Q0200

Iris Murdoch

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.
Thinker Iris Murdoch
School Platonic Revival
Source The Sublime and the Good (1959)
Theme Love
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with The Sublime and the Good (1959), within the tradition of Platonic Revival. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of love, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Iris Murdoch's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Iris Murdoch. (n.d.). Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0200

MLA: Iris Murdoch. “Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0200.

Chicago: Iris Murdoch. “Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0200.

Same thinker

More from Iris Murdoch

  1. We need a moral philosophy in which the concept of love… can once again be made central.

All quotations by Iris Murdoch

Same theme

More on love

  1. Love is the desire for the perpetual possession of the good.
  2. A friend is another self.
  3. If you wish to be loved, love.
  4. Late have I loved you, beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you!
  5. Compassion is the basis of morality.

Browse the love theme