Doris Lessing: What is a hero without love for mankind

I have compiled some of the most notable quotes of Doris Lessing the, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007.

It would be best to read her classic romantic novels and short stories, such as "The Sweetest Dream".

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

And then, not expecting it, you become middle-aged and anonymous. No one notices you. You achieve a wonderful freedom.
~ Doris Lessing

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

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

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

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

If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.
~ Doris Lessing

In the writing process, the more a story cooks, the better.
~ Doris Lessing

In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.
~ Doris Lessing

It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction.
~ Doris Lessing

It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important.
~ Doris Lessing

Literature is analysis after the event.
~ Doris Lessing

Man, who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance!
~Doris Lessing

Pearls mean tears.
~ Doris 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

Small things amuse small minds.
~ Doris Lessing

Some people obtain fame, others deserve it.
~ Doris Lessing

Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time.
~ Doris Lessing

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What's terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is first-rate, that you don't need love when you do or that you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.
~ Doris Lessing

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

You can't be a Red if you're married to a civil servant.
~ Doris Lessing





VIEW MORE OF DORIS LESSING'S BOOKS.

Hopeless Love As A Metaphor for Despair

Hopeless Love As A Metaphor for Despair

I have been more of a spectator of the different scenarios of the drama of life, as I watch more in amusement than bewilderment, how humans live through the existential realities of life on earth, their battle of wits and instincts to create an ideal society in the development and advancement of human civilization.

I often brood and ponder over how humans act and react in different circumstances and the influences of these circumstances form their experiences in their development in a particular environment.

The culture of nature is full of imperfections and malfunctions as human inhibitions and laws contradict the natural dispositions of their instincts.

All humans are naturally romantic and erotic creatures and respond to their stimuli for sexual pleasures as they thirst for water or want food. But the question of right and wrong causes disruptions as they continue to make corrections to balance the equations of life on earth.

Here is one of my case studies in Lagos, Nigeria.

She is hopelessly in love with an older man since she knew him when she was only six. Now she is 19 and her heart still beats faster whenever she sees him. Her parents like him and he respects them. They see him as a very disciplined and kind uncle, but she wants him to be her lover. She feels intimidated in his company as he is often surrounded by a bevy of beauties, white and black and she would feel outshined by the older women. No day passes that she does not wish to be wrapped in his arms. He has left and ignored her and she has dated boys of her age group, but she has lost interest in them and now feels guilty that she gave her virginity away to one of these boys. She wants Jimmy to love her as he would love his older women, but she is afraid of going to him without what he advised her to preserve till marriage. At 18, she was still a virgin and offered herself to him and thought he would be anxious and curious to deflower her, but he politely declined and did not even embrace or kiss her. She could not believe he would reject her. She has tried to ignore him and forget him, but she has failed. She does not hide anything from him, she gave him access to her only e-mail account, just to show him how honest, and transparent she is. Her parents know she loves him, but they are afraid that he will not marry her even though he has not married any of his numerous female companions who cannot stop loving him. They pray their daughter to find a suitable suitor and get over her passion for Jimmy, but she knows they can never stop the festering thoughts of her unfulfilled love for the only man who makes her feel the depth of her being.


N.B:

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