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
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All art deals with the absurd and aims at the simple. Good art speaks truth, indeed is truth, perhaps the only truth.
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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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