A Quote by Richard Strauss

I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer.

Richard Strauss

Quote Topics

Am Class Composer First First-Rate I May Not Be May Rate Second Second-Rate

Quote Author

Richard Strauss
German - Composer
June 11, 1864 - September 8, 1949

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 am reading Sienkiewicz. What tormenting reading. What a powerful genius! And there never was such a first-rate writer of the second-rate class.

Witold Gombrowicz

Shining outward qualities, although they may excite first-rate expectations, are not unusually found to be the companions of second-rate abilities.

Charles Caleb Colton

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

Nothing can injure a man's writing if he's a first-rate writer. If a man is not a first-rate writer, there's not anything can help it much. The problem does not apply if he is not first rate because he has already sold his soul for a swimming pool.

William Faulkner

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

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

Gerald Finzi

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

Clive James

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

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

Maurice Ravel

First rate mathematicians choose first rate people, but second rate mathematicians choose third rate people.

Andre Weil

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

At the end of the day, I am singing the composer's creation, and I follow the instructions given to me. What I feel may be a right take may not work for the composer or his vision on how he thinks the song should sound.