A sweeping statement is the only statement worth listening to. The critic without faith gives balanced opinions, usually about second-rate writers.

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There are certain things in which mediocrity is intolerable: poetry, music, painting, public eloquence. What torture it is to hear a frigid speech being pompously declaimed, or second-rate verse spoken with all a bad poet's bombast!

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If we should swap a good library for a second-rate stump speech and not ask for boot, it would be thoroughly in tune with our hearts. For deep...

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The qualities of a second-rate writer can easily be defined, but a first-rate writer can only be experienced. It is just the thing in him whic...

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The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he, by peddling second-rate technology, who led them into it in the first place.

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The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.

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I would rather have a first-class manager running a second-rate business than a second-rate manager running a first-rate business.

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What's terrible is to pretend that the 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.

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The bad teacher imposes his ideas and his methods on his pupils, and such originality as they may have is lost in the second-rate art of imitation.

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Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.

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Set exorbitant standards, and give your people hell when they don't live up to them. There is nothing so demoralizing as a boss who tolerates second rate work.

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Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else.

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Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of someone else.

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Always be a first rate version of your self instead of a second rate version of someone else.

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One mark of a second-rate mind is to be always telling stories.

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