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
He was a sociologist; he had got into an intellectual muddle early on in life and never managed to get out.
I see myself as Rhoda, not Mary Tyler Moore.
The notion that one will not survive a particular catastrophe is, in general terms, a comfort since it is equivalent to abolishing the catastrophe.
In philosophy if you aren't moving at a snail's pace you aren't moving at all.
Being good is just a matter of temperament in the end.
Socrates wrote nothing. Christ wrote nothing.
Moralistic is not moral. And as for truth - well, it's like brown - it's not in the spectrum. Truth is so generic.
Literature could be said to be a sort of disciplined technique for arousing certain emotions.
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.
Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wavelength of ours all they hear is a continuous scream.
We shall be better prepared for the future if we see how terrible, how doomed the present is.
No love is entirely without worth, even when the frivolous calls to the frivolous and the base to the base.
Dogs are very different from cats in that they can be images of human virtue. They are like us.
One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats