Top 500 Iris Murdoch Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “Your best friends are in trouble and you say ‘of course’ and forget them instantly.”

— Iris Murdoch

202. “But there are times of suffering which remain in our lives like black absolutes and are not blotted out. Fortunate are those for whom these black stars shed some sort of light.”

— Iris Murdoch

203. “I took a deep breath, however, and followed my rule of never speaking frankly to women in moments of emotion. No good ever comes of this.”

— Iris Murdoch

204. “The sun shone calm and bright on the grass, refreshed by the rain, on the border of pretty stones, on the sparkling yellow rocks. It was a caricature of a happy scene.”

— Iris Murdoch

205. “The notion that one can liberate another soul from captivity is an illusion of the very young.”

— Iris Murdoch

206. “I had deluded myself throughout by the idea of reviving a secret love which did not exist at all.”

— Iris Murdoch

207. “A childhood hatred, like a childhood love, can last a lifetime.”

— Iris Murdoch

208. “You imagine that to live in a state of extremity is necessarily to discover the truth about yourself. What you discover then is violence and emptiness. And of this you make a virtue.”

— Iris Murdoch

209. “Look Moy, see the chimneys, they’ve lit all the fires, they must have known we were going to try to drown ourselves. And Anax is running on ahead to bring the news.”

— Iris Murdoch

210. “Coffee, unless it is very good and made by somebody else, is pretty intolerable at any time.”

— Iris Murdoch

211. “I’m sorry I was awful. I’m so full of terrors.”

— Iris Murdoch

212. “There are special nightmares for the daytime sleeper: little nervous dreams tossed into some brief restless moments of unconsciousness and breaking through the surface of the mind to become confused at once with the horror of some waking vision. Such are these awakenings, like an awakening in the grave, when one opens one’s eyes, stretched out rigid with clenched hands, waiting for some misery to declare itself; but for a long time it lies to suffocation upon the chest and utters no word.”

— Iris Murdoch

213. “But, and especially with Linda’s help, he had decided that, like most other people, he was not made for reality.”

— Iris Murdoch

214. “You know what. You’ve killed me and sent me to hell, and you must descend to the underworld to find me and make me live again. If you don’t come for me, I’ll become a demon and drag you down into the dark.”

— Iris Murdoch

215. “He said, ‘Forgive me for being a liar and a fool and an utterly worthless man.’ Louise replied, ‘I love you.’ He took her in his arms for a moment and they held each other with closed eyes.”

— Iris Murdoch

216. “Not to have been born is undoubtedly best, but sound sleep is second best.”

— Iris Murdoch

217. “I am just a past with no present.”

— Iris Murdoch

218. “Perhaps there was an intimacy which did not need words.”

— Iris Murdoch

219. “Perhaps the crime was that of letting himself be loved so much more than he loved.”

— Iris Murdoch

220. “And now she had run into an emptiness more final than any words of rejection. He was gone and would make himself a stranger to her for ever.”

— Iris Murdoch

221. “He dreamt... he was a huge white egg floating in the sea of turquoise blue, and he was everything that there was.”

— Iris Murdoch

222. “The most potent and sacred command which can be laid upon any artist is the command: wait.”

— Iris Murdoch

223. “Being good is just a matter of temperament in the end.”

— Iris Murdoch

224. “I am sorry,” said Monty. “I cannot respond to you in any way. I am just not sufficiently interested in anything you have to say.”

— Iris Murdoch

225. “The human soul is not framed for continued proximity, and the result of this enforced neighbourhood is often an appalling loneliness for which the rules of the game forbid assuagement.”

— Iris Murdoch

226. “They really wanted to remain always in their own house and their own garden. There are such people.”

— Iris Murdoch

227. “Sometimes I feel I am crammed with demons.”

— Iris Murdoch

228. “Oh what a mad business, no good can come of it, only chaos, and not just chaos but evil. How did we gradually get entangled in such a terribly dangerous shambles!”

— Iris Murdoch

229. “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. Possibly I am a natural bachelor.”

— Iris Murdoch

230. “Sometimes he would have liked to pray, but what is prayer if there is nobody there?”

— Iris Murdoch

231. “His eyes closed now, and for a long time they sat quietly thus. Such was their lovemaking.”

— Iris Murdoch

232. “I think philosophy is extremely good training for anyone who wants to do anything. Although that is an idea which people may speak scornfully of now, I think it does teach one to.”

— Iris Murdoch

233. “We naturally take in the catastrophes of our friends a pleasure which genuinely does not preclude friendship. This is partly but not entirely because we enjoy being empowered as helpers. The unexpected or inappropriate catastrophe is especially piquant.”

— Iris Murdoch

234. “Where’s your house?’ ‘Kempsford Gardens, by West Brompton tube station.”

— Iris Murdoch

235. “I know people can be awful dooms for each other.”

— Iris Murdoch

236. “You can’t magic yourself out of the situation, you’ve got to live it as decently and as grimly as you can.”

— Iris Murdoch

237. “I daresay anything can be made holy by being sincerely worshipped.”

— Iris Murdoch

238. “And suffering we know breeds images, it breeds the most beautiful images of all.”

— Iris Murdoch

239. “In a happy marriage there is a continuous dense magnetic sense of communication.”

— Iris Murdoch

240. “I had better spend the day quietly, sleep in the afternoon perhaps, and then start again hunting for Hugo. I would have much preferred to look for Anna. But I had no idea now where to start looking. Also I wanted to lay quickly to rest the terrible suspicion that where I found Hugo now I would also find Anna. This idea didn’t bear thinking about and so I didn’t think about it.”

— Iris Murdoch

241. “Another person’s illness is often harder to bear than one’s own.”

— Iris Murdoch

242. “The trouble with people nowadays is they don’t know how to do nothing.”

— Iris Murdoch

243. “We re all muddlers. The thing is to see is when one’s got to stop muddling.”

— Iris Murdoch

244. “Only sometimes at night when I think that you live now and are somewhere, I shed tears.”

— Iris Murdoch

245. “The problems were too evident, they sat together eyeing them in silence. The stage now belonged to the young people, there would be happenings. Yet nothing happened; and Clement felt as if a magic spell had paralysed them all.”

— Iris Murdoch

246. “You cannot have both truth and what you call civilisation.”

— Iris Murdoch

247. “I was now, all the time, unutterably tired as if simply keeping alive was a terrible effort.”

— Iris Murdoch

248. “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.”

— Iris Murdoch

249. “Even what we are most certain of we know only in an illusory form.”

— Iris Murdoch

250. “We’re just living on our emotions and eating each other.”

— Iris Murdoch