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
Falling out of love is very enlightening. For a short while you see the world with new eyes.
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.
Possibly, more people kill themselves and others out of hurt vanity than out of envy, jealousy, malice or desire for revenge.
Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.
Philosophy! Empty thinking by ignorant conceited men who think they can digest without eating!
The bereaved cannot communicate with the unbereaved.
One doesn't have to get anywhere in a marriage. It's not a public conveyance.
Love is the source of our greatest errors; but when it is even partially refined it is the energy and the passion of the soul in its search for Good, the force that joins us to Good and joins us to the world through Good. Its existence is the unmistakable sign that we are spiritual creatures, attracted by excellence and made for the Good. It is a reflection of the warmth and light of the sun.
Good writing is full of surprises and novelties, moving in a direction you don't expect.
I feel half faded away like some figure in the background of an old picture.
But fantasy kills imagination, pornography is death to art.
Man's creative struggle, his search for wisdom and truth, is a love story.
Human affairs are not serious, but they have to be taken seriously.
Every artist is an unhappy lover.