artist

bad review

bereavement

bicycle

book

equality

failure

flower

happiness

jealousy

literature

love

philosophy

present

reality

self-knowledge

sophistry

unity

unselfing

virtuous consciousness

youth

nationality

British

Irish

occupation / innovator as

novelist

philosopher

poet

scientific organization

American Academy of Arts and Sciences

cause of death

natural causes

professor

biographer

is a struggle to be virtuous in a particular sort of way.

All art is a struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous. (Iris Murdoch)

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

is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved.

is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.

The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.

Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea.

is, in every case, ultimately a failure in love.

Remember that all our failures are ultimately failures in love.

is the everyday mode of consciousness whereby one is busy and lively and unconcerned with self. The opposite, or damnation, is an unremitting agonizing preoccupation with self.

Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self. To be damned is for one's ordinary everyday mode of consciousness to be unremitting agonizing preoccupation with self.

is a matter of one's most ordinary and everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self.

Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary and everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self.

is the most dreadfully involuntary of all sins, at once one of the ugliest and one of the most pardonable.

Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.

is the most dreadfully involuntary of all sins.

is a disciplined technique for arousing certain emotions.

Literature could be said to be a sort of disciplined technique for arousing certain emotions. (Iris Murdoch)

is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.

Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real. (Iris Murdoch)

is slow-going. If you aren't moving at a snail's pace, you aren't moving at all.

In philosophy if you aren't moving at a snail's pace you aren't moving at all. (Iris Murdoch)

is empty thinking by ignorant conceited men who think they can digest without eating.

is looking at things which one takes for granted and suddenly seeing that they are very odd indeed.

is terrible and doomed and we will be better prepared for the future if we see just how terrible, and just how doomed.

We shall be better prepared for the future if we see how terrible, how doomed the present is. Iris Murdoch

is a methodology of altering our mood or state of thinking whereby we give our attention over to nature (for example to that bird passing there) in order to clear our minds of selfish care.

InThe Sovereignty of the Good: 'The most obvious thing in our surroundings which is an occasion for 'unselfing' is what is popularly called beauty I am looking out of my window in an anxious and resentful state of mind, oblivious of 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. And of course this is something which we may do deliberately: give attention to nature in order to clear our minds of selfish care.

*From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.

Iris MurdochThinkers

Iris Murdoch