A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.
Iris Murdoch

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

Anything that consoles is fake.
Iris Murdoch

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

Being good is just a matter of temperament in the end.
Iris Murdoch

Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out.
Iris Murdoch

But fantasy kills imagination, pornography is death to art.
Iris Murdoch

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

Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is.
Iris Murdoch

Falling out of love is very enlightening. For a short while you see the world with new eyes.
Iris Murdoch

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

He was a sociologist; he had got into an intellectual muddle early on in life and never managed to get out.
Iris Murdoch

Human affairs are not serious, but they have to be taken seriously.
Iris Murdoch

I daresay anything can be made holy by being sincerely worshipped.
Iris Murdoch

I see myself as Rhoda, not Mary Tyler Moore.
Iris Murdoch

I think being a woman is like being Irish. Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the same.
Iris Murdoch

In almost every marriage there is a selfish and an unselfish partner. A pattern is set up and soon becomes inflexible, of one person always making the demands and one person always giving way.
Iris Murdoch

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

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

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