What a test that is: more than devotion, admiration, passion. If you long and long for someoneβs company you love them.
Iris MurdochRead
The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The bicycle represents a simple, pure, and civilized means of transportation compared to other increasingly complex and problematic forms of travel.
This quote by Iris Murdoch suggests that the bicycle epitomizes a form of transport that is straightforward, unencumbered by the complications and stresses associated with modern vehicles. In a world where other means of transport often become 'nightmarish' due to congestion, pollution, and technological dependence, the bicycle stands out as a symbol of purity and simplicity, offering a more humane and thoughtful way to move about.
Themes
BicycleTransportationCivilizationPurityFreedom
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used during a cycling event to emphasize the positive aspects of biking.
More from Iris Murdoch
All quotes βMan's creative struggle, his search for wisdom and truth, is a love story.
Iris MurdochRead
All art deals with the absurd and aims at the simple. Good art speaks truth, indeed is truth, perhaps the only truth.
Iris MurdochRead
A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.
Iris MurdochRead
Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wavelength of ours all they hear is a continuous scream.
Iris MurdochRead
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.
Iris MurdochRead
Similar quotes
We can build wealth in all our communities, value public education, plan for our neighborhoods, invest in housing we can afford and transportation that serves everyone, truly fund public health for safety and healing, and deliver on a city Green New Deal for clean air and water, healthy homes, and the brightest future for our children.
Michelle WuRead
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.
Alfred North WhiteheadRead
The man who sat on the ground in his tipi meditating on life and its meaning, accepting the kinship of all creatures and acknowledging unity with the universe of things, was infusing into his being the true essence of civilization.
Luther Standing BearRead
When I go biking, I repeat a mantra of the day's sensations: bright sun, blue sky, warm breeze, blue jay's call, ice melting and so on. This helps me transcend the traffic, ignore the clamorings of work, leave all the mind theaters behind and focus on nature instead. I still must abide by the rules of the road, of biking, of gravity. But I am mentally far away from civilization. The world is breaking someone else's heart.
Diane AckermanRead
Real freedom lies in wildness, not in civilization.
Charles LindberghRead
To accept civilization as it is practically means accepting decay.
George OrwellRead