As we live our precarious lives on the brink of the void, constantly coming closer to a state of nonbeing, we are all too often aware of our fragitlity. — Iris Murdoch

How huge it is, how empty, this great space for which I have been longing all my life. Still no letters. — Iris Murdoch

One of the secrets of a happy life is continous small treats. — Iris Murdoch

We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality’ says Iris Murdoch. But given the state of the world, is it wise? — Iris Murdoch

Art and psychoanalisis give shape and meaning to life and that’s why we adore them. However, life as it is lived has no shape nor meaning, and that’s what I am experiencing right now. — Iris Murdoch

We brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out. — Iris Murdoch

Those who hope, by retiring from the world, to earn a holiday from human frailty, in themselves and others, are usually disappointed. — Iris Murdoch

Thinking about the misery of the world is a favourite contemporary occupation. and if you can’t think the television set will think for you. — Iris Murdoch

White magic is black magic. a less than perfect meddling in the spiritual world can breed monsters for other people, and demons used for good can hang around and make mischief afterwards. — Iris Murdoch

Good art shows us how difficult it is to be objective by showing us how differently the world looks to an objective vision. — Iris Murdoch

Emotions really exist at the bottom of the personality or at the top. in the middle they are acted. this is why all the world is a stage. — Iris Murdoch

What I needed with all my starved and silent soul was just that particular way of shouting back at the world. — Iris Murdoch

To overthrow a tyrant, whether in public or in private, one must learn to hate. — Iris Murdoch

But to be understood is not a human right. Even to understand oneself is not a human right. — Iris Murdoch

The theatre is certainly a place for learning about the brevity of human glory: oh all those wonderful glittering absolutely vanished pantomimes. — Iris Murdoch

For most of us, for almost all of us, truth can be attained, if at all, only in silence. It is in silence that the human spirit touches the divine. — Iris Murdoch

There is a gulf fixed between those who can sleep and those who cannot. It is one of the greatest divisions of the human race. — Iris Murdoch

Coffee, unless it is very good and made by somebody else, is pretty intolerable at any time. — Iris Murdoch

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

People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us. — Iris Murdoch

The world is full of broken people. Splints, casts, miracle drugs, and time can’t mend fractured hearts, wounded hearts, wounded minds, torn spirits. — Dean Koontz

When I’m up to something I find it very hard to realize that I probably look no different from the way I look on other occasions. — Iris Murdoch

The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart. — Iris Murdoch

People have obsessions and fears and passions which they don’t admit to. I think every character is interesting and has extremes. It’s the novelist privilege to see how odd everyone is. — Iris Murdoch

A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia. — Iris Murdoch

Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is. — Iris Murdoch

That’s how vile i am! I live Ireland, I breathe Ireland, and Christ how I loathe it, I wish I were a bloody Scot, that’s how bloody awful it is being Irish! — Iris Murdoch

Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wavelength of ours all they hear is a continuous scream. — Iris Murdoch

I took a deep breath, however, and followed my rule of never speaking frankly to women in moments of emotion. No good ever comes of this. — Iris Murdoch

Once you do something, you never forget. Even if you can’t remember. — Spirited Away

This sort of quiet gazing, which was like a feeding of the heart… — Iris Murdoch

One should go easy on smashing other people’s lies. Better to concentrate on one’s own. — Iris Murdoch

I wash away negativity, opening myself up to light and love and all things good and beneficial. — Deborah Blake

You imagine that to live in a state of extremity is necessarily to discover the truth about yourself. What you discover then is violence and emptiness. And of this you make a virtue. — Iris Murdoch

I feel half faded away like some figure in the background of an old picture. — Iris Murdoch

Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out. — Iris Murdoch

There is not enough love and kindness in the world to permit us to give any of it away to imaginary beings. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Disapproving of things is all right. But you mustn’t disapprove of people. It cuts you off. — Iris Murdoch

She leaves my side and heads deeper into the apartment singing, — If The Spirit Tries To Hide

Only the very greatest art invigorates without consoling. — Iris Murdoch

Love doesn’t think like that. All right, it’s blind as a bat––’ ‘Bats have radar. Yours doesn’t seem to be working. — Iris Murdoch

I felt a deep grief that crouched and stayed still as if it was afraid to move. — Iris Murdoch