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 More Quotes by Iris Murdoch More Quotes From Iris Murdoch We can only learn to love by loving. Iris Murdoch deep-romantic true-love love We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality. Iris Murdoch tasks life reality There is no beyond, there is only here, the infinitely small, infinitely great and utterly demanding present. 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 responsibility sea inspirational 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 real love-is art Every artist is an unhappy lover. And unhappy lovers want to tell their story. Iris Murdoch artist unhappy stories The best thing about being God would be making the heads. Iris Murdoch best-things would-be Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self. Iris Murdoch gratitude happy happiness 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 healing heart men Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck. Iris Murdoch women marriage writing Jealousy comes from self-love rather than from true love. Iris Murdoch dont-give-up jealousy giving-up But fantasy kills imagination, pornography is death to art. Iris Murdoch imagination death art The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular body and its indifference to substitutes is one of life's major mysteries. Iris Murdoch marriage relationship life People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us. Iris Murdoch sunshine nature flower When does one ever know a human being? Perhaps only after one has realized the impossibility of knowledge and renounced the desire for it and finally ceased to feel even the need of it. But then what one achieves is no longer knowledge, it is simply a kind of co-existence; and this too is one of the guises of love. Iris Murdoch doe desire needs Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out. Iris Murdoch shoes boots italian All art is the struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous. Iris Murdoch literature struggle art 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 essentials fundamentals culture Love is the perception of individuals. Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real. Iris Murdoch real inspirational love Almost any tale of our doings is comic. We are bottomlessly comic to each other. Even the most adored and beloved person is comic to his lover. The novel is a comic form. Language is a comic form, and makes jokes in its sleep. God, if He existed, would laugh at His creation. Yet it is also the case that life is horrible, without metaphysical sense, wrecked by chance, pain and the close prospect of death. Out of this is born irony, our dangerous and necessary tool. Iris Murdoch pain sleep laughing
