Iris Murdoch Quotes
Iris Murdoch was a 20th-century British philosopher and novelist, the author of 26 novels and several volumes of moral philosophy. Her philosophical work, including The Sovereignty of Good and Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, defended a Platonic moral realism in which attention to other persons and to the good is the central ethical task. The quotes below are attributed to Iris Murdoch, organized by topic.
Browse Iris Murdoch by topic
Iris Murdoch on Death
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“Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved.”
The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974) p. 37. -
“But fantasy kills imagination, pornography is death to art.”
The Message to the Planet (1989) p. 43.
Iris Murdoch on God
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Attributed to Iris Murdoch:
“The love of God is moral and not mystical.”
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“Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.”
"Art and Eros: A Dialogue about Art", Acastos: Two Platonic Dialogues (1986). -
“I daresay anything can be made holy by being sincerely worshipped.”
The Message to the Planet (1989) p. 322.
Iris Murdoch on Happiness
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Attributed to Iris Murdoch:
“One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats.”
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“He felt neither guilt nor distress at the pleasure with which he was now filled by the proximity of this young creature, and when he discovered in himself even physical symptoms of his inclination he did not take fright, but continued cheerfully and serenely to see Nick whenever the ordinary run of his duties suggested it, congratulating himself upon the newly achieved solidity and rational calm of his spiritual life.”
The Bell (1958) p. 91 -
“People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.”
A Fairly Honourable Defeat (1970); 2001, p. 170. -
“Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self. To be damned is for one's ordinary everyday mode of consciousness to be unremitting agonising preoccupation with self.”
The Nice and the Good (1968), ch. 22.
Iris Murdoch on Justice
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“Being good is just a matter of temperament in the end.”
The Nice and the Good (1968), ch. 14, p. 127. Murdoch attributed this opinion to her character Kate Gray. It was not her own.
Iris Murdoch on Knowledge
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“The Bell (1958) p. 91”
He felt neither guilt nor distress at the pleasure with which he was now filled by the proximity of this young creature, and when he discovered in himself even physical symptoms of his inclination he did not take fright, but continued cheerfully and serenely to see Nick whenever the ordinary run of his duties suggested it, congratulating himself upon the newly achieved solidity and rational calm o -
“Only lies and evil come from letting people off.”
A Severed Head (1961); 1976, p. 61. -
“There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship.”
A Severed Head (1961); 1976, p. 181. -
“We know that the real lesson to be taught is that the human person is precious and unique; but we seem unable to set it forth except in terms of ideology and abstraction.”
Sartre: Romantic Rationalist(1953) | Ch. 10, p. 148 (the concluding sentence of the book)
Iris Murdoch on Life
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“The chief requirement of the good life... is to live without any image of oneself.”
The Bell (1958), ch. 9; 2001, p. 119. -
“Whit Meynell was a sociologist; he had got into an intellectual muddle early on in life and never managed to get out.”
The Philosopher's Pupil (1983) p. 165. -
“The sin of pride may be a small or a great thing in someone's life, and hurt vanity a passing pinprick or a self-destroying or even murderous obsession. Possibly, more people kill themselves and others out of hurt vanity than out of envy, jealousy, malice or desire for revenge.”
The Philosopher's Pupil (1983) p. 76.
Iris Murdoch on Love
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Attributed to Iris Murdoch:
“Love is the perception of individuals.”
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“We can only learn to love by loving.”
The Bell (1958), ch. 19; 2001, p. 219. -
“Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.”
The Black Prince (1973); 2003, p. 10. -
“Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real. Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality.”
The Sublime and the Good", in the Chicago Review , Vol. 13 Issue 3 (Autumn 1959) p. 51.
Iris Murdoch on Mind
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“I think being a woman is like being Irish... Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the same.”
The Red and the Green (1965), ch. 2, p. 30.
Iris Murdoch on Politics
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Attributed to Iris Murdoch:
“Tyrants always fear art because tyrants want to mystify, while art tends to clarify.”
Iris Murdoch on Truth
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“Anything that consoles is fake.”
The Sovereignty of Good (1970) p. 59.
Iris Murdoch on Virtue
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“Serious reflexion about one's own character will often induce a curious sense of emptiness; and if one knows another person well, one may sometimes intuit a similar void in him. (This is one of the strange privileges of friendship.)”
Sartre: Romantic Rationalist(1953) | Ch. 8, p. 119 -
“All art is the struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous.”
The Black Prince (1973); 2003, p. 181. -
“Murdoch attributed this opinion to her character Kate Gray. It was not her own.”
Wikiquote
Things actually not said by Iris Murdoch
A number of widely-shared lines are circulated as Iris Murdoch but are in fact from someone else. Did Iris Murdoch say these? No. Each entry below pairs the line with the person who actually wrote it.
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Did Iris Murdoch say this? No.
“I see myself as Rhoda, not Mary Tyler Moore .”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Not Iris Murdoch, but the actress and comedian Rosie O'Donnell . See George Mair Rosie O'Donnell: Her True Story (1997) p. 81.