A Quote by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

Nothing is more painful to me than the disdain with which people treat second-rate authors, as if there were room only for the first-raters.

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

Quote Topics

Authors Disdain First First-Rate Me More Nothing Only Painful People Rate Room Second Second-Rate Than Treat Were Which

Quote Author

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
December 23, 1804 - October 13, 1869

I drank a second mouthful in which I find nothing more than in the first, then a third which gives me rather less than the second. It is time to stop; the potion is losing its magic.

Marcel Proust

The qualities of a second-rate writer can easily be defined, but a first-rate writer can only be experienced. It is just the thing in him which escapes analysis that makes him first-rate.

Willa Cather

A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.

Abraham Maslow

First-rate science fiction was, and remains, more interesting than second-rate art.

Clive James

It's better to read first rate science fiction than second rate science-it's a lot more fun, and no more likely to be wrong.

Martin Rees

It's often better to read first-rate science fiction than second-rate science - it's far more stimulating, and perhaps no more likely to be wrong.

Martin Rees

Nothing would please the Kremlin more than to have the people of this country choose a second rate president.

Richard M. Nixon

Learn from the best; the second raters have nothing to offer.

David Hurn

If you go to a second-rate place, and you are first-rate, it is very difficult to do first-rate work because you do not get that critical feedback you need for first-rate work on a daily basis.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

The result of a public that has a very high consumption rate and turnover rate is people listen to more music but spend less time with individual bits of music. It's made me more likely to put things up quickly and treat it more like a magazine instead of a novel.

Trent Reznor

All varieties of interference with the market phenomena not only fail to achieve the ends aimed at by their authors and supporters, but bring about a state of affairs which - from the point of view of their authors and advocates valuations - is less desirable than the previous state of affairs which they were designed to alter.

Ludwig von Mises

There is no room in music for the second-rate - it might just as well be the nineteenth-rate.

Gustav Holst

It's a very obsessive profession that you need to stay obsessed to get anywhere, and it's very easy for us to get obsessed and then nothing else matters. I was reading Somerset Maugham's novella, Moon and Sixpense, about this artist based on Gauguin's life. It was so beautifully written. You must be first rate because second rate you might not survive. If you're an accountant, you'll survive second rate. If you chance it big, you may not get anywhere.

Joan Chen

I'm from Indiana, the home of more first-rate second-class men than any other state in the union.

Thomas R. Marshall

A man is like a two-story house. The first floor is equipped with an entrance and a living room. On the second floor is every family member's room. They enjoy listening to music and reading books. On the first underground floor is the ruin of people's memories. The room filled with darkness is the second underground floor.