1,162 Quotes by Iris Murdoch

The flat was small and smelt of ancient things with which Gildas had not contended. In the sitting room shadowy photographs of Italian lakes had been hung high up by a previous tenant.

Since parting company with the priesthood he could almost be said to have become demoralised. Almost, for somehow he remained someone, a slightly mysterious someone, whom they respected, and they gave him the benefit of every doubt.

Those who occasion loss of dignity are hard to forgive.

And all the time my very soul would travel with her, invisible and crying soundlessly with pain. I had acquired a dimension of suffering which would poison and devour my whole being, as far as I could see, forever.

The room, the wall, trembled with precision, as if the inanimate world were about to utter a word.

How fearful that dark shadow is when we catch sight of it in the life of another. No wonder those at whom that black arrow is aimed so often turn and flee. How unendurable it can be, the love another bears us. I would never persecute my darling with that dread knowledge. From now onward until the world ended everything must remain, although utterly changed, exactly as it was before.

There are moments when, if one rejects the simple and obvious promptings of duty, one finds oneself in a labyrinth of complexities of some quite new kind.

Our relationship in fact was never idle. It was obvious that we constantly thought about each other.

I am really in love and it's a terrible experience.