Iris Murdoch Quotes

All art is a struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous.

Iris Murdoch

Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.

Iris Murdoch

We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.

Iris Murdoch

Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary and everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self.

Iris Murdoch

We can only learn to love by loving.

Iris Murdoch

Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.

Iris Murdoch

In almost every marriage there is a selfish and an unselfish partner. A pattern is set up and soon becomes inflexible, of one person always making the demands and one person always giving way.

Iris Murdoch

Every man needs two women: a quiet home-maker, and a thrilling nymph.

Iris Murdoch

Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out.

Iris Murdoch

The cry of equality pulls everyone down.

Iris Murdoch

Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is.

Iris Murdoch

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

Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wavelength of ours all they hear is a continuous scream.

Iris Murdoch