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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| db5ae62 | Your coldness has ruined my life. All right, you didn't mean it, all right I was a schoolgirl, but you could have been kinder to someone who said they loved you, you could have been gentle and grateful. | declaration-of-love harsh iris-murdoch rejection ruined-lives the-message-to-the-planet | Iris Murdoch | |
| f67684d | When the sun was set I might perhaps go to sleep. I never let myself sleep during the day. Daytime sleep is a cursed slumber from which one wakes in despair. The sun will not tolerate it. If he can he will pry under your eyelids and prise them apart; and if you hang black curtains at your windows he will lay siege to your room until it is so stifling that at last you stagger with staring eyes to the window and tear back the curtains to see .. | Iris Murdoch | ||
| 8338d61 | How mysterious night and day are, this endless procession off dark and light....I think such sad thoughts - of people in trouble and afraid, all lonely people all prisoners. | Iris Murdoch | ||
| 22523a2 | It is necessary to write, that much is clear, and to write in a way quite unlike any way which I have employed before. | self-deception truth writers writing | Iris Murdoch | |
| b72fe87 | As soon as any idea is a consolation the tendency to falsify it becomes strong: hence the traditional problem of preventing the idea of God from degenerating in the believer's mind. | Iris Murdoch | ||
| ee0fe07 | Even if readers claim that they 'take it all with a grain of salt', they do not really. They yearn to believe, and they believe, because believing is easier than disbelieving, and because anything which is written down is likely to be 'true in a way'. | façades fiction readers reading writing | Iris Murdoch | |
| 2c24070 | The self, the place where we live, is a place of illusion. Goodness is connected with the attempt to see the unself, to see and to respond to the real world in the light of a virtuous consciousness. This is the non-metaphysical meaning of the idea of transcendence to which philosophers have so constantly resorted in their explanations of goodness. 'Good is a transcendent reality' means that virtue is the attempt to pierce the veil of selfis.. | good human-nature illusion real transcendence | Iris Murdoch | |
| 46e3320 | If I see her she may kill hope. | Iris Murdoch | ||
| 9dc2c37 | 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 t.. | fantasy good illusion intellect love self unity vision | Iris Murdoch | |
| 375eb56 | Your love for me does not exist in the real world. Yes, it is love, I do not deny it. But not every love has a course to run, smooth or otherwise, and this love has no course at all . . . But that is remote from love and remote from ordinary life. As real people we do not exist for each other. | figurative-language impossible-love iris-murdoch love unrequited-love | Iris Murdoch | |
| d7a8c6f | I could not see other human beings at present. | alone antisocial iris-murdoch misanthropic recluse seclusion | Iris Murdoch | |
| 4bb865e | He felt as if he were under an intolerable physical strain, as if his body were likely at any moment to fly to pieces. Other strange physical symptoms came to trouble him. An unpleasant odour lingered in his nostrils, as if he could literally smell the sulphur of the pit; and he had from time to time the curious illusion that his flesh was turning black. He had to look continually at his hands to be sure that it was not so. Nightmares troub.. | Iris Murdoch | ||
| 39eda6c | And I thought, rolling my head to and fro between my hands in anguish, oh if only it could have worked somehow for us two. | if-only in-another-life iris-murdoch star-crossed-lovers the-sea-the-sea unrequited-love | Iris Murdoch | |
| 6388a0b | We shall meet, but as strangers. It is the end of an era. A whole part of my life is torn away. | iris-murdoch parting sad separation strangers the-end-of-an-era the-green-knight | Iris Murdoch | |
| 3c675f3 | Yet on the other hand, I did manage to write, and without more than occasional repining, during my years of bondage, and I would not, as some unsatisfied writers do, blame my lack of productivity upon my lack of time. | Iris Murdoch | ||
| ad314a7 | Love is no respecter of ages, everyone knows that. | Iris Murdoch | ||
| d71b68e | It might be most dramatically effective to begin the tale at the moment when Arnold Baffin rang me up and said, "Bradley, could you come round here please, I think I have just killed my wife." | dramatic iris-murdoch meta narrative narrator opening storytelling the-black-prince | Iris Murdoch | |
| add2c7c | Disapproving of things is all right. But you mustn't disapprove of people. It cuts you off. | Iris Murdoch | ||
| 7851f1c | I had deluded myself throughout by the idea of reviving a secret love which did not exist at all. | iris-murdoch love secret-love the-sea-the-sea unrequited-love | Iris Murdoch | |
| ea951d7 | He dreamt...he was a huge white egg floating in the sea of turquoise blue, and he was everything that there was. | Iris Murdoch | ||
| 46198ad | I have always attributed a great importance to eyes. How mysteriously expressive those damp orbs can be; the eyeball does not change and yet it is the window of the soul. And colour in eyes is, in its nature and inherence, quite unlike colour in any other substance. Mr Osmand had grey eyes, but his eyes were hard and speckled like Aberdeen granite, while Tommy's were clear and empty like light smoke. | Iris Murdoch | ||
