1,162 Quotes by Iris Murdoch

There is no beyond, there is only here, the infinitely small, infinitely great and utterly demanding present.

There were good times or goodish times, only the bad times were so—crucial.

I've been so unhappy for years, so unhappy . . . I don't understand how a human being can be so unhappy all the time and still be alive.

He had always thought of himself as a muddler, a sufferer, a victim.

I was born to be nothing and to have nothing.

But suicides are mysterious, and one must respect their mystery.

I think being a woman is like being Irish... Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the time.

One can't stop people from killing themselves if they're determined to. It may even be wrong to do so.

But now more often the old stale hopeless weariness overcame him: the black sickness which almost no one else, certainly not his nearest dearest friends, could understand at all. The idea of giving up the world, which had given him for a time so much life-energy, appeared now as a sort of fake suicide, a ghastly play-image of his death. This fatal falseness-of-heart was what perhaps Father Damien, on further acquaintance, had now seen in him.