Muriel Spark

The sparkle and morning-freshness of the shop, and the butter-conjuring girl, formed a mind-picture which accompanied the whole of my youth.(about the Buttercup Dairy)

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.

it never really occurred to her that literary men, if they like women at all, do not want literary women but girls.

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

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

It's_only_possible_to_betray_where_loyalty_is_due

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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