The priesthood is a marriage. People often start by falling in love, and they go on for years without realizing that love must change into some other love which is so unlike it that it can hardly be recognized as love at all. – Iris Murdoch
In almost every marriage there is a selfish and an unselfish partner. A pattern is set up and soon becomes inflexible, of one person always making the demands and one person always giving way. – Iris Murdoch
Every man needs two women: a quiet home-maker, and a thrilling nymph. – Iris Murdoch
We shall be better prepared for the future if we see how terrible, how doomed the present is. – Iris Murdoch
But on the first day came veiled spirits from all hours into his soul… a soft intoxication, which the atmosphere of nature, like that of a wine-store, communicated to him, spread itself, like an enchanted solitude around his soul. – Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, Hesperus, or Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days: A Biography,