Top 80 Muriel Spark Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— Muriel Spark

2. “Beware the ire of the calm.”

— Muriel Spark

3. “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

4. “To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil’s soul.”

— Muriel Spark

5. “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

6. “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

7. “Goodness, Truth and Beauty come first.”

— Muriel Spark

8. “The sacrifice of pleasures is of course itself a pleasure.”

— Muriel Spark

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

— Muriel Spark

10. “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

11. “You look for one thing and you find another.”

— Muriel Spark

12. “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

13. “Never apologise, never explain.”

— Muriel Spark

14. “I often wonder if we were all characters in one of God’s dreams.”

— Muriel Spark

15. “Ridicule is the only honorable weapon we have left.”

— Muriel Spark

16. “Final perseverance is the doctrine that wins the eternal victory in small things as in great.”

— Muriel Spark

17. “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

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

— Muriel Spark

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

— Muriel Spark

20. “I’m old-fashioned beyond my years.”

— Muriel Spark

21. “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.”

— Muriel Spark

22. “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

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

— Muriel Spark

24. “She wasn’t a person to whom things happen. She did all the happenings.”

— Muriel Spark

25. “Beware of men bearing flowers.”

— Muriel Spark

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

— Muriel Spark

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

— Muriel Spark

28. “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

29. “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

30. “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

31. “Frankness is usually a euphemism for rudeness.”

— Muriel Spark

32. “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

33. “4:15. Not 4 not 4:30 but 4:15. She thought to intimidate me with the use of quarter hours.”

— Muriel Spark

34. “A rebellion against a tyrant is only immoral when it hasn’t got a chance.”

— Muriel Spark

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

— Muriel Spark

36. “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

37. “Phrases like ‘the team spirit’ are always employed to cut across individualism, love and personal loyalties.”

— Muriel Spark

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

— Muriel Spark

39. “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

40. “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

41. “Miss Brodie was easily the equal of both sisters together, she was the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle and they were only the squares on the other two sides.”

— Muriel Spark

42. “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

43. “One should only see a psychiatrist out of boredom.”

— Muriel Spark

44. “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.”

— Muriel Spark

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

— Muriel Spark

46. “Let us run up debts. One is nobody without debts.”

— Muriel Spark

47. “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

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

— Muriel Spark

49. “If you don’t remember Death, Death reminds you to do so. And if you can’t cope with the facts the next best thing is to go away for a holiday.”

— Muriel Spark

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

— Muriel Spark