Muriel Spark Quotes

If I had my life to live over again, I would form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practice, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is not another practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life.

~ Muriel Spark

If you want to concentrate deeply on some problem, and especially some piece of writing or paper-work, you should acquire a cat. Alone with the cat in the room where you work ... the cat will invariably get up on your desk and settle placidly under the desk lamp ... The cat will settle down and be serene, with a serenity that passes all understanding. And the tranquility of the cat will gradually come to affect you, sitting there at your desk, so that all the excitable qualities that impede your concentration compose themselves and give your mind back the self-command it has lost. You need not watch the cat all the time. Its presence alone is enough. The effect of a cat on your concentration is remarkable, very mysterious.

~ Muriel Spark

To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul.

~ Muriel Spark

The word education comes from the root e from ex, out, and duco, I lead. It means a leading out. To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul.

~ Muriel Spark

Phrases like 'the team spirit' are always employed to cut across individualism, love and personal loyalties.

~ Muriel Spark

4:15. Not 4 not 4:30 but 4:15. She thought to intimidate me with the use of quarter hours.

~ Muriel Spark

Six years previously, Miss Brodie had led her new class into the garden for a history lesson underneath the big elm. On the way through the school corridors they passed the headmistress's study. The door was wide open, the room was empty.'Little girls,' said Miss Brodie, 'come and observe this.'They clustered round the open door while she pointed to a large poster pinned with drawing-pins on the opposite wall within the room. It depicted a man's big face. Underneath were the words 'Safety First'.'This is Stanley Baldwin who got in as Prime Minister and got out again ere long,' said Miss Brodie. 'Miss Mackay retains him on the wall because she believes in the slogan Safety First. But Safety does not come first. Goodness, Truth and Beauty come first. Follow me.

~ Muriel Spark

It's only possible to betray where loyalty is due

~ Muriel Spark

Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid.

~ Muriel Spark

It was a gusty day, and from the windows of Caroline's top-floor flat, only the sky was visible with its little hurrying clouds. It was a day when being indoors was meaningful, wasting an afternoon in superior confidences with a friend before the two-barred electric heater.

~ Muriel Spark

it never really occurred to her that literary men, if they like women at all, do not want literary women but girls.

~ Muriel Spark

The sparkle and morning-freshness of the shop, and the butter-conjuring girl, formed a mind-picture which accompanied the whole of my youth.(about the Buttercup Dairy)

~ Muriel Spark

Sandwiches,' she said, 'like diamonds, are forever.

~ Muriel Spark

It is well, when in difficulties, to say never a word, neither black nor white. Speech is silver but silence is golden.

~ Muriel Spark

People who want to write books do so because they feel it to be the easiest thing they can do. They can read and write, they can afford any of the instruments of book writing such as pens, paper, computers, tape recorders, and generally by the time they have reached this decision, they have had a simple education.

~ Muriel Spark

Saving and pinching to get married, you're losing the best time of your life.

~ Muriel Spark

Do you know, Sandy dear, all my ambitions are for you and Rose. You have got insight, perhaps not quite spiritual, but you're a deep one, and Rose has got instinct.' 'Perhaps not quite spiritual' said Sandy.'Yes,' said Miss Brodie, 'you're right. Rose has got a future by virtue of her instinct.'...'I ought to know because my prime has brought me instinct and insight, both.

~ Muriel Spark

I see no reason to keep silent about my enjoyment of the sound of my own voice as I work.

~ Muriel Spark

To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul.

~ Muriel Spark

Be on the alert to recognize your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur.

~ Muriel Spark

It is impossible to persuade a man who does not disagree but smiles.

~ Muriel Spark

It is impossible to repent of love. The sin of love does not exist.

~ Muriel Spark

Parents learn a lot from their children about coping with life.

~ Muriel Spark

Be on the alert to recognize your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur.

~ Muriel Spark

When a noble life has prepared old age, it is not decline that it reveals, but the first days of immortality.

~ Muriel Spark

To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul. To Miss Mackay it is a putting in of something that is not there, and that is not what I call education. I call it intrusion.

~ Muriel Spark

It is impossible to persuade a man who does not disagree, but smiles.

~ Muriel Spark