
“We all have two lives. The second begins when you realize you only have one.”
A collection of quotes on the topic of beginning, end, time, timing.
“We all have two lives. The second begins when you realize you only have one.”
All for Education
“Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.”
Source: Heliogabalus
Teacher
“When diplomacy ends, War begins.”
“Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.”
Variant: Coming together is the beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.
"Mary, Queen of Scots" The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Ed. Elizabeth Knowles. Oxford University Press, 2004. Oxford Reference Online. http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t115.e2074
“The beginning of purpose is found in creating something that only you understand.”
“If you would take, you must first give, this is the beginning of intelligence.”
"On Medicine, (c. 1020) http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1020Avicenna-Medicine.html
Context: The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes. Therefore in medicine we ought to know the causes of sickness and health. And because health and sickness and their causes are sometimes manifest, and sometimes hidden and not to be comprehended except by the study of symptoms, we must also study the symptoms of health and disease. Now it is established in the sciences that no knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings, if it has had causes and beginnings; nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials. Of these causes there are four kinds: material, efficient, formal, and final.
“Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals.”
Source: Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey
Dated 27 March 1942
Diary excerpts
Attributed to Goethe by popular British novelist Marie Corelli in her essay "The Spirit of Work" as published in The Queen's Christmas carol : an anthology of poems, stories, essays, drawings and music / by British authors, artists and composers in 1905 by The Daily Mail of London.
Attributed to Goethe by William Hutchinson Murray, in his book The Scottish Himalayan Expedition (1951), this has been shown to be a misattribution at "German Myth 12: The Famous 'Goethe' Quotation", Answer.com http://german.about.com/library/blgermyth12.htm and "Popular Quotes: Commitment", Goethe Society of North America http://www.goethesociety.org/pages/quotescom.html
Misattributed
Variant: Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.
“Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.”
“A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.”
Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
Source: I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World
“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
“My loyalty to my party ends where my loyalty to my country begins.”
As quoted in John Gunther's Inside Asia. (1939)
Author, Third Day. Change of Position<!--p.153 [190]-->
Dialogues and Mathematical Demonstrations Concerning Two New Sciences (1638)
Context: It has been observed that missiles and projectiles describe a curved path of some sort; however no one has pointed out the fact that this path is a parabola. But this and other facts, not few in number or less worth knowing, I have succeeded in proving; and what I consider more important, there have been opened up to this vast and most excellent science, of which my work is merely the beginning, ways and means by which other minds more acute than mine will explore its remote corners.
“The Art of Peace begins with you.”
As quoted in Inspire! What Great Leaders Do (2004) by Lance Secretan, p. 45
Context: The Art of Peace begins with you. Work on yourself and your appointed task in the Art of Peace. Everyone has a spirit that can be refined, a body that can be trained in some manner, a suitable path to follow. You are here to realize your inner divinity and manifest your innate enlightenment. Foster peace in your own life and then apply the Art to all than you encounter.
“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”
Source: Confucius: The Analects
Source: Manson in His Own Words: The Shocking Confessions of 'The Most Dangerous Man Alive'
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
Laozi in the Tao Te Ching, Chapter 64
Misattributed, Chinese
Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, Foreword, p. viii.
Context: Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. There is no other way for land to survive the impact of mechanized man, nor for us to reap from it the aesthetic harvest it is capable, under science, of contributing to culture.
“A conflict begins and ends in the hearts and minds of people, not in the hilltops.”
Source: http://gamasutra.com/view/news/175791/A_free_tip_from_Miyamoto_Make_your_first_level_last.php
Letter to Sir Francis Walsingham, from off Cape Sagres, Portugal (17 May 3067)
“Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins.”
“If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.”
“There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life.”
Fellini on Fellini (1976) edited by Anna Keel and Christian Strich; translated by Isabel Quigly.
Variant: There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the passion of life.
“Don't be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin!”
“When the bird of the heart begins to sing, too often will reason stop up her ears.”
Source: The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception
According to R. Ken Rasmussen in The Quotable Mark Twain (1998), this is most probably not Twain's.
Misattributed
“We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.”
“Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again.”
Source: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Haring – Art in Transit http://www.haring.com/!/selected_writing/haring-art-in-transit#.V1cw0tIrKyw The Keith Haring Foundation
Was klein ist im Beginn wird oft am Ende überaus groß sein. Und so geschieht es, das wer im Anfange auch nur um ein Weniges von der Wahrheit abweicht, im Verlauf immer weiter und weiter und zu tausendmal größern Irrthümer fortgeführt wird.
On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle (1862)
To Leon Goldensohn (24 May 1946)
The Nuremberg Interviews (2004)
Conclusion in Wonders of the Universe - Destiny
“Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.”
Source: Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963), Ch. 1 "Science : Conjectures and Refutations", Section VII
Source: Social Theory and Social Structure (1949), p. 477 (1968 Enlarged edition)
Context: The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behaviour which makes the original false conception come "true". This specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning.
Letter announcing Alzheimer's diagnosis http://www.nationalreview.com/document/reagan_sunset200406070915.asp (5 November 1994)
Post-presidency (1989–2004)
Context: In closing, let me thank you, the American people, for giving me the great honor of allowing me to serve as your president. When the Lord calls me home, whenever that day may be, I will leave with the greatest love for this country of ours and eternal optimism for its future. I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead. Thank you, my friends. May God always bless you.
Original: (uk) Кожен мій ранок починається з sms-повідомлення. Це sms від Генерального штабу. За минулу добу обстрілів – сім, втрат – дві. Цифри можуть бути різними, але тільки одна робить ранок добрим. Це – нуль. Обстрілів – нуль. Втрат – нуль.
Transliteration: Kozhen miy ranok pochynayetʹsya z sms-povidomlennya. Tse sms vid Heneralʹnoho shtabu. Za mynulu dobu obstriliv – sim, vtrat – dvi. Tsyfry mozhutʹ buty riznymy, ale tilʹky odna robytʹ ranok dobrym. Tse – nulʹ. Obstriliv – nulʹ. Vtrat – nulʹ.
Speech by Zelensky during the celebration of Independence Day of Ukraine https://www.ukrinform.ua/rubric-society/2766331-promova-zelenskogo-z-nagodi-28i-ricnici-nezaleznosti-ukraini.html (24 August 2019)
"We all equally want to win, but there will be battles ahead" (1 April 2022) https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/mi-vsi-odnakovo-hochemo-peremogi-ale-poperedu-budut-bitvi-zv-74009
“Once upon a time – for that is how all stories should begin – there was a boy who lost his mother.”
Source: The Book of Lost Things
Variant: God does not begin by asking our ability, but more of our availability. When we prove our dependability, He will in crease our capability.
“And suddenly you know: It's time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings”
Widely circulated on the internet, but no actual text to tie it back to Eckhart, as of yet.
Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Meister Eckhart / Disputed
Source: The Tao of Pooh
1950s, Loving Your Enemies (Christmas 1957)
Context: First, we must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. It is impossible even to begin the act of loving one's enemies without prior acceptance of the necessity, over and over again, of forgiving those who inflict evil and injury upon us. It is also necessary to realize that the forgiving act must always be initiated by the person who has been wronged, the victim of some great hurt, the recipient of some tortuous injustice, the absorber of some terrible act of oppression. The wrongdoer may request forgiveness. He may come to himself, and, like the prodigal son, move up with some dusty road, his heart palpitating with the desire for forgiveness. But only the injured neighbor, the loving father back home can really pour out the warm waters of forgiveness.
Source: Story of O
Source: Communion: The Female Search for Love
Source: Waiting and Dating