Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
Dame Jean Iris Murdoch DBEwas an Irish novelist and philosopher, 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, was selected in 1998 as one of Modern Library's 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In 1987, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Her books include The Bell, A Severed Head, The Red and the Green,...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth15 July 1919
CountryIreland
What a test that is: more than devotion, admiration, passion. If you long and long for someone’s company you love them.
Upon the demon-ridden pilgrimage of human life, what next I wonder.
It is not enough that I succeed, everyone else must fail.
Yes, of course, there's something fishy about describing people's feelings. You try hard to be accurate, but as soon as you start to define such and such a feeling, language lets you down. It's really a machine for making falsehoods. When we really speak the truth, words are insufficient. Almost everything except things like "pass the gravy" is a lie of a sort. And that being the case, I shall shut up. Oh, and... pass the gravy.
Learning philosophy is learning a particular kind of intuitive understanding.
Our destiny can be examined, but it cannot be justified or totally explained. We are simply here.
Literature could be said to be a sort of disciplined technique for arousing certain emotions.
Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
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.
I just enjoy translating, it's like opening one's mouth and hearing someone else's voice emerge.
One of the secrets of a happy life is continous small treats.
People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.
Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wavelength of ours all they hear is a continuous scream.
Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea.