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
Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out.
All art is a struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous.
Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.
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.
We shall be better prepared for the future if we see how terrible, how doomed the present is.
We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.
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.
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.
We can only learn to love by loving.
until I have been able to bury my head so deep in dear London that I can forget that I have ever been away I am inconsolable.