1,162 Quotes by Iris Murdoch

You've got to see me, Martin. I'm to blame. I've never been quite and entirely myself with you. The situation didn't let me be. The untruthfulness infected everything. I must break out a little? Do you see at all?

Suppose she never got into art school, suppose she was not a painter after all? Suppose the talents which others had persuaded her she possessed were to abandon her overnight, or turn out to have been unreal all the time? Suppose she had to take a typing course or live with a word processor? I would die, she thought, I would kill myself or make myself die of grief. Already there was one great deep grief in her life.

The same virtues, in the end, the same virtue (love), are required throughout, and fantasy (self) can prevent us from seeing a blade of grass just as it can prevent us from seeing another person. An increasing awareness of 'goods' and the attempt (usually only partially successful) to attend to them purely, without self, brings with it an increasing awareness of the unity and interdependence of the moral world. One-seeking intelligence is the image of faith.

It is not simply that suppression of self is required before accurate vision can be obtained. The great artist sees his objects (and this is true whether they are sad, absurd, repulsive or even evil) in a light of justice and mercy. The direction of attention is, contrary to nature, outward, away from self which reduces all to a false unity, towards the great surprising variety of the world, and the ability so to direct attention is love.

The painter copies this bed from one point of view. He is thus at three removes from reality. He does not understand the bed, he does not measure it, he could not make it.

…we have futures. That means we can make things true…

It's terrible that one doesn't love people forever.

Do you think she'll change?""Hope nothing.""Is there a cure?""Only art. Or more love.""I should die of more love.

When dealing with a married couple one can never be neutral. The hot magnetic power of each one's view of the other makes the spectator sway.