Muriel Spark

Novelist

1918-02-01

Quotes by Muriel Spark

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

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• 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

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• It's only possible to betray where loyalty is due

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

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• 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.

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

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

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• 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.

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

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• 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.

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

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• 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.

  Read quote

• 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.

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• 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

  Read quote

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

  Read quote

• 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.

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

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• It's only possible to betray where loyalty is due

  Read quote

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

  Read quote

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

  Read quote