Quotes from Iris Murdoch

Philosophy is often a matter of finding occasions on which to say the obvious

There is a deep foundation of my being which knows not of time and change and is still and ever with Hartley, in that good place where we once were.

Things which he and she had done and been in years past were having their deep inevitable consequences.

But now, when things had happened which were too appalling to think about, when his romantic love was a corpse and his cleverness a ghost, he knew where it was he wanted to lay his head.

But now he was dreaming, he was wildly imagining things.

Still, everyone appeared to be extremely nice, except that that Dr Greenfield man was a trifle rebarbative. (This was a word which Toby had recently learnt at school and could not now conceive of doing without.)

It was like a comedy by Shakespeare. All the ends of the story were being bound up in a good way.

Blaise has always lived in a dream world. We all live in dream worlds, said Monty.

I'm being led — on some dark way.

Living with someone who hates you is—it drives you mad—

Lately Louise had decided to give up wearing make-up altogether, but had not yet acted upon the decision.

Let him die peacefully in his sleep and not know. Only not tonight, not tonight.

You die at heart from a withdrawal of love.

I run, I run, I am gathered to your heart. But no, she thought, it's not like that. I am alone. I cannot reach anybody.

There was absolutely nothing that she could do with this huge emotion which she had so suddenly discovered in herself.

Perhaps he would achieve some sort of peace, the peace of an elderly man, a peace of cosy retirement without angels. Without women too, he thought.

He looked like some unidentified person in a nineteenth-century photograph.

How strangely it excites people to see their dogs swimming!

The past buries the past and must end in silence, but it can be a conscious silence that rests open-eyed.

But with her I would have been faithful, with her my whole life would have been different, less rootless, less empty.

For years he had been incapable of tears.

As he rose to go and held Louise's hand and gazed at her he felt for a moment his old love for her taking possession of his whole being. They looked at each other. I feed upon this looking, thought Clement, but does she? I don't know, and I cannot ask. I am terrified of saying something which would wound our whole precious relationship. We are well as we are. I love her, that's all, that is my drama.

These young people have got to suffer, we can't save them from it —

For me, nothing can ever be well again.