Moralistic is not moral. And as for truth - well, it's like brown - it's not in the spectrum. Truth is so generic.
Iris Murdoch

No love is entirely without worth, even when the frivolous calls to the frivolous and the base to the base.
Iris Murdoch

One doesn't have to get anywhere in a marriage. It's not a public conveyance.
Iris Murdoch

Only lies and evil come from letting people off.
Iris Murdoch

People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.
Iris Murdoch

Perhaps misguided moral passion is better than confused indifference.
Iris Murdoch

Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wavelength of ours all they hear is a continuous scream.
Iris Murdoch

Philosophy! Empty thinking by ignorant conceited men who think they can digest without eating!
Iris Murdoch

The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular body and its indifference to substitutes is one of life's major mysteries.
Iris Murdoch

The cry of equality pulls everyone down.
Iris Murdoch

The notion that one will not survive a particular catastrophe is, in general terms, a comfort since it is equivalent to abolishing the catastrophe.
Iris Murdoch

The priesthood is a marriage. People often start by falling in love, and they go on for years without realizing that love must change into some other love which is so unlike it that it can hardly be recognized as love at all.
Iris Murdoch

There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship.
Iris Murdoch

We can only learn to love by loving.
Iris Murdoch

We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.
Iris Murdoch

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

Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.
Iris Murdoch