Every man needs two women: a quiet home-maker, and a thrilling nymph. Iris Murdoch More Quotes by Iris Murdoch More Quotes From Iris Murdoch Human affairs are not serious, but they have to be taken seriously. Iris Murdoch serious taken literature What a test that is: more than devotion, admiration, passion. If you long and long for someone’s company you love them. Iris Murdoch passion tests long 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 fantasy judging world 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 pride hurt life I daresay anything can be made holy by being sincerely worshipped. Iris Murdoch holy worship made He was a sociologist; he had got into an intellectual muddle early on in life and never managed to get out. Iris Murdoch sociologists intellectual literature Language is a machine for making falsehoods. Iris Murdoch machines language inspirational Mathematics is good for the soul, getting things right enlivens a sense of truth, efforts to understand automatically purify desires. Iris Murdoch effort soul desire You cannot have both truth and what you call civilisation. Iris Murdoch civilisation truth Oh the piercing sadness of life in the midst of its ordinariness! Iris Murdoch piercings unhappiness sadness Actors are cave dwellers in a rich darkness which they love and hate. Iris Murdoch caves hate darkness 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 gun struggle sports To be a complete victim may be another source of power. Iris Murdoch victim power may People who boast of happy marriages are, I submit, usually self-deceivers, if not actually liars. Iris Murdoch marriage self liars 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. Iris Murdoch childhood despair children ... 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 laughter choices animal A death is the most terrible of facts. Iris Murdoch terrible death facts 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 erotic love sex The human soul is not framed for continued proximity, and the result of this enforced neighbourhood is often an appalling loneliness for which the rules of the game forbid assuagement. Iris Murdoch loneliness soul games Trains induce such terrible anxiety. They image the possibility of total and irrevocable failure. They are also dirty, rackety, packed with strangers, an object lesson in the foul contingency of life: the talkative fellow-traveller, the possibility of children. Iris Murdoch anxiety children dirty
