Edmund White
{mb_by_description}
{mb_by_casual_summary}
Table of Contents
Family Info
Siblings
Spouses
Children
About the Iris Murdoch
Dame Jean Iris Murdoch was an Irish and British novelist and philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her first published novel, Under the Net (1954), was selected in 1998 as one of Modern Library’s 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Her 1978 novel The Sea, The Sea won the Booker Prize. In 1987, she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II for services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked Murdoch twelfth on a list of “The 50 greatest British writers since 1945”.
Her other books include The Bell (1958), A Severed Head (1961), An Unofficial Rose (1962), The Red and the Green (1965), The Nice and the Good (1968), The Black Prince (1973), Henry and Cato (1976), The Philosopher’s Pupil (1983), The Good Apprentice (1985), The Book and the Brotherhood (1987), The Message to the Planet (1989), and The Green Knight (1993).
As a philosopher, Murdoch’s best-known work is The Sovereignty of Good (1970). She was married for 43 years, until her death, to the literary critic and author John Bayley.
Frequently Asked Questions
{mb_by_number_of_quotes} Quotes by Iris Murdoch
- 1.
We shall be better prepared for the future if we see how terrible, how doomed the present is.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 2.
Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 3.
Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wavelength of ours all they hear is a continuous scream.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 4.
Happiness is a matter of one’s most ordinary and everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 5.
No love is entirely without worth, even when the frivolous calls to the frivolous and the base to the base.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 6.
But fantasy kills imagination, pornography is death to art.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 7.
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{mb_by_description:plain}
- 8.
Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 9.
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{mb_by_description:plain}
- 10.
Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 11.
Anything that consoles is fake.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 12.
All art is a struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 13.
Human affairs are not serious, but they have to be taken seriously.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 14.
Every man needs two women: a quiet home-maker, and a thrilling nymph.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 15.
We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 16.
One doesn’t have to get anywhere in a marriage. It’s not a public conveyance.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 17.
Moralistic is not moral. And as for truth – well, it’s like brown – it’s not in the spectrum. Truth is so generic.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 18.
We can only learn to love by loving.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 19.
I think being a woman is like being Irish. Everyone says you’re important and nice, but you take second place all the same.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 20.
He was a sociologist; he had got into an intellectual muddle early on in life and never managed to get out.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 21.
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{mb_by_description:plain}
- 22.
There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 23.
I see myself as Rhoda, not Mary Tyler Moore.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 24.
The notion that one will not survive a particular catastrophe is, in general terms, a comfort since it is equivalent to abolishing the catastrophe.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 25.
Being good is just a matter of temperament in the end.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 26.
Falling out of love is very enlightening. For a short while you see the world with new eyes.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 27.
Philosophy! Empty thinking by ignorant conceited men who think they can digest without eating!
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 28.
Only lies and evil come from letting people off.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 29.
Perhaps misguided moral passion is better than confused indifference.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 30.
Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one’s luck.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 31.
Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 32.
I daresay anything can be made holy by being sincerely worshipped.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 33.
The cry of equality pulls everyone down.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 34.
A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 35.
Literature could be said to be a sort of disciplined technique for arousing certain emotions.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 36.
In philosophy if you aren’t moving at a snail’s pace you aren’t moving at all.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}
- 37.
The priesthood is a marriage. People often start by falling in love, and they go on for years without realizing that love must change into some other love which is so unlike it that it can hardly be recognized as love at all.
Iris Murdoch{mb_by_description:plain}