| f2e104d | Don't tease me. Everything wounds me now except perfect kindness. | iris-murdoch kindness sensitive teasing the-green-knight | Iris Murdoch | |
| 3f8737c | I am, I must confess, an obsessive and superstitious letter-writer. When I am troubled I will write any long letter rather than make a telephone call. This is perhaps because I invest letters with magical power. To desiderate something in a letter is, I often irrationally feel, tantamount to bringing it about. A letter is a barrier, a reprieve, a charm against the world, an almost infallible method of acting at a distance. (And, it must be .. | iris-murdoch letters magical obsessive superstitious the-black-prince writing | Iris Murdoch | |
| b8cabb6 | Your infatuation will end in tears. | heartbreak infatuation iris-murdoch tears the-message-to-the-planet warning | Iris Murdoch | |
| 87809f9 | There is a time limit to how long a spirited young person can be kept in cold storage. | iris-murdoch limbo on-the-shelf spirited youth | Iris Murdoch | |
| 3e32f51 | And she did seem then to go to sleep instantly: the quick flight into oblivion of the chronically unhappy person. | depression iris-murdoch oblivion sleep the-sea-the-sea unhappy | Iris Murdoch | |
| aff24b1 | Only take someone's hand in a certain way, even look into their eyes in a certain way, and the world is changed forever. | gazing holding-hands iris-murdoch irrevocable love romance romantic the-black-prince touch | Iris Murdoch | |
| 062fa4e | You can't magic yourself out of the situation, you've got to live it as decently and as grimly as you can. | grim iris-murdoch magic the-message-to-the-planet trapped | Iris Murdoch | |
| 98756c2 | I know girls aren't supposed to tell, but I've got to tell--just in case you should fail to love me because you never knew how much I loved you. I want not to have to say later--I wish I'd told him. | declaration-of-love gender-roles henry-and-cato if-only iris-murdoch love romance romantic-love unrequited-love | Iris Murdoch | |
| 995b2e2 | I've been so unhappy for years, so unhappy . . . I don't understand how a human being can be so unhappy all the time and still be alive. | iris-murdoch miserable suffering suicidal the-black-prince unending unendurable unhappy | Iris Murdoch | |
| 374a2b7 | Let me sleep at last. I've had misery enough in my life. You said there was nowhere to go to. There is death to go to. I've had misery enough in my life. | desperate escape iris-murdoch misery sleep suicidal the-black-prince | Iris Murdoch | |
| b05d5c1 | I know people can be awful dooms for each other. | doom iris-murdoch the-black-prince toxic-people toxic-relationships unhealthy | Iris Murdoch | |
| 0882153 | In a century or two this planet will have been destroyed by external cosmic forces or by the senseless activity of the human race. Human life is a freak phenomenon, soon to be blotted out. That is a consoling thought. Meanwhile we are surrounded by strange invisible entities, possibly your angels." "I hope so." "Ah, you think they are good, they be good, there is no good, the tendency to evil is overwhelming. One has only to think of the .. | end-of-the-world humor iris-murdoch misanthrope pessimistic recluse relationship the-green-knight | Iris Murdoch | |
| f83a2ea | It is ever thus. We find the words to speak when all hope of converse is past. | Stephanie Barron | ||
| 1423062 | the long blue shadows of afternoon advanced before me like cheerful ghosts of last summer's growth, dancing past the withered flower borders and the stiff hedges to fall at the feet of a stone nymph, her cascade of water frozen in her urn. | jane-austen mystery | Stephanie Barron | |
| b5162f6 | life's burdens may only be overcome by a summoning of inner resources: by a dependence not upon others, but upon the qualities of spirit and mind. | Stephanie Barron | ||
| abcb7f2 | A great deal of hurt has been done in the name of honesty, | Stephanie Barron | ||
| d3615f3 | Providence, assuredly, is a mysterious mover, and who is Jane to ignore it's direction? | Stephanie Barron | ||
| c40e0b4 | Anxieties," wrote Alfred Thayer Mahan, "are the test and penalty of greatness." -- | James D. Hornfischer | ||
| 37e0c9d | It has been written that so much of life is preparation, so much is routine, and so much is retrospect that the purest essence of anyone's genius contracts itself to a precious few hours. | genius preparation routine | James D Hornfischer | |
| 49cdbb5 | Captain Copeland picked up the intercom mike and addressed the Roberts's crew. That he was speaking for himself struck Ens. Jack Moore as unusual and urgent. Normally seaman Jack Roberts was the public address voice of his namesake warship. His southern drawl was all but unintelligible to anyone not acquainted with Dixie's rhythms and diphthongs. But the skipper's diction was as crisp as a litigator's. He was talking fast and sounding more .. | James D. Hornfischer | ||
| 622bf2a | Pop culture didn't actually need an Andy Warhol to make it postmodern. Rock 'n' roll was never anything but a faked-up blues--something that the glam-era Bowie had understood perfectly. (Eno: "Some people say Bowie is all surface style and second-hand ideas, but that sounds like a definition of pop to me.")" | Hugo Wilcken | ||
| 5dce774 | B kissed Damian. Two people kissing always look like fish. | Andy Warhol | ||
| 51b9737 | I will find your books and review with nastiness. | Andy Warhol |