Iris Murdoch Soul Quotations

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

Mathematics is good for the soul, getting things right enlivens a sense of truth, efforts to understand automatically purify desires.

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.

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

I hate solitude, but I'm afraid of intimacy. The substance of my life is a private conversation with myself which to turn into a dialogue would be equivalent to self-destruction. The company which I need is the company which a pub or a cafe will provide. I have never wanted a communion of souls. It's already hard enough to tell the truth to oneself.