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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| fc6f639 | I said, "Your brother is in bed with my wife." I added, "I just took them up some wine in bed." | dialogue humor iris-murdoch witty | Iris Murdoch | |
| cd34b6b | He had lived a chaste life really. It was his accusers and not his crimes which troubled him. | Iris Murdoch | ||
| 0e5eab1 | Bellamy found simply a task of amazing difficulty. It was as if ordinary human life were a mobile machine full of holes, crannies, spaces, apertures, fissures, cavities, lairs, into one of which Bellamy was required to (and indeed desired to) fit himself. The machine moved slowly, resembling a train, or sometimes a merry-go-round. But as soon as Bellamy got on (or got in), the machine would soon eject him, sending him spinning back to a .. | depression despair iris-murdoch left-out place-in-the-world spectator the-green-knight work | Iris Murdoch | |
| db42014 | Kant abolished God and made man God in His stead. We are still living in the age of the Kantian man, or Kantian man-god. Kant's conclusive exposure of the so-called proofs of the existence of God, his analysis of the limitations of speculative reason, together with his eloquent portrayal of the dgnity of rational man, has had results which might possibly dismay him. How recognizable, how familiar to us, is the man so beautifully portrayed i.. | Iris Murdoch | ||
| f0bf99e | She felt intense disappointment, even a kind of guilt, as if she had missed something, perhaps forever. He had been there, she could have spoken to him. Could she call out now, cry his name? It was impossible. | finality guilt iris-murdoch missed-chances missed-opportunity sad the-green-knight | Iris Murdoch | |
| 6ed5b79 | You're doing your thing, why can't I do my thing? I must be me even if I suffer for it. | henry-and-cato identity iris-murdoch self self-expression suffer | Iris Murdoch | |
| 8fac1f1 | I did not like the look of him at all. Something significantly ill-omened which I could not yet define emanated from him. | bad-omens foreboding iris-murdoch the-black-prince | Iris Murdoch | |
| 2447f1e | We are all potentially demons to each other, but some close relationships are saved from this fate. | demons iris-murdoch metaphor relationships the-sea-the-sea toxic-relationships | Iris Murdoch | |
| 2a6306c | Then the front doorbell (already too long delayed by my rambling narrative) rang. | iris-murdoch meta narrative narrator self-deprecating the-black-prince | Iris Murdoch | |
| d510c11 | I shall not attempt here to describe my marriage. Some impression of it will doubtless emerge. For the present story, its general nature rather than its detail is important. It was not a success. At first I saw her as a life-bringer. Then I saw her as a death-bringer. Some women are like that. There is a sort of energy which seems to reveal the world: then one day you find you are being devoured. Fellow victims will know what I mean. Possib.. | humor iris-murdoch marriage omission relationships the-black-prince | Iris Murdoch | |
| 69f934e | You get so worked up and flowery! You sound as if you were quoting something all the time! | flowery humor iris-murdoch quoting the-black-prince | Iris Murdoch | |
| c4f14e4 | You see, nobody cares about me except you. You don't know what that's like. You've always had people who cared. You've always had . I've never had anybody. No wonder I feel frustrated. | frustrated henry-and-cato iris-murdoch lonely unloved | Iris Murdoch | |
| 08af27f | I want you to be able to me, and as my love for you is so much of me (all of me, making me more than myself) then you must see that too. | henry-and-cato identity iris-murdoch love seen self the-beloved | Iris Murdoch | |
| 4d38cb7 | I'm not interested. I never liked him. He's some sort scoundrel. | dialogue dislike humor iris-murdoch scoundrel the-black-prince | Iris Murdoch | |
| 209a32c | Nothing will bring me peace except revenge. | peace revenge the-green-knight | Iris Murdoch | |
| a68af5b | Anywhere is dangerous if you carry danger with you. | dangerous inner-turmoil iris-murdoch the-message-to-the-planet troubled | Iris Murdoch | |
| 711df23 | The trouble with people nowadays is they don't know how to do nothing. | idle inactivity iris-murdoch | Iris Murdoch | |
| ff36d4b | The virtues have secret names: they are, so difficult of access, secret things. Everything that is worthy is secret. | secret the-black-prince virtues worthy | Iris Murdoch | |
| 7e2ecc0 | Only stories and magic really endure. | iris-murdoch lasting magic stories the-black-prince | Iris Murdoch | |
| 25e3de8 | How easily one is hurt. Or is it only I who am so stupidly vulnerable. | iris-murdoch sensitive the-green-knight vulnerable | Iris Murdoch | |
| d7adc61 | Now, when she felt so deeply connected to him, they were finally estranged. | connection estranged iris-murdoch star-crossed-lovers the-message-to-the-planet unrequited-love | Iris Murdoch | |
| 33c175b | I'm not young. I've never had any youth. | burdens iris-murdoch old-soul sad the-message-to-the-planet youth | Iris Murdoch | |
| 8d0063a | There is a kind of despair involved in creation which I am sure any artist knows all about. In art, as in morality, great things go by the board because at the crucial moment we blink our eyes. When is the crucial moment? Greatness is to recognize it and be able to hold it and to extend it. But for most of us the space between 'dreaming on things to come' and 'it is too late, it is all over' is too tiny to enter. And so we let each thing go.. | creative-process crucial-moment elusive inspiration iris-murdoch the-black-prince writer writing | Iris Murdoch | |
| 2dc9b4b | Of course we have an 'unconscious mind' and this is partly what my book is about. But there is no general chart of that lost continent. Certainly not a 'scientific' one. | metaphor subconscious subconscious-mind the-black-prince unknowable | Iris Murdoch | |
| 1d7c738 | Only sometimes at night when I think that you live now and are somewhere, I shed tears. | crying iris-murdoch parted sad separated separation tears the-black-prince | Iris Murdoch | |
