Muriel Spark Quotes

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

Sooner or later I do what I want to do.

But you won't be able to pin her down on sex. Have you thought of politics?

Flattening their scorn underneath the chariot wheels of her superiority.

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.

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.

It is a good thing to go to Paris for a few days if you have had a lot of trouble, and that is my advice to everyone except Parisians.

One should only see a psychiatrist out of boredom.

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

[...] there were other people's Edinburghs quite different from hers [...]

I'm not saying anything against the Modern side.
Modern and Classical, they are equal, and each provides for a function in life. You must make your free choice. Not everyone is capable of a Classical education. You must make your choice quite freely.

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

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

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

I can tell you that if there's nothing wrong with you except fat it is easy to get thin. You eat and drink the same as always, only half. If you are handed a plate of food, leave half; if you have to help yourself, take half. After a while, if you are a perfectionist, you can consume half of that again … On the question of will-power, if that is a factor, you should think of will-power as something that never exists in the present tense, only in the future and the past. At one moment you have decided to do or refrain from an action and the next moment you have already done or refrained; it is the only way to deal with will-power.

Goodness, Truth and Beauty come first

Nothing can be more puritanical in application than the virtues.

It was then that Miss Brodie looked beautiful and fragile, just as dark, heavy Edinburgh itself could suddenly be changed into a floating city when the light was a special pearly white and fell upon one of the gracefully fashioned streets. In the same way Miss Brodie's masterful features became clear and sweet to Sandy when viewed in the curious light of the woman's folly, and she never felt more affection for her in her later years than when she thought upon Miss Brodie silly.

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.

He turns a page of his newspaper and folds it conveniently for reading, and reads it without looking at her again, settling further into his seat with the slight sigh of one whose visitor has left and who is at last alone.

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

They are demanding equal rights with us,' says Mrs. Fiedke. 'That's why I never vote with the Liberals. Perfume, jewellery, hair down to their shoulders, and I'm not talking about the ones who were born like that. I mean, the ones that can't help it should be put on an island. It's the others I'm talking about. There was a time they would stand up and open the door for you. They would take their hat off. But they want their equality today. All I say is that if God had intended them to be as good as us he wouldn't have made them different from us to the naked eye. They don't want to be all dressed alike any more. Which is only a move against us. You couldn't run an army like that, let alone the male sex. With all due respects to Mr. Fiedke, may he rest in peace, the male sex is getting out of hand. Of course, Mr. Fiedke knew his place as a man, give him his due.'
…..
'If we don't look lively,' she says, 'they will be taking over the homes and the children, and sitting about having chats while we go and fight to defend them and work to keep them. They won't be content with equal rights only. Next thing they'll want the upper hand, mark my words. Diamond earrings, I've read in the paper.

I'd rather deal with a rogue than a fool.

You can lie awake at night and think; the quality of insomnia depends entirely on what you decide to think of. Can you decide to think? - Yes, you can.

We have invented sex guilt to take our minds off the real thing.

We often laughed at others in our house, and I picked up the craft of being polite while people were present and laughing later if there was anything to laugh about.

The Brodie set did not for a moment doubt that she would prevail. As soon expect Julius Caesar to apply for a job at a crank school as Miss Brodie. She would never resign. If the authorities wanted to get rid of her she would have to be assassinated.

[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.

Beware of men bearing flowers.

I am putting old heads on your young shoulders,' Miss Brodie had told them at the time.

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

Let us run up debts. One is nobody without debts.

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.

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

A work of art is like living people.

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

She did not know then that the price of allowing false opinions was the gradual loss of one's capacity for forming true ones.

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 ...

You girls," said Miss Brodie, "must learn to
cultivate an expression of composure. It is one of the best assets of a woman, an expression of composure, come foul, come fair. Regard the Mona Lisa over yonder!

Never apologise, never explain.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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. 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, from the Latin root prefix in meaning in and the stem trudo, I thrust.

You don't know what it's like trying to eat enough to live on and at the same time avoid fats and carbohydrates.

Her words depressed him. They were like spilt sugar; however much you swept it up some grains would keep grinding under your feet.

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 ...

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

Beware the ire of the calm.

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.

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

Being dead's a drug', he says, 'you'll get hooked on it.

- 'Poise is perfect balance, an equanimity of body and mind, complete composure whatever the social scene. Elegant dress, immaculate grooming, and perfect deportment all contribute to the attainment of self-confidence.' -

Frankness is usually a euphemism for rudeness.

Oh" she says "the inconceivable sorrow of it, those chairs piled up at night when you're sitting in a cafè. The last one left".

One's prime is the moment one was born for.

In fact, it was the religion of Calvin of which Sandy felt deprived, or rather a specified recognition of it. She desired this birthright; something definite to reject. It pervaded the place in proportion as it was unacknowledged. In some ways the most real and rooted people whom Sandy knew were Miss Gaunt and the Kerr sisters who made no evasions about their believe that Gold had planned for practically everybody before they were born an nasty surprise when they died. Later, when Sandy read John Calvin, she found that although popular conceptions of Calvinism were sometimes mistaken, in this particular there was no mistake, indeed it was but a mild understanding of the case, he having made it God's pleasure to implant in certain people an erroneous since of joy and salvation, so that their surprise at the end might be the nastier.

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.

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

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

The sacrifice of pleasures is of course itself a pleasure.

I'm old-fashioned beyond my years.

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

I was just as anxious to prevent injustice as to cause justice.

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

Godfrey's wife Charmian sat with her eyes closed, attempting to put her thoughts into alphabetical order which Godfrey had told her was better than no order at all, since she now had grasp of neither logic nor chronology.

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

You're quite wrong there, Collie. One does miss sex. The body has a life of it's own. We do miss what we haven't had, you and I. Biologically. Ask Sigmund Freud. It is revealed in dreams. The absent touch of warm limbs at night, the absent

To put it squarely, as I say in my memoir, the eternal triangle has come full circle.

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.

No mind should submit their mind to another mind He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still
that's my motto. I won't be brainwashed.

When people say that nothing happens in their lives I believe them. But you must understand that everything happens to an artist; time is always redeemed, nothing is lost and wonders never cease.

At that time many of the men looked like Rupert Brooke, whose portrait still hung in everyone's imagination.

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.

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

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.

Interviews can be stimulating. It depends on the intelligence of the interviewer.

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

Back in 1944 when people were normal and there was a world war on,' says Paul to his son, 'it was a serious thing to be a spy.

After thirty years' hostile fellowship with Collie, of course she did quite well understand that collie had a habit of skipping several stages in the logical sequence of her thoughts and would utter apparently disconnected statements, especially when confused by unfamiliar subject or the presence of a man

You look for one thing and you find another.

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

However, as soon as Mrs. Hogg stepped into her room she disappeared, she simply disappeared. She had no private life whatsoever. God knows where she went in her privacy.

I don't know why I thought of Dottie as my friend but I did. I believe she thought the same way about me although she really didn't like me. In those days, among the people I mixed with, one had friends almost by predestination. There they were, like your winter coat and your meagre luggage. You didn't think of discarding them just because you didn't altogether like them.

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.

I think she's too ignorant to be a witch.

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.

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