Iris Murdoch World Quotations

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

emotions really exist at the bottom of the personality or at the top. in the middle they are acted. this is why all the world is a stage.

We defend ourselves with descriptions and tame the world by generalizing.

We are all the judges and the judged, victims of the casual malice and fantasy of others, and ready sources of fantasy and malice in our turn. And if we are sometimes accused of sins of which we are innocent, are there not also other sins of which we are guilty and of which the world knows nothing?

A letter is a barrier, a reprieve, a charm against the world, an almost infallible method of acting at a distance.

Those who hope, by retiring from the world, to earn a holiday from human frailty, in themselves and others, are usually disappointed.