Quotes from Iris Murdoch

So it is that we can be terrors to each other, and people in lonely rooms suffer humiliation and even damage because of others in whose consciousness perhaps they scarcely figure at all.

You don't understand what it's like when things are terrible in your mind.

At the very thought he felt a tendency to tremble.

What are you thinking, my love, my darling?' 'About you. I was wondering if you could make me happy. It would be fearfully difficult.' 'I'm fearfully clever, and I love you fearfully much.

But he was surrendered, they had surrendered him, into the power of death.

Como todavía no hablase, dije: —¿Podríamos ser felices? Honor dijo: —Esto no tiene nada que ver con la felicidad, nada en absoluto. Era cierto. Acepté la promesa de sus palabras. Dije: —No sé si sobreviviré a ello. Honor dijo con una espléndida sonrisa: —¡Tienes que correr el riesgo!

He did not consciously wish for death but he grieved at night for some blank thing which he could not even name.

The past and present are after all so close, almost one, as if time were an artificial teasing out of a material which longs to join, to interpenetrate, and to become heavy and very small like some of those heavenly bodies scientists tell us of.

We've all got things to cry about. Don't you think I could drown the world with tears if I started on my own woes?

There's a kind of reality, a kind of truth.

Onurunuzu kaybetmenize sebep olan insanlar? kolay affedemiyorsunuz.

Perhaps 'love' had always been for me an ignis fatuus.

Comprendo. —Añadí—: Tú me acusaste en una ocasión de decir tonterías. Si yo soy un privilegiado sólo por haberte visto abrazando a tu hermano… Seguía callada, sonriendo otra vez. Traté de no devolverle la sonrisa. Dije: —Me dijiste que eras una cabeza cortada. ¿Se pueden mantener relaciones humanas con una cabeza cortada?

He felt obscurely the dividedness of his being, the extent of what was gross, the littleness and value of what was not.

Theo wanted to call him back. But then he thought, oh let him go, there's no mending a fruitless love, it just has to be endured.

Pavydas gimsta drauge su meile, bet ne visuomet drauge numiršta.

Human life is short, we don't exist all that much. A pale brief flicker in the dark.

Gwen went up to Cambridge and read Moral Sciences and started on a Ph.D. thesis on Frege.

It's just that I don't hope any more, I've lost my nerve.

Suddenly, as if by the fiat of a wicked fairy, he had been utterly dispossessed.

They had exhorted her to work hard, it need only be for a short time after all, at 'dull school subjects', such as English, French, History and Maths. Moy, who hated these with the possible exception of English, had decided some time ago that she would not work at these horrid subjects, would not take any of the beastly exams, and would leave school as soon as possible. She occasionally tried to communicate this decision to her family, but they simply refused to listen.

We're all sinners. We all hurt each other just by existing.

Then as she dwindled away to nothing he glided on towards me with increasing speed, his huge Jewish face growing like a great egg above the silken wings of his gown. I swung the sword in an arc before him but as it moved the blade came away and flew upwards into the winter darkness which had collected above us. Clinging in fear and guilt to what remained in my hand I recognized my father.

you want to understand everything sympathetically. It can't be done. One must just blunder on. Truth lies in blundering on.