Top 500 Iris Murdoch Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “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

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

— Iris Murdoch

203. “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

204. “Sometimes one feels suddenly doomed by fate.”

— Iris Murdoch

205. “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

206. “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

207. “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

208. “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.”

— Iris Murdoch

209. “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

210. “Most real relationships are involuntary.”

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

213. “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

214. “Goodness is giving up power and acting upon the world negatively. The good are unimaginable.”

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

216. “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

217. “Your best friends are in trouble and you say ‘of course’ and forget them instantly.”

— Iris Murdoch

218. “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

219. “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

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

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

222. “The entry of a child into any situation changes the whole situation.”

— Iris Murdoch

223. “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

224. “I have no close friends, that is, no friends.”

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

227. “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

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

— Iris Murdoch

229. “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

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

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

233. “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

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

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

237. “Today we will read love poetry. You shall read aloud to me and we will weep together.”

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

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

— 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. “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

242. “Marriage isn’t a tram. It doesn’t have to get anywhere.”

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

245. “The sending of a letter constitutes a magical grasp upon the future.”

— Iris Murdoch

246. “Now she did not even wish to try, for fear of rousing up something terrible.”

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

248. “All dreams are sinister.”

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch