Lessing Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about Lessing

Lessing Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational Lessing quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

If one is sensible, if one is reasonable, if one never allows oneself a base thought or an envious emotion, naturally one says: Let's make a foursome! — Doris Lessing

They make glorious shipwreck who are lost in seeking worlds. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

What of October, that ambiguous month, the month of tension, the unendurable month? — Doris Lessing

What is a hero without love for mankind. — Doris Lessing

You won't change her by making fun of her. You just hurt her feelings. — Doris Lessing

How boring these emotions are that we're caught in and can't get free of, no matter how much we want to ... — Doris Lessing

If you understand something, you don't forgive it, you are the thing itself: forgiveness is for what you don't understand. — Doris Lessing

The difficulty of writing about sex, for women, is that sex is best when not thought about, not analysed. — Doris Lessing

When there's a war, people get married. — Doris Lessing

If we were to put into practice what we know ... but that is the point. — Doris Lessing

I never thought of London in terms of possible heroes - of course, there are thousands. It's a very talented city. — Doris Lessing

A blush is the sign which Nature hangs out to show where chastity and honor dwell. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

One can drink too much, but one never drinks enough. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

The searcher's eye Not seldom finds more than he wished to find. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

I write because I've always written, can't stop. I am a writing animal. The way a silk worm is a silk-producing animal. — Doris Lessing

For the will and not the gift makes the giver. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Let the devil catch you but by a single hair, and you are his forever. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

I haven't got the energy to write now. — Doris Lessing

She could not see what good it would do anyone to read a novel of this kind. Yet she was writing it. — Doris Lessing

Yesterday I lived, today I suffer, tomorrow I die; but I still think fondly, today and tomorrow, of yesterday. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

It is not too much to say that when the word "blood" is pronounced, this is a sign that reason is about to depart. — Doris Lessing

The cleverest trick of the Devil is that nobody believes in him. It. Her. Well, we have been very stupid. — Doris Lessing

Nature intended that woman should be her masterpiece. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

I've won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one. I'm delighted to win them all, the whole lot. — Doris Lessing

Is there any delight as great as the child's discovering ability? — Doris Lessing

Dreams have always been my friend, full of information, full of warnings. — Doris Lessing

Envy has always hidden behind moral indignation. — Doris Lessing

If what we think now is different from what we thought then, we can take it for granted that what we think in a year will be different again. — Doris Lessing

It's lovely to have money to give away - that's the bonus of winning the Nobel. — Doris Lessing

The most exciting periods of literature have always been those when the critics were great. — Doris Lessing

The critics slap labels on you and then expect you to talk inside their terms. — Doris Lessing

I have to conclude that fiction is better at 'the truth' than a factual record, — Doris Lessing

There is nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend endless amounts of time with small children. — Doris Lessing

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

Better Counsel comes overnight. — Doris Lessing

The words of a wise man's mouth are gracious; but the lips of a fool will swallow up himself. — Doris Lessing

[I wrote] '...letters designed to hide behind. — Doris Lessing

Art is the Mirror of our betrayed ideals. — Doris Lessing

Paul was even more difficult than Ben. But he was a normal "disturbed" child, not an alien. — Doris Lessing

I'll be pleased when I'm dead. That will let me off worrying about all these wars. — Doris Lessing

We moderns do not believe in demigods, but our smallest hero we expect to feel and act as a demigod. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Women are the cowards they are because they have been semi-slaves for so long. — Doris Lessing

Literature is analysis after the event. — Doris Lessing

What I had that others didn't was a capacity for sticking to it. — Doris Lessing

A single grateful thought toward heaven is the most perfect prayer. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

None of you [men] ask for anything - except everything, but just for so long as you need it. — Doris Lessing

But how many moments are already past!
Ah! who thinks of those that are past? — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

The thing is, I haven't changed at all. — Doris Lessing

The youth do not see the old. They are not programmed to see the old, who are cancelled, negated, wiped out. — Doris Lessing

