Be First Rate Quotes

#1. To be first-rate at anything you have to stake your all. Nobody's an artist 'on the side'.

Eleanor Clark

#2. Everything should be first-rate in a person, his face, clothes, soul and thoughts.

Anton Chekhov

#3. Pay no heed to the average photographer's remarks upon "flat" and "weak" negatives. Probably he is flat, weak, stale, and unprofitable; your negative may be first-rate, and probably is if he does not approve of it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#4. A person's first duty, a young person's at any rate, is to be ambitious, and the noblest ambition is that of leaving behind something of permanent value.

G.H. Hardy

#5. 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

#6. Ah, critics! How unforgiving they are toward anything that isn't, in some special way, known only to them, absolutely first-rate. Do they ever guess, I wonder, how much energy and guts and sheer talent it takes to be second-rate?

Robertson Davies

#7. 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, joked Lord Rees, Astronomer Royal and the former president of the Royal Society, at Wired 2013.

Martin J. Rees

#8. Colonel L., in whose eyes I was a first-rate Riot Acter or, worse, an intellectual - in his phrase, "someone who reads books" - the most damning appraisal that could be made of a junior lieutenant.

Steven Pressfield

#9. I will say that Edward Norton, who plays the scout master, would be a first-rate Eagle Scout. He's got all those techniques. If your plane crashes into the jungle somewhere, he would be the guy you would want to have with you.

Wes Anderson

#10. The first law of sustainability: population growth and/or growth in the rate of consumption of resources cannot be sustained

Albert Allen Bartlett

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

Willa Cather

#12. Always be a first rate version of yourself and not a second rate version of someone else.

Judy Garland

#13. My proposal now is to test a vaccine first on people who have been infected, and if you show some efficacy at this level, you might be able to go further to study uninfected people in a population with a high rate of infection.

Luc Montagnier

#14. 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

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

Richard Strauss

#16. 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.

Thucydides

#17. The exercise of voluntary attention in the schoolroom must therefore be counted one of the most important points of training that take place there; and the first-rate teacher, by the keenness of the remoter interests which he is able to awaken, will provide abundant opportunities for its occurrence.

William James

#18. The world would be a pretty dull place if it were made up only of the first-rate, right?

Haruki Murakami

#19. America's educational dilemma doesn't make sense to even the casual observer. How can it be that the world's only superpower has so much trouble educating its youth? Why is it that providing all American children with a solid, first-rate education is so hard for this mighty nation?

Karin Chenoweth

#20. Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's St Matthew Passion on a ukulele: The instrument is too crude for the work, for the audience and for the performer.

Ben Bagdikian

#21. When I lay down on my deathbed, I want to know that I have done all I could to be a first rate human, not a third rate pawn of the gods.

Thomm Quackenbush

#22. Every man who can be a first-rate something
as every man can be who is a man at all
has no right to be a fifth-rate something; for a fifth-rate something is not better than a first-rate nothing.

J.G. Holland

#23. When the first-rate author wants an exquisite heroine or a lovely morning, he finds that all the superlatives have been worn shoddy by his inferiors. It should be a rule that bad writers must start with plain heroines and ordinary mornings, and, if they are able, work up to something better.

F Scott Fitzgerald

#24. To be able to be there first, I love the pioneer thing. It's exciting to me. And they pay full rate, they're really nice, they support the work, and they said yes. What could be bad? It's the Wild West. You can do what you want.

Jenji Kohan

#25. As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you're going to be a second-rate artist.

Margaret Atwood

#26. You become like that, what you admire most. By admiring excellence and practicing, it can boost you to become excellent.

Mark LaMoure

#27. You cannot be both fashionable and first-rate

Logan Pearsall Smith

#28. When I teach writing, I have a mantra: 'Be a first-rate version of yourself, and not a second-rate version of another writer.'

David Morrell

#29. Having told the truth for years as a first-rate reporter, Jason Leopold now comes completely clean about himself and also sheds light on his imperiled profession. A riveting account of just how hard the truth can be.

Mark Crispin Miller

#30. If I spoke all I think on this point, if I gave my real opinion of some first-rate female characters in first-rate works, where should I be? Dead under a cairn of avenging stones in half an hour.

Charlotte Bronte

#31. Ought to be havin' a first-rate eddication, at their age. When I was their age I was doin' all this Latin and stuff

T.H. White

#32. Within me, I knew I would never be a first-rate producer. I wasn't tough enough.

Dominick Dunne

#33. You cannot be really first-rate at your work if your work is all you are.

Anna Quindlen

#34. That's why," he said speaking with averted face, "I wanted to do something first. I mean, to show I was worthy of you. Not that I could ever really be that. But at any rate to show I wasn't absolutely un-worthy. I wanted to do something.

Aldous Huxley

#35. Never be a second-rate version of someone else, be a first-rate version of yourself

Judy Garland