Muriel Spark

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

"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."

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