What a test that is: more than devotion, admiration, passion. If you long and long for someoneβs company you love them.
Iris MurdochRead
All art deals with the absurd and aims at the simple. Good art speaks truth, indeed is truth, perhaps the only truth.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Art addresses life's absurdities while seeking simplicity and truth.
This quote by Iris Murdoch emphasizes the intrinsic connection between art and the human experience, suggesting that art reflects the absurdities of life while striving to convey fundamental truths. It posits that good art not only represents these truths but embodies them, serving as a vital medium for understanding reality in a chaotic world.
Themes
ArtAbsurdityTruthSimplicityExpression
In practice
Example use cases
A discussion in an art class about what defines good art.
More from Iris Murdoch
All quotes βThe bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.
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Man's creative struggle, his search for wisdom and truth, is a love story.
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A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.
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Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wavelength of ours all they hear is a continuous scream.
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For most of us, for almost all of us, truth can be attained, if at all, only in silence. It is in silence that the human spirit touches the divine.
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To desire to write poems that endure-we undertake such a goal certain of two things: that in all likelihood we will fail, and if we succeed we will never know it
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People on the outside think there's something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn't like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that's all there is to it.
Harlan EllisonRead