Doris Lessing Quotes

Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.
Doris Lessing

Human, Unexpected, Simply

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

Age, Change, Great

Trust no friend without faults, and love a woman, but no angel.
Doris Lessing

Trust, Love, Woman

A simple grateful thought turned heavenwards is the most perfect prayer.
Doris Lessing

Simple, Thought, Perfect

Borrowing is not much better than begging; just as lending with interest is not much better than stealing.
Doris Lessing

Interest, Stealing, Begging

Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.
Doris Lessing

Yourself, Please, Cases

Small things amuse small minds.
Doris Lessing

Small, Minds, Amuse

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

Political, Free, Tell

That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.
Doris Lessing

Life, Learning, Understand

I'm sure that everybody feels a kind of permanent anguish about what's going on in the world.
Doris Lessing

Sure, Everybody, Feels

There is only one real sin and that is to persuade oneself that the second best is anything but second best.
Doris Lessing

Best, Real, Second

I didn't go to school much, so I taught myself what I knew from reading.
Doris Lessing

School, Reading, Knew

Our society is dependent on some precarious mechanisms, and they are very dicey. They can easily collapse.
Doris Lessing

Society, Dependent, Precarious

We use our parents like recurring dreams, to be entered into when needed.
Doris Lessing

Dreams, Parents, Needed

What is a hero without love for mankind.
Doris Lessing

Love, Hero, Mankind

When I became political and Communist, it was because they were the only people I had ever met who fought the color bar in their lives.
Doris Lessing

Political, Lives, Color

When you're young you think that you're going to sail into a lovely lake of quietude and peace. This is profoundly untrue.
Doris Lessing

Peace, Young, Lovely

A story is how we construct our experiences.
Doris Lessing

Story, Construct

A writer falls in love with an idea and gets carried away.
Doris Lessing

Love, Away, Idea

All I do is give interviews and spend time being photographed.
Doris Lessing

Time, Give, Spend

All my friends' mothers were appalling women.
Doris Lessing

Women, Friends, Mothers

As soon as I got the Nobel Prize my back collapsed and I was in hospital.
Doris Lessing

Soon, Hospital, Prize

Everything all the time in a city is extraordinary!
Doris Lessing

For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying.
Doris Lessing

Life, Work, Alone

God knows why nobody ever learns from the preceding generation - but they don't.
Doris Lessing

God, Why, Knows

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Biography

Nationality: English

Type: Writer

Born: October 22, 1919

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Cite this Page: Citation

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