quote · Legacy record
There are mysterious agencies of the human mind which, like roving gases, travel the world, causing pain and mutilation, without their owners having any full awareness, or even any awareness at all, of the strength and the whereabouts of these exhalations... So it is that we can be terrors to each other, and people in lonely rooms suffer humiliation and even damage because of others in whose consciousness perhaps they scarcely figure at all.
There are mysterious agencies of the human mind which, like roving gases, travel the world, causing pain and mutilation, without their owners having any full awareness, or even any awareness at all, of the strength and the whereabouts of these exhalations... So it is that we can be terrors to each other, and people in lonely rooms suffer humiliation and even damage because of others in whose consciousness perhaps they scarcely figure at all.
Approximate author period: c. 1959 AD · modern
Meaning not yet available
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Begin with source-checked readings and explanations ↗Attribution & collection notes
- Author or tradition
- Iris Murdoch
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin. - Historical period
- Approximate author period: c. 1959 AD · modern
Approximate author-period anchor from life dates 1919 to 1999; Wikidata Q217495, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q217495 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken. - Recorded source
- Contributor-provided quotation collection
Supplied reference C; CSV row 128687; supplied attribution, independently unverified
A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.