The Bell Quotes

“I know how much you grieve over those who are under your care: those you try to help and fail, those you cannot help. Have faith in God and remember that He will is His own way and in His own time complete what we so poorly attempt. Often we do not achieve for others the good that we intend but achieve something, something that goes on from our effort. Good is an overflow. Where we generously and sincerely intend it, we are engaged in a work of creation which may be mysterious even to ourselves - and because it is mysterious we may be afraid of it. But this should not make us draw back. God can always show us, if we will, a higher and a better way; and we can only learn to love by loving. Remember that all our failures are ultimately failures in love. Imperfect love must not be condemned and rejected but made perfect. The way is always forward, never back.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“Our actions are like ships which we may watch set out to sea, and not know when or with what cargo they will return to port.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“Those who hope, by retiring from the world, to earn a holiday from human frailty, in themselves and others, are usually disappointed.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“Violence is born of the desire to escape oneself.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“The talk of lovers who have just declared their love is one of life's most sweet delights. Each vies with the other in humility, in amazement at being so valued. The past is searched for the first signs and each one is in haste to declare all that he is so that no part of his being escapes the hallowing touch.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“youth is a marvelous garment”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“Toby had received, though not yet digested, one of the earliest lessons of adult life: that one is never secure. At any moment one can be removed from a state of guileless serenity and plunged into its opposite, without any intermediate condition, so high about us do the waters rise of our own and other people's imperfection.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“The chief requirement of the good life', said Michael, 'is that one should have some conception of one's capacities. One must know oneself sufficiently to know what is the next thing. One must study carefully how best to use such strength as one has. ... One must perform the lower act which one can manage and sustain: not the higher act which one bungles.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“... 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 Murdoch, The Bell

“Youth is a marvelous garment. How misplaced is the sympathy lavished on adolescents. There is a yet more difficult age which comes later, when one has less to hope for and less ability to change, when one has cast the die and has to settle into a chosen life without the consolations of habit or the wisdom of maturity, when, as in her own case, one ceases to be une jeune fille un peu folle, and becomes merely a woman, worst of all, a wife. The very young have their troubles, but they have at least a part to play, the part of being very young.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“But death is not easy, and life can win by simulating it.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“You don't respect me," said Dora, her voice trembling.

"Of course I don't respect you," said Paul. "Have I any reason to? I'm in love with you, unfortunately, that's all."

"Well, it's unfortunate for me too," said Dora, starting to cry.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“Like all inexperienced people, Toby tended to make all-or-nothing judgements.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“She stopped thinking so as not to cry”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“Dora watched him for a while, nervously, and then returned to scanning the whole group. Seeing them all together like that she felt excluded and aggressive, and Noel's exhortations came back to her. They had a secure complacent look about them: the spiritual ruling class; and she wished suddenly that she might grow as large and fierce as a gorilla and shake the flimsy doors off their hinges, drowning the repulsive music in a savage carnivorous yell.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“Patchway had the enviable countryman's capacity, which is shared only by great actors, of standing by and saying nothing, and yet existing, large, present, and at ease.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“It occurred to her that here at last was something real and something perfect. Who had said that, about perfection and reality being in the same place? Here was something which her consciousness could not wretchedly devour, and by making it part of her fantasy make it worthless.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“To be good and gay was surely the highest of human destinies.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“You don’t respect me,’ said Dora, her voice trembling.
‘Of course I don’t respect you,’ said Paul. ‘Have I any reason to? I’m in love with you, unfortunately, that’s all.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“There were many people . . . 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. Work, as it now is, . . . can rarely offer satisfaction to the half-contemplative.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“With strong magnetic force the human heart is drawn to consolation; and even grieving becomes consolation in the end.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“There were many people, she said, and Michael was but too ready to credit her since 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 Murdoch, The Bell

“How could he assess her like this because of something which had happened in the past? The past was never real for Dora. The notion that Paul might keep her past alive to torment her with, now occurred to her for the first time.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“Still, everyone appeared to be extremely nice, except that that Dr Greenfield man was a trifle rebarbative. (This was a word which Toby had recently learnt at school and could not now conceive of doing without.)”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“Michael could hear him yawning. At last he said, ‘That cider has made me quite sleepy.’ ‘Well, go to sleep then,’ said Michael. ‘Oh, no,’ said Toby. ‘I’m not as sleepy as all that.’ In a few minutes he was asleep.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“When I am told that a person is happy,’ said Nick, ‘I know that he is not. Of really happy people this is never said.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“By a dialectic well known to those who habitually succumb to temptation he passed in a second from the time when it was too early to struggle to the time when it was too late to struggle.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“He went away, bent double with the pains of remorse and regret and the inward biting of a love which had now no means of expression. He remembered now when it was useless how the Abbess had told him that the way was always forward. Nick had needed love, and he ought to have given him what he had to offer, without fears about its imperfection. If he had had more faith he would have done so, not calculating either Nick’s faults or his own. Michael recalled too how, with Toby; he had acted with more daring, and had probably acted wrong. Yet no serious harm had come to Toby; besides he had not loved Toby as he loved Nick, was not responsible for Toby as he had been for Nick. So great a love must have contained some grain of good, something at least which might have attached Nick to this world, given him some glimpse of hope. Wretchedly Michael forced himself to remember the occasions on which Nick had appealed to him since he came to Imber, and how on every occasion Michael had denied him. Michael had concerned himself with keeping his own hands clean, his own future secure, when instead he should have opened his heart: should impetuously and devotedly and beyond all reason have broken the alabaster cruse of very costly ointment.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“Toby had received, though not yet digested, one of the earliest lessons of adult life: that one is never secure. At any moment one can be removed from a state of guileless serenity and plunged into its opposite, without any intermediate condition, so high about us do the waters rise of our own and other people’s imperfection.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“There is a God but I do not believe in him.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell