Iris Murdoch Quotes

“I am looking out of my window in an anxious and resentful state of mind, oblivious to my surroundings, brooding perhaps on some damage done to my prestige. Then suddenly I observe a hovering kestrel. In a moment everything is altered. The brooding self with its hurt vanity has disappeared. There is nothing now but kestrel. And when I return to thinking of the other matter it seems less important”

“How had things gone so terribly wrong? She wasn't supposed to be returning to Murdoch House in defeat, and she most certainly was not supposed to be returning alone.Lilly should be there. And Gideon. High-handed, muleheaded, wonderful Gideon. She'd never admitted it, not even to herself, but a part of her had expected him to come back to Murdoch House with her. Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that no part of her had been able to imagine going back without him.”

“So long as I can stay mentally alert - inquiring, curious - I want to keep going. I love my wife and my children, but I don't want to sit around at home with them. We go on safaris and things like that. I can do that for a couple of weeks a year. I'm just not ready to stop, to die.”

“I'm a catalyst for change. You can't be an outsider and be successful over 30 years without leaving a certain amount of scar tissue around the place.”

“The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.”

“Every man needs two women: a quiet home-maker, and a thrilling nymph.”

“There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship.”

“Advances in the technology of telecommunications have proved an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere.”

“Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.”

“All art is a struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous.”