Iris Murdoch

Novelist, Author

1919 – 1999

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Who was Iris Murdoch?

Dame Iris Murdoch DBE was an Irish-born British author and philosopher, best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her first published novel, Under the Net, was selected in 1998 as one of Modern Library's 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In 1987, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. In 2008, The Times ranked Murdoch twelfth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

Famous Quotes:

  • Philosophy! Empty thinking by ignorant conceited men who think they can digest without eating!
  • Possibly, more people kill themselves and others out of hurt vanity than out of envy, jealousy, malice or desire for revenge.
  • 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.
  • Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Every man needs two women, a quiet home-maker, and a thrilling nymph.
  • Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.
  • Moralistic is not moral. And as for truth -- well, it's like brown -- it's not in the spectrum. Truth is so generic.
  • I daresay anything can be made holy by being sincerely worshipped.

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Born
Jul 15, 1919
Phibsborough
Also known as
  • Jean Iris Murdoch
  • Dame Iris Murdoch
Spouses
Nationality
  • United Kingdom
  • Republic of Ireland
Profession
Education
  • Somerville College, Oxford
  • Newnham College, Cambridge
  • University of Toronto Mississauga
  • Badminton School
  • University of Oxford
  • Ibstock Place School
Lived in
  • Dublin
  • Suffolk
Died
Feb 8, 1999
Oxfordshire

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

Citation

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