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The Black Prince

Iris Murdoch

Top 10 Best Quotes

“Every artist is an unhappy lover. And unhappy lovers want to tell their story.”

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

“The division of one day from the next must be one of the most profound peculiarities of life on this planet. We are not condemned to sustained flights of being, but are constantly refreshed by little holidays from ourselves. We are intermittent creatures, always falling to little ends and rising to new beginnings. Our soon-tired consciousness is meted out in chapters, and that the world will look quite different tomorrow is, both for our comfort and our discomfort, usually true. How marvelously too night matches sleep, sweet image of it, so nearly apportioned to our need. Angels must wonder at these beings who fall so regularly out of awareness into a fantasm-infested dark. How our frail identities survive these chasms no philosopher has ever been able to explain.”

“I've been so unhappy for years, so unhappy . . . I don't understand how a human being can be so unhappy all the time and still be alive.”

“I have nobody in the world. I'll kill myself. That's best. Everyone will say, It's for the best that she killed herself, she's better off dead . . . I hate myself so much I could spend hours and hours just screaming with hatred and with the pain of it, oh the pain of it . . .”

“Once in an endless meadow, just able to peer through the tawny haze of the grass tops, the child who was myself had watched a young fox catching mice, an elegant newly minted fox, straight from the hand of God, brilliantly ruddy, with black stockings and a white-tipped brush. The fox heard and turned. I saw its intense vivid mask, its liquid amber eyes. Then it was gone. An image of such beauty and such mysterious sense. The child wept and knew himself an artist.”

“Most friendships are a sort of frozen and undeveloping semi-hostility.”

“Love generates, or rather reveals, something which may be called absolute charm. In the beloved nothing is gauche. Every move of the head, every tone of the voice, every laugh or grunt or cough or twitch of the nose is as valuable and revealing as a glimpse of paradise.”

“Only take someone's hand in a certain way, even look into their eyes in a certain way, and the world is changed forever.”

“An experience is richest not talked of.”

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Book Keywords:

unhappy, hostility, friendship, touch, frenemies, miserable, depression, suffering, suicidal, unendurable, romantic, romance, gazing, iris-murdoch, change, resentment, self-loathing, the-black-prince, irrevocable, love, unending, self-hatred, relationships, stagnant, holding-hands, alone

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