MURIEL SPARK

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

One should only see a psychiatrist out of boredom.

All my pupils are the creme de la creme. Give me a girl of an impressionable age, and she is mine for life.

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

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

I used to think it a pity that her mother rather than she had not thought of birth control.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Every communist has a fascist frown, every fascist a communist smile.

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

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.

Ridicule is the only honorable weapon we have left.

Beware the ire of the calm.

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

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

If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practise, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other 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. Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid.

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.

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

[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.