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

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

If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death...
MURIEL SPARK

Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive ...
MURIEL SPARK

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

If you're going to do a thing, you should do it thoroughly. If you're going to be a Christian, you m...
MURIEL SPARK

To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul. To Miss Mackay it is ...
MURIEL SPARK

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

One's prime is elusive. You little girls, when you grow up, must be on the alert to recognize your p...
MURIEL SPARK

One should only see a psychiatrist out of boredom.
MURIEL SPARK

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

One's prime is elusive. You little girls, when you grow up, must be on the alert to recognize yo...
MURIEL SPARK

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

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

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

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

Art and religion first; then philosophy; lastly science. That is the order of the great subjects of ...
MURIEL SPARK

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

To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul. To Miss Mackay it...
MURIEL SPARK

Art and religion first; then philosophy; lastly science. That is the order of the great subjects of ...
MURIEL SPARK

Godfrey's wife, Charmian, sat with her eyes closed, attempting to put her thoughts into alphabetical...
MURIEL SPARK

All my pupils are the crème de la crème. Give me a girl of an impressionable age, and she is mine ...
MURIEL SPARK

I am putting old heads on your young shoulders...all my pupils are the creme de la creme.
MURIEL SPARK

If you want to concentrate deeply on some problem, and especially some piece of writing or paper-wor...
MURIEL SPARK

It is one of the secrets of Nature in its mood of mockery that fine weather lays heavier weight on t...
MURIEL SPARK

Parents learn a lot from their children about coping with life
MURIEL SPARK

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

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

Sandy felt warmly towards Miss Brodie at these times when she saw how she was misled in her idea of ...
MURIEL SPARK

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

But those of Miss Brodie's kind were great talkers and feminists and, like most femini...
MURIEL SPARK

I'm not saying anything against the Modern side.
Modern and Classical, they are equal...
MURIEL SPARK

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

But now they were all fifteen, there was a lot they did not tell each other.
MURIEL SPARK

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

Nothing infuriates people more than their own lack of spiritual insight.
MURIEL SPARK

The word ‘education’ comes from the root e from ex, out, and duco, I lead. It means a leading ou...
MURIEL SPARK

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

O where shall I find a virtuous woman, for her price is above rubies.
MURIEL SPARK

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

Do you know, Sandy dear, all my ambitions are for you and Rose. You have got insight, perhaps not qu...
MURIEL SPARK

Six years previously, Miss Brodie had led her new class into the garden for a history lesson underne...
MURIEL SPARK

In fact, it was the religion of Calvin of which Sandy felt deprived, or rather a specified recogniti...
MURIEL SPARK

The Brodie set did not for a moment doubt that she would prevail. As soon expect Julius Caesar to ap...
MURIEL SPARK

... flattening their scorn underneath the chariot wheels of her superiority.
MURIEL SPARK

It's only possible to betray where loyalty is due
MURIEL SPARK

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

Miss Brodie was easily the equal of both sisters together, she was the square on the hypotenuse of a...
MURIEL SPARK

The word 'education' comes from the root e from ex, out, and duco, I lead. It means a leading out. T...
MURIEL SPARK

These years are still the years of my prime. It is important to recognise the years of one's prime, ...
MURIEL SPARK

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

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

For those who like that sort of thing," said Miss Brodie in her best Edinburgh voice, "That is the s...
MURIEL SPARK

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

The word "education" comes from the root e from ex, out, and duco, I lead. It means a leading out. T...
MURIEL SPARK

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

Hildegard had long felt that sentimentality was a luxury she could not afford.
MURIEL SPARK

Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings. Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things...
MURIEL RUKEYSER

When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small th...
MURIEL BARBERY

A loser seldom lives in the present, but instead destroys the present by focusing on past memories o...
MURIEL JAMES

I think there is choice possible to us at any moment, as long as we live. But there is no sacrifice....
MURIEL RUKEYSER

The universe is made of stories, not atoms.
MURIEL RUKEYSER

The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.
MURIEL RUKEYSER

They didn't recognize me," I repeat.
He stops in turn, my hand still on his arm.
"It is be...
MURIEL BARBERY

I think there is choice possible to us at any moment, as long as we live. But there is no sacrifice....
MURIEL RUKEYSER

The universe is made up of stories, not of atoms.
MURIEL RUKEYSER

Women and men have to fight together to change society - and both will benefit... Partnership, not d...
MURIEL FOX

Most of us experience happiness when we are enjoying life and feeling free, enjoying the process and...
JAMES MURIEL

The universe is made up of stories, not of atoms
MURIEL RUKEYSER

Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry.
MURIEL RUKEYSER

Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings. Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things...
MURIEL RUKEYSER

The fear of poetry is an indication that we are cut off from our own reality
MURIEL RUKEYSER

Dreams the sources of action, the meeting and the end, / a resting-place among the flight of things.
MURIEL RUKEYSER

I hear the singing of the lives of women. They clear mystery, the offering, and pride.
MURIEL RUKEYSER

This was going full circle for him.
MURIEL COOPER

We never look beyond our assumptions and what's worse, we have given up trying to meet others; we ju...
MURIEL BARBERY

One characteristic of modern poetry is that arrangement of parts which strikes many people as being ...
MURIEL RUKEYSER

The actual world, not some fantastic structure that has nothing to do with reality, must provide the...
MURIEL RUKEYSER

Our house was the most lit-up house on Frazier Street.
MURIEL COOPER

However confused the scene of our life appears, however torn we may be who now do face that scene, i...
MURIEL RUKEYSER

The journey is my home
MURIEL RUKEYSER

And on the way home I thought: pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beau...
MURIEL BARBERY

