The Unicorn
Iris Murdoch
Top 10 Best Quotes
“ We are all prisoner, but the name of our cure is not freedom”
“Freedom may be a value in politics, but it is not a value in morals.”
“Art and psychoanalisis give shape and meaning to life and that's why we adore them. However, life as it is lived has no shape nor meaning, and that's what I am experiencing right now.”
“She was her death now, that death which she had so much striven to emulate in life, which she had studied and practised and loved. She had succeeded, and death and she had converged into a single point. Who knew if that was victory or defeat? His last vision was of the white veil that hid her now. After all, and at last, she had become utterly private.”
“How mysterious night and day are, this endless procession off dark and light....I think such sad thoughts - of people in trouble and afraid, all lonely people all prisoners.”
“What we can see determines what we choose. Good is the distant source of light, it is the unimaginable object of our desire. Our fallen nature knows only its name and its perfection. That is the idea which is vulgarized by existentialists and linguistic philosophers when they make good into a mere matter of personal choice. It cannot be defined, not because it is a function of our freedom, but because we do not know it.”
“There are things which are appalling to young people because young people think life should be happy and free. But life is never really happy and free in any beautiful sense. Happiness is a weak and paltry thing and perhaps"freedom" has no meaning. There are great patterns in which we are involved, and destinies which belong to us and which we love even in the moment when they destroy us.”
“Suffering is no scandal. It is natural. Nature appoints it. All creation suffers. It suffers from having been created, if from nothing else. It suffers from being divided from God.' 'Yours is a melancholy sort of religion, Dennis. I'm afraid I don't believe in God.' 'Ah, you do. But you do not know His name. And I who know His name am only the better of you by one little word. Here is the salmon pool.”
“Marian was suddenly overcome by an appalling crippling panic. She was very frightened at the idea of arriving. But it was more than that. She feared the rocks and the cliffs and the grotesque dolmen and the ancient secret things. Her two companions seemed no longer reassuring but dreadfully alien and even sinister. She felt, for the first time in her life, completely isolated and in danger. She became in an instant almost faint with terror. She said, as a cry for help, ‘I’m feeling terribly nervous’. ‘I know you are,’ said Scottow. (…) Marian was appalled at the sudden quietness. But the insane panic had left her. She was frightened now in an ordinary way, sick in her stomach, shy, tongue-tied, horribly aware of the onset of a new world.”
“Art and psychoanalysis give shape and meaning to life and that is why we adore them, but life as it is lived has no shape and meaning, and that is what I am experiencing just now.”
Except where otherwise noted, all rights reserved to the author(s) of this book (mentioned above). The content of this page serves solely as promotional material for the aforementioned book. If you enjoyed these quotes, you can support the author(s) by acquiring the full book from Amazon.
Book Keywords:
private, psychoanalysis, art, suicidal, the-unicorn, goodness, novel, fiction, meaningless, life, shapeless, meaning, death, philosophy, iris-murdoch, good, suicide
