
Moving
Choosing
Lost
Merely
Make
Move
Things
Already
Quite
Knowing

More quotes by Iris Murdoch

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There is a gulf fixed between those who can sleep and those who cannot. It is one of the greatest divisions of the human race.
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Music relates sound and time and so pictures the ultimate edges of human commmunications.
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It's easier to sell junk when you're known than works of genius when you're unknown.
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Not to have been born is undoubtedly best, but sound sleep is second best.
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Only lies and evil come from letting people off.
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Only love has clear vision. Hatred has cloudy vision. When we hate we know not what we do.
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A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.
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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.
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The notion that one can liberate another soul from captivity is an illusion of the very young.
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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.
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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.
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Every man needs two women: a quiet home-maker, and a thrilling nymph.
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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.
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The sending of a letter constitutes a magical grasp upon the future.
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Good writing is full of surprises and novelties, moving in a direction you don't expect.
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The most interesting things are always happening behind one.
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Most real relationships are involuntary.
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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.
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It is not enough that I succeed, everyone else must fail.
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We defend ourselves by descriptions and tame the world by generalizing.
Iris Murdoch