Doris Lessing Quotes, Sayings, Remarks, Thoughts and Speeches
Doris Lessing Quotes and Sayings
- 1
A simple grateful thought turned heavenwards is the most perfect prayer.
Doris Lessing | Refcard PDF ↑
- 2
Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.
Doris Lessing | Refcard PDF ↑
- 3
Borrowing is not much better than begging; just as lending with interest is not much better than stealing.
Doris Lessing | Refcard PDF ↑
- 4
For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying.
Doris Lessing | Refcard PDF ↑
- 5
I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.
Doris Lessing | Refcard PDF ↑
- 6
If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.
Doris Lessing | Refcard PDF ↑
- 7
In the writing process, the more a story cooks, the better.
Doris Lessing | Refcard PDF ↑
- 8
In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.
Doris Lessing | Refcard PDF ↑
- 9
It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction.
Doris Lessing | Refcard PDF ↑
- 10
It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important.
Doris Lessing | Refcard PDF ↑
- 11
Literature is analysis after the event.
Doris Lessing | Refcard PDF ↑
- 12
Man, who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance!
Doris Lessing | Refcard PDF ↑
- 13
Pearls mean tears.
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- 14
Pleasure resorts are like film stars and royalty... embarrassed by the figures they cut in the fantasies of people who have never met them.
Doris Lessing | Refcard PDF ↑
- 15
Small things amuse small minds.
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- 16
Some people obtain fame, others deserve it.
Doris Lessing | Refcard PDF ↑
- 17
Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time.
Doris Lessing | Refcard PDF ↑
- 18
That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.
Doris Lessing | Refcard PDF ↑
- 19
The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion.
Doris Lessing | Refcard PDF ↑
- 20
There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.
Doris Lessing | Refcard PDF ↑
- 21
There is only one real sin and that is to persuade oneself that the second best is anything but second best.
Doris Lessing | Refcard PDF ↑
- 22
Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.
Doris Lessing | Refcard PDF ↑
- 23
This world is run by people who know how to do things. They know how things work. They are equipped. Up there, there's a layer of people who run everything. But we - we're just peasants. We don't understand what's going on, and we can't do anything.
Doris Lessing | Refcard PDF ↑
- 24
Trust no friend without faults, and love a woman, but no angel.
Doris Lessing | Refcard PDF ↑
- 25
We use our parents like recurring dreams, to be entered into when needed.
Doris Lessing | Refcard PDF ↑
- 26
What is a hero without love for mankind.
Doris Lessing | Refcard PDF ↑
- 27
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 28
With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one - but no one at all - can tell you what to read and when and how.
Doris Lessing | Refcard PDF ↑
- 29
You can't be a Red if you're married to a civil servant.
Doris Lessing | Refcard PDF ↑
