First-rate Quotes

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else. (Judy Garland)
Everything should be first-rate in a person, his face, clothes, soul and thoughts. View quote
Anton Chekhov
I wrote somewhere once that the third-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking with the majority, the second-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking with the minority, and the first-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking. View quote
A. A. Milne
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. View quote
F. Scott Fitzgerald
We class schools into four grades: leading school, first-rate school, good school and school. View quote
Evelyn Waugh
If you like poetry let it be first-rate; Milton, Shakespeare, Thomson, Goldsmith, Pope (if you will, though I don't admire him), Scott, Byron, Camp[b]ell, Wordsworth, and Southey. Now don't be startled at the names of Shakespeare and Byron. Both these were great men, and their works are like themselves. You will know how to choose the good and avoid the evil; the finest passages are always the purest, the bad are invariably revolting, you will never wish to read them over twice. View quote
Charlotte Brontë
The world would be a pretty dull place if it were made up only of the first-rate, right? View quote
Haruki Murakami
There is but one question ultimately to be asked respecting every line you draw, Is it right or wrong? If right, it most assuredly is not a "free" line, but an intensely continent, restrained and considered line; and the action of the hand in laying it is just as decisive, and just as "free" as the hand of a first-rate surgeon in a critical incision. View quote
John Ruskin
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. View quote
Willa Cather
Great women scholars like Jane Harrison and Gisela Richter were produced by the intellectual discipline of the masculine classical tradition, not the wishy-washy sentimentalism of clingy, all-forgiving sisterhood, from which no first-rate book has yet emerged. Every year, feminists provide more and more evidence for the old charge that women can neither think nor write. View quote
Camille Paglia
It is of first-rate importance to notice from the start that stupidity is not the same thing, or the same sort of thing, as ignorance. There is no incompatibility between being well-informed and being silly, and a person who has a good nose for arguments or jokes may have a bad head for facts. (Gilbert Ryle)
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. View quote
Doris Lessing
A theatre receives recognition through its initiative, which is indispensable for first-rate performances. View quote
Franz Liszt
Abstinence from all injustice to other first-rate powers is a greater tower of strength than anything that can be gained by the sacrifice of permanent tranquillity for an apparent temporary advantage. View quote
Thucydides
There is more credit and satisfaction in being a first-rate truck driver than a tenth-rate executive. View quote
B. C. Forbes
We class schools, you see, into four grades: Leading School, First-rate School, Good School, and School. Frankly," said Mr Levy, "School is pretty bad... View quote
Evelyn Waugh
I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer. View quote
Richard Strauss
My mother once told me never be a second-rate version of somebody else when you can be a first-rate version of yourself. View quote
Liza Minnelli
Liza Minelli said she can't sing well enough those "special songs" of her late mother, Judy Garland, so she doesn't sing them at all. The award-winning entertainer said she'd "rather present a first-rate version of myself than a second-rate version of Mama." View quote
Liza Minnelli
Booze, pot, too much sex, failure in one's private life, too much attrition, too much recognition, too little recognition. Nearly everything in the scheme of things works to dull a first-rate talent. But the worst probably is cowardice. View quote
Norman Mailer
I don't give a damn if some Thracian ape strut Proud of that first-rate shield the bushes got. Leaving it was hell, but in a tricky spot I kept my hide intact. Good shields can be bought. (as translated by Stuart Silverman) (Archilochus)
First-rate men will not canvass mobs; and if they did, the mobs would not elect the first-rate men. View quote
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
The better artists are original and obdurate; they're the gravel in the pea soup. ln Jackson Pollock's painting the particularity, the immediacy, is the dripped paint, which remains dripped paint as a phenomenon, for all the beauty of the small shapes it makes it makes. The generality is in the scale or proportion and in the large shapes. It's in the appearance of chaos. The gesture or the motion shown in the application of the paint varies from painting to painting from the particular to a middling generality. The size and the color generally occur in the middle between particularity and generality. At the same time as Pollock and since, almost all first-rate art has been based on an immediate phenomenon, for example the work of Dan Flavin and Larry Bell. View quote
Donald Judd
First-rate science fiction was, and remains, more interesting than second-rate art. View quote
Clive James
First-rate people hire first-rate people; second-rate people hire third-rate people. View quote
Leo Rosten