What a test that is: more than devotion, admiration, passion. If you long and long for someone’s company you love them.
Iris MurdochRead
Time can divorce us from the reality of people, it can separate us from people and turn them into ghosts. Or rather it is we who turn them into ghosts or demons. Some kinds of fruitless preoccupations with the past can create such simulacra, and they can exercise power, like those heroes at Troy fighting for a phantom Helen.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Time can make us forget the reality of people, reducing them to mere memories or shadows in our minds.
This quote by Iris Murdoch reflects on how the passage of time can influence our perceptions of people, turning them into mere memories or exaggerated versions of themselves, akin to ghosts or demons. It suggests that our fixation on the past can distort our relationships and create illusions that dominate our thoughts and emotions, rather than allowing us to engage with the reality of these individuals.
Themes
TimeMemoryRelationshipsPastPerception
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a discussion about how we remember loved ones who have passed away.
More from Iris Murdoch
All quotes →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.
Iris MurdochRead
Man'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
Similar quotes
Never idealize others. They will never live up to your expectations. Don't over-analyze your relationships. Stop playing games. A growing relationship can only be nurtured by genuineness.
Leo BuscagliaRead
I don't even know how to speak up for myself, because I don't really have a father who would give me the confidence or advice.
EminemRead
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Barack ObamaRead
I have to express sympathy from the bottom of my heart to those people who were taken as wartime comfort women. As a human being, I would like to express my sympathies, and also as prime minister of Japan I need to apologize to them.
Shinzo AbeRead
Mackenzie, you cannot produce trust, just as you cannot 'do' humility. It either is or is not. Trust is the fruit of a relationship in which you know you are loved. Because you do not know that I love you, you cannot trust me.
William P. YoungRead
When you really listen to another person from their point of view, and reflect back to them that understanding, it's like giving them emotional oxygen.
Stephen CoveyRead