Personally I think that grammar is a way to attain beauty.
MURIEL BARBERY

I thought: pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language.
MURIEL BARBERY

Even if I didn't have a brokerage, I'd want to talk with a broker. You have big accounts, long-term ...
MURIEL SIEBERT

Maybe that's what being alive is about: so we can track down those movments that are dying.
MURIEL BARBERY

In our period, they say there is free speech. They say there is no penalty for poets, There is no pe...
MURIEL RUKEYSER

Flight is intolerable contradiction.
MURIEL RUKEYSER

Our poems will have failed if our readers are not brought by them beyond the poems.
MURIEL RUKEYSER

Most people, when they move, well they just move depending on whatever's around them. At this very m...
MURIEL BARBERY

This pause in time, within time ... When did I first experience the exquisite sense of surrender tha...
MURIEL BARBERY

When someone that you love dies..it's like fireworks suddenly burning out in the sky and everything ...
MURIEL BARBERY

The only purpose of cats is that they constitute mobile decorative objects.
MURIEL BARBERY

Sólo se me ocurre el psicoanálisis para rivalizar con el cristianismo en la predilección por los ...
MURIEL BARBERY

...only one man lived who could understand

I am going to die, but that is of no importance.
MURIEL BARBERY

We're going to see what Bush says tonight, and we're going to see what Greenspan says tomorrow -- no...
MURIEL SIEBERT

We have a knowledge of harmony, anchored deep within. It is this knowledge that enables us, at every...
MURIEL BARBERY

In a split second of eternity, everything is changed, transfigured. A few bars of music, rising from...
MURIEL BARBERY

There is always the easy way out, although I am loath to use it. I have no children, I do not watch ...
MURIEL BARBERY

... c'est peut-être ça la vie : beaucoup de désespoir mais aussi quelques moments de beauté où ...
MURIEL BARBERY

...what I dread more than anything else in this life is noise...silence helps you to go inward..anyo...
MURIEL BARBERY

It would be so much better if we could share our insecurity, if we could all venture inside ourselve...
MURIEL BARBERY

. . . maybe that's what life's all about: there's a lof of despair, but also the odd moments of beau...
MURIEL BARBERY

We think we can make honey without sharing in the fate of bees, but we are in truth nothing but poor...
MURIEL BARBERY

If you dread tomorrow it's because you don't know how to build the present, and when you don't know ...
MURIEL BARBERY

But many intelligent people have a sort of bug: they think intelligence is an end in itself. They ha...
MURIEL BARBERY

Life has meaning and we grown-ups know what it is is the universal lie that everyone is suppo...
MURIEL BARBERY

Beautiful things should belong to beautiful souls.
MURIEL BARBERY

There's so much humanity in a love of trees, so much nostalgia for our first sense of wonder, so muc...
MURIEL BARBERY

I have read so many books. And yet, like most Autodidacts, I am never quite sure of what I have gain...
MURIEL BARBERY

The tea ritual: such a precise repetition of the same gestures and the same tastes; accession to sim...
MURIEL BARBERY

I may be indigent in name, position, and in appearance, but in my own mind I am an unrivaled goddess...
MURIEL BARBERY

Do you know that it is in your company that I have had my finest thoughts?
MURIEL BARBERY

When something is bothering me, I seek refuge. No need to travel far; a trip to the realm of literar...
MURIEL BARBERY

Madame Michel has the elegance of the hedgehog: on the outside she is covered in quills, a real fort...
MURIEL BARBERY

I find this a fascinating phenomenon: the ability we have to manipulate ourselves so that the founda...
MURIEL BARBERY

I have finally concluded, maybe that's what life is about: there's a lot of despair, but also the od...
MURIEL BARBERY

If you have but one friend, make sure you choose her well.
MURIEL BARBERY

People aim for the stars, and they end up like goldfish in a bowl. I wonder if it wouldn't be simple...
MURIEL BARBERY

For the first time in my life I understood the meaning of the word 'never'. And it's really awful. Y...
MURIEL BARBERY

Those who speak of our culture as dead or dying have a quarrel with life, and I think they cannot un...
MURIEL RUKEYSER

What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?
The world would split open.
MURIEL RUKEYSER

Je savais qu'un afflux inespéré d'énergie l'avait levé de son lit, lui avait donné la force de ...
MURIEL BARBERY

For a few seconds Maria did not move, or even breathe, apparently. Then she gave a sorrowful gulp an...
MURIEL BARBERY

Iata deci cugetarea mea profunda pe ziua de azi: e pentru prima oara cand intalnesc pe cineva care c...
MURIEL BARBERY

Elsewhere the world may be blustering or sleeping, wars are fought, people live and die, some nation...
MURIEL BARBERY

There are only two moments when everything is possible in this life," said Petrus, "when one drinks,...
MURIEL BARBERY

Qui croit
Pouvoir faire du miel
Sans partager le destin des abeilles?
MURIEL BARBERY

I am an advocate for older citizens. I want to change the image in this country people have of older...
MURIEL SAUNDERS

There is more to this sport than just the skill of placing your discs. You have to know how to outwi...
MURIEL ROWLAND

I truly believe that Betty Friedan was the most influential woman, not only of the 20th century but ...
MURIEL FOX

He came off as gruff, but the kids could see beneath that. He was about giving the kids opportunity.
MURIEL COOPER

You are stronger than you think. I have weathered many storms, tragedies, and heartaches in my life�...
MICHELLE MURIEL

When we move, we are in a way de-structured by our movement toward something: we are both her...
MURIEL BARBERY

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

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Muriel Spark

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

Muriel Spark

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