Daily Inspiration Quote by Richard Strauss

Strauss’s line lands because it’s equal parts brag and preemptive self-defense, the sort of candor that sounds humble until you notice how carefully it manages the ranking. “First-rate” concedes the pantheon to the Beethovens and Wagners; “first-class second-rate” quietly claims dominion over everyone else. It’s a joke with an edge: he’s demoting himself only to control the terms of the demotion.

The subtext is a composer acutely aware of the culture’s obsession with hierarchies. Late-19th- and early-20th-century European music ran on canon formation and moral seriousness: art wasn’t just good or bad, it was destined for eternity or doomed to be “mere” entertainment. Strauss, who built a career on dazzling orchestration, tone poems, and operas that could be both sensational and sophisticated, knew critics could frame him as an opportunist or an aesthete rather than a “prophet.” By embracing the “second-rate” label, he robs it of its sting and turns it into a brand: I’m the best at being the thing you’re tempted to dismiss.

It also hints at his modernity. Strauss isn’t performing Romantic agony about greatness; he’s being managerial about it, like a professional who understands the market and the memoir. The line reads as insurance against posterity: if history crowns him, he looks shrewd; if it doesn’t, he can say he called it. That’s not self-loathing. It’s strategic self-placement in a world that keeps score.