150 Quotes by Muriel Spark

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

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

I don’t know why I thought of Dottie as my friend but I did. I believe she thought the same way about me although she really didn’t like me. In those days, among the people I mixed with, one had friends almost by predestination. There they were, like your winter coat and your meagre luggage. You didn’t think of discarding them just because you didn’t altogether like them.

Never apologise, never explain.

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