Iris Murdoch Quotes

But now more often the old stale hopeless weariness overcame him: the black sickness which almost no one else, certainly not his nearest dearest friends, could understand at all. The idea of giving up the world, which had given him for a time so much life-energy, appeared now as a sort of fake suicide, a ghastly play-image of his death. This fatal falseness-of-heart was what perhaps Father Damien, on further acquaintance, had now seen in him.

I've thought about nothing else but you.

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

Tal como nos conocemos, somos objetos falsos, imposturas, ramilletes de ilusiones”

“Los juicios sobre las personas no son jamás decisivos, surgen de resúmenes que inmediatamente hacen pensar en la necesidad de una reconsideración. Los arreglos humanos no son otra cosa que cabos sueltos y cálculos nebulosos, independientemente de cualquier cosa que para consolarnos pueda fingir el arte

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.

What greater torment than to see that light, and then to see it eternally withdrawn?

I'll never be happy, how can you love me, I'm awful, I'm covered with spiders, I'm doomed.

I'm the absolute queen bee of unrequited love.

To say we were 'in love', that vague weakened phrase, cannot express it. We loved each other, we lived in each other, through each other, by each other. We were each other. Why was it such pure unadulterated pain?

You seem to think the past is unreal, a pit full of ghosts. But to me the past is in some ways the most real thing of all, and loyalty to it the most important thing of all.

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.

I'm made for misery, misery, misery, I'm made to be destroyed!

"You've obviously never been in love."

"I have actually. And awfully. And — always — without hope — I've never had my love reciprocated ever."

I have seen much of human beings over a long period, and I have learnt how little good to expect from them.

Of course we live in dreams and by dreams, and even in a disciplined spiritual life, in some ways especially there, it is hard to distinguish dream from reality. In ordinary human affairs humble common sense comes to one's aid. For most people common sense is moral sense. But you seem to have deliberately excluded this modest source of light. Ask yourself, what really happened between whom all those years ago? You've made it into a story, and stories are false.