Muriel Spark famous quotes

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

#Voice #Sound #Quiet

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

#Teacher #Soul #Pupils

It is one of the secrets of Nature in its mood of mockery that fine weather lays heavier weight on the mind and hearts of the depressed and the inwardly tormented than does a really bad day with dark rain sniveling continuously and sympathetically from a dirty sky.
-- Muriel Spark

#Dirty #Rain #Heart

The true novelist is one who understands the work as a continuous poem, is a myth-maker, and the wonder of the art resides in the endless different ways of telling a story.
-- Muriel Spark

#Art #Different #Stories

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

#Smile #Men #Doe

If you're going to do a thing, you should do it thoroughly. If you're going to be a Christian, you may as well be a Catholic.
-- Muriel Spark

#Christian #Catholic #May

The sacrifice of pleasures is of course itself a pleasure.
-- Muriel Spark

#Happiness #Sacrifice #Pleasure

For those who like that sort of thing," said Miss Brodie in her best Edinburgh voice, "That is the sort of thing they like.
-- Muriel Spark

#Voice #Missing #Edinburgh

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

#Children #Inspirational Life #Parent

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

#Girl #Morning #Mind

Beware of men bearing flowers.
-- Muriel Spark

#Flower #Men

How wonderful it feels to be an artist and a woman in the twentieth century,
-- Muriel Spark

#Artist #Wonderful #Century

I wouldn't take the Pope too seriously. He's a Pole first, a pope second, and maybe a Christian third.
-- Muriel Spark

#Christian #Firsts #Pope

If you want to concentrate deeply on some problem, and especially some piece of writing or paper-work, you should acquire a cat . . .
-- Muriel Spark

#Cat #Writing #Pieces

Frankness is usually a euphemism for rudeness.
-- Muriel Spark

#Rudeness #Euphemism #Frankness

Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid.
-- Muriel Spark

#Death #Surprise #Life Is

The words of the double-tongued are as if they were harmless, but they reach even to the inner part of the bowels. Praise be to the Lord, who distinguishes our cause and delivers us from the unjust and deceitful man.
-- Muriel Spark

#Men #Deception #Unjust

I am a hoarder of two things: documents and trusted friends.
-- Muriel Spark

#Friendship #Two #Trusted Friends

Neurotics are awfully quick to notice other people's mentalities ...
-- Muriel Spark

#People #Mentality

A rebellion against a tyrant is only immoral when it hasn't got a chance.
-- Muriel Spark

#Tyrants #Revolution #Chance

There was altogether too much candor in married life; it was an indelicate modern idea, and frequently led to upsets in a household, if not divorce ...
-- Muriel Spark

#Divorce #Ideas #Upset

I was just as anxious to prevent injustice as to cause justice.
-- Muriel Spark

#Justice #Causes #Injustice

I have a great desire to make people smile - not laugh. Laughter is too aggressive. People bare their teeth.
-- Muriel Spark

#Laughter #Laughing #People

The letters of famous people can be placed into two categories: there is the type of letter which becomes itself a valuable contribution to literature through its wit, style or wisdom; another kind is that whose main importance lies in the provision of a background to their author's life. Especially in the correspondence of great writers and poets, these two factors are very often combined ...
-- Muriel Spark

#Lying #Two #People

Ridicule is the only honorable weapon we have left.
-- Muriel Spark

#Weapons #Honorable #Ridicule

sooner or later I do what I want to do.
-- Muriel Spark

#Want #Assertiveness #Sooner Or Later

It isn't necessarily the great and famous beauty spots we fall in love with. As with people, so with places. Love is unforeseen, and we can all find ourselves affectionately attached to the minor and the less obvious.
-- Muriel Spark

#Travel #Falling In Love #Love Is

So great was the noise during the day that I used to lie awake at night listening to silence.
-- Muriel Spark

#Lying #Night #Silence

Fiction to me is a kind of parable. You have got to make up your mind it's not true. Some kind of truth emerges from it, but it's not fact.
-- Muriel Spark

#Mind #Facts #Fiction

everything happens to an artist; time is always redeemed, nothing is lost and wonders never cease.
-- Muriel Spark

#Artist #Wonder #Lost

New York, home of the vivisectors of the mind, and of the mentally vivisected still to be reassembled, of those who live intact, habitually wondering about their states of sanity, and home of those whose minds have been dead, bearing the scars of resurrection.
-- Muriel Spark