There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth. — Doris Lessing

Hitler admired Stalin, quite properly seeing himself as a mere infant in crime compared to his great exemplar. — Doris Lessing

He had decided not to be angry: it was killing him. — Doris Lessing

Nothing under the sun is ever accidental. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

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

Would that we could at once paint with the eyes! In the long way from the eye through the arm to the pencil, how much is lost! — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

I always hated Tony Blair, from the beginning. — Doris Lessing

There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be. — Doris Lessing

Choose? When do I ever choose? Have I ever chosen? — Doris Lessing

It seems to me that ideas must flow through humanity like tides. — Doris Lessing

It's very interesting what you don't care about. — Doris Lessing

The freedom of women was achieved by two things: One, the Pill. Two ... by labour-saving devices like the washing machine. By science, not feminism. — Doris Lessing

Ein einziger dankbarer Gedanke gen Himmel ist das vollkommenste Gebet. One single grateful thought raised to heaven is the most perfect prayer. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

As always he behaved as if he were an abstraction, not really there, a machine without a soul. — Doris Lessing

Sentimentality is intolerable because it is false feeling. — Doris Lessing

I'm not one of those writers that sits worrying about posthumous fame. — Doris Lessing

I wanted to highlight that whole dreadful process in book publishing that 'nothing succeeds like success.' — Doris Lessing

But far within him something cried For the great tragedy to start, The pang in lingering mercy fall And sorrow break upon his heart. - EDWIN MUIR — Doris Lessing

The old watch the young with anguish, pain, fear. Above all what each has learned is what things cost, what has to be paid. — Doris Lessing

Every child has the capacity to be everything. — Doris Lessing

The true vagrant is the only king above all comparison. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

I wanted to write about my mother as she should have been if she had not been messed up by World War I. — Doris Lessing

I do not think that marriage is one of my talents. I've been much happier unmarried than married. — Doris Lessing

Things are not quite so simple always as black and white. — Doris Lessing

The first thing I learned from Judy Blume was that God is the wrong one to ask for bigger breasts. (Stephanie Lessing) — Jennifer O'Connell

There are two kinds of humanity, those who dream and those who don't, and both tend to despise, or to tolerate, the other. — Doris Lessing

Who cannot resolve upon a moment's notice To live his own life, he forever lives A slave to others. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

What can the Creator see with greater pleasure than a happy creature? — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

It is medicine, not poison, I offer you. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

When the heart dares to speak, it needs no preparation. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

She wanted to be acknowledged, her predicament given its value. — Doris Lessing

We like to think we can solve everything, but we can't always. — Doris Lessing

As you get older, you don't get wiser. You get irritable. — Doris Lessing

Nature meant woman to be her masterpiece. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

My major aim was to shape a book which would make its own comment, a wordless statement: to talk through the way it was shaped. — Doris Lessing

The superstition in which we were brought up never loses its power over us, even after we understand it. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

I have you for being normal, I hate you for it. You're a normal human being. What right have you to that? — Doris Lessing

Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty. — Doris Lessing

I treasure solitude. One doesn't have to have human contact. — Doris Lessing

A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Whenever I met anyone who knew anything, I would bore them stiff until they told me what they knew. — Doris Lessing

You can only value something if you've experienced it. — Doris Lessing

I think kids ought to travel. I think it's very good to carry kids around. It's good for them. Of course it's tough on the parents. — Doris Lessing

Laughter is by definition healthy. — Doris Lessing

I've worked hard all my life. You have to if you want to get things done. — Doris Lessing

Women are slaves to their beauty. — Doris Lessing

Sometimes I think the one form of experience people are incapable of learning from is the political experience. — Doris Lessing

What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness. — Doris Lessing

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

We need a shape for the tale. A beginning, a middle and an end. — Doris Lessing

Bad luck for both of us, we are both boulder-pushers. — Doris Lessing