Top 500 Iris Murdoch Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “He had lived a chaste life really. It was his accusers and not his crimes which troubled him.”

— Iris Murdoch

202. “Even if readers claim that they ‘take it all with a grain of salt’, they do not really. They yearn to believe, and they believe, because believing is easier than disbelieving, and because anything which is written down is likely to be ‘true in a way’.”

— Iris Murdoch

203. “The room, the wall, trembled with precision, as if the inanimate world were about to utter a word.”

— Iris Murdoch

204. “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

205. “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

206. “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

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

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

210. “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

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

— Iris Murdoch

212. “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

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

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

215. “No! I can’t leave him, I’m bound to him, I’m made of him, I am him!”

— Iris Murdoch

216. “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

217. “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

218. “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

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

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

221. “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

222. “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

223. “Those who cry out the truth to an indifferent world too often weary, fall silent or come to doubt their own wit.”

— Iris Murdoch

224. “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

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

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

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

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

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

233. “She thought, I am becoming a recluse. Yes, that’s it, that is the way.”

— Iris Murdoch

234. “He is crammed full of rage and hate and desire for revenge.”

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

238. “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

239. “He felt misery, loneliness, a terrible need for love.”

— Iris Murdoch

240. “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

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

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

244. “All dreams are sinister.”

— Iris Murdoch

245. “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

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

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

248. “She was her death now, that death which she had so much striven to emulate in life, which she had studied and practised and loved. She had succeeded, and death and she had converged into a single point. Who knew if that was victory or defeat? His last vision was of the white veil that hid her now. After all, and at last, she had become utterly private.”

— Iris Murdoch

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

— Iris Murdoch

250. “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