Iris Murdoch - The Bell (1958)

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Like all inexperienced people, Toby tended to make all-or-nothing judgments.

Iris Murdoch
Dora Greenfield left her husband because she was afraid of him. She decided six months later to return to him for the same reason.

Iris Murdoch
Mockery did not come easily to Dora, and had to be thought out beforehand.

Iris Murdoch
The talk of lovers who have just declared their love is one of life's most sweet delights. Each vies with the other in humility, in amazement at being so valued. The past is searched for the first signs, and each one is in haste to declare all that he is so that no part of his being escapes the hallowing touch.

Iris Murdoch
He felt neither guilt nor distress at the pleasure with which he was now filled by the proximity of this young creature, and when he discovered in himself even physical symptoms of his inclination he did not take fright, but continued cheerfully and serenely to see Nick whenever the ordinary run of his duties suggested it, congratulating himself upon the newly achieved solidity and rational calm of his spiritual life.

Iris Murdoch
Our actions are like ships which we may watch set out to sea, and not know when or with what cargo they will return to port.

Iris Murdoch
Remember that all our failures are ultimately failures in love.

Iris Murdoch
The chief requirement of the good life... is to live without any image of oneself.

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

Iris Murdoch
He felt himself to be one of them, who can live neither in the world nor out of it. They are a kind of sick people, whose desire for God makes them unsatisfactory citizens of an ordinary life, but whose strength or temperament fails them to surrender the world completely; and present-day society, with its hurried pace and its mechanical and technical structure, offers no home to these unhappy souls.

Iris Murdoch