... he felt himself to be one of them, who can live neither in the world nor out of it. They are a kind of sick people, whose desire for God makes them unsatisfactory citizens of an ordinary life, but whose strength or temperament fails them to surrender the world completely; and present-day society, with its hurried pace and its mechanical and technical structure, offers no home to these unhappy souls.
Iris MurdochI have used the word "attention," which I borrow from Simone Weil, to express the idea of a just and loving gaze directed upon individual reality. I believe this to be the characteristic and proper mark of the active moral agent.
Iris MurdochWe need a moral philosophy in which the concept of love, so rarely mentioned now by philosophers, can once again be made central.
Iris MurdochDogs are very different from cats in that they can be images of human virtue. They are like us.
Iris Murdoch