A Quote by Doris Lessing

What's terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.

Doris Lessing

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Better Capable First First-Rate Know Like Like You Love Need Need Love Pretend Quite Rate Second Second-Rate Terrible Well Work Your

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Doris Lessing
English - Novelist
October 22, 1919 - November 17, 2013

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

I knew I'd always be a second-rate academic, and I thought, 'Well, I'd rather be a second-rate novelist or even a third-rate one'.

Sarah Waters

I don't pretend that I can predict the future value of the growth rate or rate of return.

Thomas Piketty

I knew Id always be a second-rate academic, and I thought, Well, Id rather be a second-rate novelist or even a third-rate one.

Sarah Waters

But no work from a first rate mind is ever really second rate.

Gerald Finzi

You might lose your spontaneity and, instead of composing first-rate Gershwin, end up with second rate Ravel.

Maurice Ravel

I once did something right. I played first-rate basketball. I really did. And after you're first-rate at something, no matter what, it kind of takes the kick out of being second-rate.

John Updike

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

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

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

Gustav Holst

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

Abraham Maslow

Why become a second-rate Ravel when you're already a first-rate Gershwin?

Maurice Ravel

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

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

Clive James

World class is a phrase used by provincial cities and second-rate entertainment events, as well as a wide variety of insecure individuals, to assert that they are not provincial or second-rate, thereby confirming that they are.

John Ralston Saul

A Quote by Doris Lessing

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