#New York #Home #Mind

I never trust the airlines from those countries where the pilots believe in the afterlife. You are safer when they don't.
-- Muriel Spark

#Country #Believe #Afterlife

You look for one thing and you find another.
-- Muriel Spark

#Looks

People who quoted the Scriptures in criticism of others were terrible bores and usually they misapplied the text. One could prove anything against anyone from the Bible.
-- Muriel Spark

#Bible #People #Criticism

Contradictions in human character are one of its most consistent notes ...
-- Muriel Spark

#Character #Contradiction #Notes

Let us run up debts. One is nobody without debts.
-- Muriel Spark

#Running #Debt

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

#Mean #Roots #Soul

Jealousy ... is an affliction of the spirit which, unlike some sins of the flesh, gives no one any pleasure.
-- Muriel Spark

#Jealousy #Giving #Affliction

Looking forward to going home, I was necessarily looking backward.
-- Muriel Spark

#Home #Looking Forward #Going Home

we have invented sex guilt to take our minds off the real thing.
-- Muriel Spark

#Sex #Real #Mind

The one certain way for a woman to hold a man is to leave him for religion.
-- Muriel Spark

#Men #Way #Certain

Nothing can be more puritanical in application than the virtues.
-- Muriel Spark

#Virtue #Application

I often wonder if we were all characters in one of God's dreams.
-- Muriel Spark

#Dream #Character #Wonder

It is difficult for people of advanced years to start remembering they must die. It is best to form the habit while young.
-- Muriel Spark

#Years #People #Remember

It's a whydunnit in q-sharp major and it has a message: never talk to the sort of girls that you wouldn't leave lying about in your drawing-room for the servants to pick up.
-- Muriel Spark

#Girl #Lying #Drawing

Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life.
-- Muriel Spark

#Girl #Giving #Age

Being in love is something like poetry. Certainly, you can analyze and expound its various senses and intentions, but there is always something left over, mysteriously hovering between music and meaning.
-- Muriel Spark

#Being In Love #Love Is #Hovering

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

#Girl #Men #Want

Beware the ire of the calm.
-- Muriel Spark

#Calm

These years are still the years of my prime. It is important to recognise the years of one's prime, always remember that.
-- Muriel Spark

#Years #Important #Remember

Allow me, in conclusion, to congratulate you warmly upon your sexual intercourse, as well as your singing.
-- Muriel Spark

#Singing #Conclusion #Wells

I'm old-fashioned beyond my years.
-- Muriel Spark

#Years #Old Fashioned

Final perseverance is the doctrine that wins the eternal victory in small things as in great
-- Muriel Spark

#Perseverance #Winning #Victory

[My novel] took up the sweetest part of my mind and the rarest part of my imagination; it was like being in love and better. All day long when I was busy [...], I had my unfinished novel personified almost as a secret companion and accomplice following me like a shadow wherever I went, whatever I did.
-- Muriel Spark

#Being In Love #Imagination #Long

No medicine man these days can afford to be without a portable tape recorder. Without the aid of this modern device, which may be easily concealed in the undergrowth of the jungle, the old tribal authority will rapidly become undermined by the mounting influenece of modern skepticism.
-- Muriel Spark

#Technology #Men #Medicine

From my experience of life I believe my personal motto should be: 'Beware of any man bringing flowers.
-- Muriel Spark

#Flower #Believe #Men

If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practice, as it were, the remembrance of death. No other practice so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one -surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death, life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.
-- Muriel Spark

#Practice #Eggs #Remembrance

One should only see a psychiatrist out of boredom.
-- Muriel Spark

#Memorable #Boredom #Should

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

#Romantic Love #Doe #Impossible

Art and religion first; then philosophy; lastly science. That is the order of the great subjects of life, that's their order of importance.
-- Muriel Spark

#Art #Philosophy #Science

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

#White #Silence #Black

She wasn't a person to whom things happen. She did all the happenings.
-- Muriel Spark

#Persons #Things Happen

...try as i do, i can't recall her surname. Indeed, her very abstractedness and insubstantial personality seemed to say 'forget me'; she seemed to live in parenthesis;...
-- Muriel Spark

#Personality #Trying #Forget

One's prime is elusive. You little girls, when you grow up, must be on the alert to recognize your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur. You must then live it to the full.
-- Muriel Spark

#Girl #Time #Growing Up

If you choose the sort of life which has no conventional pattern you have to try to make an art of it, or it is a mess.
-- Muriel Spark

#Art #Trying #Patterns