| 66bc4be | Beyond her declaration of love she could not see. But as she rehearsed the intensity of her passion she thought that he , when the time came, . The desire to, at the right time, him became, as the years moved forward toward that time, increasingly painful, like a poisoned wound that must heal itself by breaking open. She thought in anguish of the times, the recent times, when she could have told him, and had been afraid to, and had cl.. | if-only iris-murdoch loss missed-chance missed-opportunity suffering the-green-knight unrequited-love unspoken | Iris Murdoch | |
| c593622 | There was a shadowy light, not exactly twilight, but an uncertain vivid yet hazy illumination, wherein people walked like spirits, bathed in light and not revealed. | description iris-murdoch light the-black-prince | Iris Murdoch | |
| 58df7d4 | A few people paused to look at him, but Londoners were by now so accustomed to 'weirdies' of all kinds that his ritual aroused little interest. | iris-murdoch london londoners onlookers passerby the-black-prince weirdies | Iris Murdoch | |
| 23b5103 | And I was upset to find how really reluctant I was to leave my little flat. It was as if I was almost frightened. Spasms of prophetic homesickness pierced me as I rearranged the china and dusted it with my handkerchief, obsessive visions of burglaries and desecrations. | anxiety fear hermetic homebody homesickness iris-murdoch recluse the-black-prince worry | Iris Murdoch | |
| 6211c2c | The room had the rather sinister tedium which some bedrooms have, a sort of weary banality which is a reminder of death. A dressing table can be a terrible thing. | description humor iris-murdoch morbid the-black-prince | Iris Murdoch | |
| 4753e09 | I struggled with a nebulous work which seemed now a , now a vast novel, wherein a hero not unlike myself pursued, amid ghostly incidents, a series of reflections about life and art. | iris-murdoch meta plot struggling the-black-prince writer writing | Iris Murdoch | |
| 2eb33b1 | I want to be cut off from people like Marloe. Being a real person oneself is a matter of setting up limits and drawing lines and saying no. I don't want to be a nebulous bit of ectoplasm straying around in other people's lives. That sort of vague sympathy with everybody precludes any real understanding of anybody . . . And it precludes any real loyalty to anybody. | discerning iris-murdoch loner loyalty relationships setting-limits the-black-prince understanding | Iris Murdoch | |
| 587585c | The world is perhaps ultimately to be defined as a place of suffering. Man is a suffering animal, subject to ceaseless anxiety and pain and fear. | iris-murdoch nihilism pessimism suffering the-black-prince the-human-condition the-world worldview | Iris Murdoch | |
| 7d9be3a | I just want to serve and help people and be good to everybody, only it always goes wrong somehow--I think about suicide all the time, every bloody day I want to die and stop this torture, but I go crawling on . . . I'm so Christ-awful bloody lonely I could scream with it for hours on end. | desperate iris-murdoch loneliness rejected selfless suicidal the-black-prince unlucky | Iris Murdoch | |
| f79e3d0 | Most friendships are a sort of frozen and undeveloping semi-hostility. | friendship hostility iris-murdoch relationships resentment stagnant the-black-prince | Iris Murdoch | |
| a8d219c | He was glad that he had expressed to her, however blunderingly, what he felt. He was glad that he had held her hand. | holding-hands iris-murdoch no-regrets the-message-to-the-planet | Iris Murdoch | |
| 9f3a0e8 | The agony was of suddenly feeling herself so separate and so secret. | iris-murdoch isolated secret secretive separate the-message-to-the-planet | Iris Murdoch | |
| d49d9d9 | Tal como nos conocemos, somos objetos falsos, imposturas, ramilletes de ilusiones" "Los juicios sobre las personas no son jamas decisivos, surgen de resumenes que inmediatamente hacen pensar en la necesidad de una reconsideracion. Los arreglos humanos no son otra cosa que cabos sueltos y calculos nebulosos, independientemente de cualquier cosa que para consolarnos pueda fingir el arte" | Iris Murdoch | ||
| d22274c | He felt himself falling into a state, very common when he was younger, of being totally cut off from the society he was in. | dissociation iris-murdoch outsider social-anxiety the-message-to-the-planet | Iris Murdoch | |
| bb2fd38 | How sad for those who cannot enjoy what are after all prime pleasures of daily life, and perhaps for some the only ones, eating and drinking. | drinking eating food iris-murdoch pleasures the-sea-the-sea | Iris Murdoch | |
| ce22cd8 | What the cold light showed me was that my situation was simply unlivable. I wanted, with a desire greater than any desire which I had ever conceived could exist without instantly killing its owner by spontaneous combustion, something which I simply could not have. | hopeless iris-murdoch suicidal the-black-prince unlivable unrequited-love wanting | Iris Murdoch | |
| 4aecd94 | 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. | pain soul suffering the-black-prince unending unendurable unrequited-love unspoken | Iris Murdoch | |
| e3e2821 | I contemplated her, seeing her young bland face looking at me, now removed as if behind a gauze curtain. She quietly invited me to suffer. There was a great space now, a great silent hall in which this suffering could take place. There was no urgency now, nothing to plan, nothing to achieve. What shall I do with it, I asked her, what shall I do now with my love for you which you so terribly revived by reappearing in my life? Why did you com.. | love the-sea-the-sea unrequited-love | Iris Murdoch | |
| 089664c | But the spark vanished, there was no longed-for recognition, no dawning sign of recovery. The love she had learnt in tending him was an enclosed love, muted and maimed, already mourning. They would never communicate now. | iris-murdoch missed-opportunity sad star-crossed-lovers the-message-to-the-planet unrequited-love unspoken | Iris Murdoch |