1919-, British Novelist
A simple grateful thought turned heavenwards is the most perfect prayer.
Doris Lessing – [Prayer]
Better Counsel comes overnight.
Doris Lessing – [Counsel]
Borrowing is not much better than begging; just as lending with interest is not much better than stealing.
Doris Lessing – [Borrowing]
If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.
Doris Lessing – [Cats]
In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.
Doris Lessing – [Colleges and Universities]
It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction.
Doris Lessing – [Self-image]
It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important.
Doris Lessing – [Priorities]
Laughter is by definition healthy.
Doris Lessing – [Laughter]
Literature is analysis after the event.
Doris Lessing – [Literature]
Man who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance!
Doris Lessing – [Humankind]
Pearls mean tears.
Doris Lessing – [Tears]
Political correctness is the natural continuum from the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others. It is a heritage of communism, but they don't seem to see this.
Doris Lessing – [Political Correctness]
Some people obtain fame, others deserve it.
Doris Lessing – [Fame]
Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time.
Doris Lessing – [Science Fiction]
That's what learning is. You suddenly understand something you understood all your life, but in a new way.
Doris Lessing – [Learning]
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 and Aging]
The worst superstition is to consider our own tolerable.
Doris Lessing – [Superstition]
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 – [Experts]
Trust no friend without faults, and love a woman, but no angel.
Doris Lessing – [Faults]
What is a hero without love for mankind.
Doris Lessing – [Heroes and Heroism]