Trish Gerber > Trish's Quotes

“Education doesn’t make you happy. Nor does freedom. We don’t become happy just because we’re free – if we are. Or because we’ve been educated – if we have. But because education may be the means by which we realize we are happy. It opens our eyes, our ears, tells us where delights are lurking, convinces us that there is only one freedom of any importance whatsoever, that of the mind, and gives us the assurance – the confidence – to walk the path our mind, our educated mind, offers.”
― Iris Murdoch

“I know how much you grieve over those who are under your care: those you try to help and fail, those you cannot help. Have faith in God and remember that He will is His own way and in His own time complete what we so poorly attempt. Often we do not achieve for others the good that we intend but achieve something, something that goes on from our effort. Good is an overflow. Where we generously and sincerely intend it, we are engaged in a work of creation which may be mysterious even to ourselves - and because it is mysterious we may be afraid of it. But this should not make us draw back. God can always show us, if we will, a higher and a better way; and we can only learn to love by loving. Remember that all our failures are ultimately failures in love. Imperfect love must not be condemned and rejected but made perfect. The way is always forward, never back.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.”
― Iris Murdoch, Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature

“I think being a woman is like being Irish... Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the time.”
― Iris Murdoch

“Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.”
― Iris Murdoch

“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.”
― Iris Murdoch, Under the Net

“One of the secrets of a happy life is continous small treats.”
― Iris Murdoch

“Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is.”
― Iris Murdoch

“The most essential and fundamental aspect of culture is the study of literature, since this is an education in how to picture and understand human situations.
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― Iris Murdoch

“The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular body and its indifference to substitutes is one of life's major mysteries.”
― Iris Murdoch

“Only the very greatest art invigorates without consoling.”
― Iris Murdoch