Quotes about beginning
page 10

“The fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the death of wisdom. Skepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Why I Am An Agnostic (1929)
Source: Why I Am An Agnostic and Other Essays

Death, Wisdom, God, Fear

“Because the moment you stop doing the very things that got you to the top of the mountain is the very moment you begin the slid down to the valley.”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Mountain

“Habit 1: Be Proactive
Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
Habit 3: Put First Things First
Habit 4: Think Win/Win
Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
Habit 6: Synergize
Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw”

Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Understanding, Thinking

“Creativity - like human life itself - begins in darkness.”

Julia Cameron book The Artist's Way

Variant: Creativity — like human life itself — begins in darkness.
Source: The Artist's Way (1992)
Context: Creativity — like human life itself — begins in darkness. We need to acknowledge this. All too often, we think only in terms of light: "And then the lightbulb went on and I got it!" It is true that insights may come to us as flashes. It is true that some of these flashes may be blinding. It is, however, also true that such bright ideas are preceded by a gestation period that is interior, murky, and completely necessary.

Life

“I knew immediately something was terribly wrong, but you can know that and not allow the thought in your head, at the front of your head. It dances around at the back, where it can't be controlled. But the front of the head is where the pain begins.”

Sebastian Barry book The Secret Scripture

Source: The Secret Scripture

Pain, Dance

“The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Education

“Simply touching a difficult memory with some slight willingness to heal begins to soften the holding and tension around it. (74)”

Stephen Levine (1937–2016) American poet and author

Source: A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

Memory

“Big Z, little Z, what begins with Z? I do.
I'm a zizzer zazzer zuzz, as you can plainly see.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

“I'm beginning to think that maybe it's not just how much you love someone. Maybe what matters is who you are when you're with them.”

Anne Tyler The Accidental Tourist

Source: The Accidental Tourist

Love, Thinking

“What the wise do in the beginning, fools do in the end.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Fools

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, all your problems begin to look like nails. - Abraham Maslow”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

Problem

“I would give up the unessential; I would give up my money, I would give up my life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself. I can't make it more clear; it's only something I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing itself to me.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

Life, Money, Children

“Another story must begin!”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“My sister, who never understood most of the things I wanted her to, might have been able to understand what had happened to me in this summer of weddings and beginnings. And she was right. The first boy was always the hardest. page 40000”

Sarah Dessen book That Summer

Source: That Summer (1996)

Boy, Understanding, Sister, Wedding

“For a certain kind of person, love begins from something tiny or silly.
From something like that or it doesn't begin at all.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Love, Personality

“Life begins at night”

Charlaine Harris book Dead Until Dark

Source: Dead Until Dark

Life, Night

“The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most.”

Thomas Merton book The Seven Storey Mountain

Source: The Seven Storey Mountain (1948)
Context: Indeed, the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers the most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and the source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture.

Fear, Suffering, Hurt

“No, what I felt was the torment of waiting, stuck between the end of one sentence and the beginning of the next which might or might not bring a hail storm, plane crash, poetic justice, or a miraculous reversal.”

Nicole Krauss book Great House

Source: Great House

Justice, Waiting

“Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgement. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error, a life-style. In this particular life-style the motto is “Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying,” but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory.”

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Author’s Note (pp. 276-277)
A Scanner Darkly (1977)

Life, Happiness, People, Disease

“History has rewritten itself so many times I'm not really sure how it was to begin with -- it's a bit like trying to guess the original color of a wall when it's been repainted eight times.”

Jasper Fforde book Something Rotten

Source: Something Rotten

Color, History, Time

“In every end, there is also a beginning.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

Good Night

“In the beginning. I wasn't there.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Source: Percy Jackson's Greek Gods

“It was the beginning of the greatest Christmas ever. Little food. No presents. But there was a snowman in their basement.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Food, Christmas

“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Effort

“The further you go, the more you have to be proud of. At the same time, in order to come a long way, you have to be behind to begin with. IN the end, though maybe it's not how you reach a place that matters. Just that you get there at all.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

Way, Time

“Like a blinking cursor on an empty page, it was just the first thing. The beginning of the beginning. But at least it was done.”

Sarah Dessen book What Happened to Goodbye

What Happened To Goodbye (2011)
Source: What Happened to Goodbye

“I soon discovered that if you keep your mouth shut, people are apt to believe you know everything, and they begin to feel freer and freer to tell you anything, anxious to show that they know something, too.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

People, Feeling

“… I begin with songs. They provide a sort of skeleton grammar for me to flesh out. Songs of longing for future tense, songs of regret for past tense, and songs of love for present tense.”

Mary Doria Russell The Sparrow

Source: The Sparrow

Love, Past, Future

“… The human perception of this energy first begins with a heightened sensitivity to beauty.”

James Redfield book The Celestine Prophecy

Source: The Celestine Prophecy

Beauty

“But behind all your stories is always your mother's story, because hers is where yours begins.”

Mitch Albom For One More Day

Variant: Behind all your stories is always your mother's story. Because hers is where yours begin.
Source: For One More Day

Mother's Day, For Mother

“I could feel the tears beginning to collect in my throat again, but I pushed them apart, away from each other. Tears are only a threat in groups.”

Aimee Bender (1969) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Feeling, Tear

“May you live in such a way that your death is just the beginning of your life.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Source: Outlive Your Life: You Were Made to Make A Difference

Life, Death, Way

“Will: Have you ever seen what happens to someone with demon pox? First it lies dormant. One begins to turn yellow and green. Then the swelling sets in -
Jem: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS DEMON POX.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“To see and listen to the wicked is already the beginning of wickedness”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

“Stories never really end… even if the books like to pretend they do. Stories always go on. They don't end on the last page, any more than they begin on the first page.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkspell

Books

“But in real life, happily-ever-after is just the beginning. It's where life starts.”

Kay Hooper (1957) American writer

Source: If There Be Dragons

Life

“A legend, Kludd, is a story that you begin to feel in your gizzard and then over time it becomes true in your heart. And perhaps makes you become a better owl.”

Kathryn Lasky (1944) American children's writer

Source: The Capture

Feeling, Time, Heart

“We won't die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come. Bye now. You are fabulous creatures, each and every one. And I bless you: More Life. The Great Work Begins.”

Tony Kushner Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes

Source: Angels in America

Life, Death, Secret, World

“Every search begins with beginner’s luck. And every search ends with the victor’s being severely tested.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

“But maybe as I get older, I begin to see beauty where I least expected it before.”

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (1956) novelist, short story writer, poet, and essayist

Beauty

“The moment we begin to seek love, love begins to seek us.
And to save us.”

Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)
Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
Context: Love is always new. Regardless of whether we love once, twice, or a dozen times in our life, we always face a brand-new situation. Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere. We simply have to accept it, because it is what nourishes our existence. If we reject it, we die of hunger, because we lack the courage to reach out a hand and pluck the fruit from the branches of the tree of life. We have to take love where we find it, even if it means hours, days, weeks of disappointment and sadness.
The moment we begin to seek love, love begins to seek us.
And to save us.

Love

“Begin to wonder what you do write about. Or if you have anything to say. Or even if there is such a thing as a thing to say. Limit these thoughts to no more than ten minutes a day; like sit-ups, they can make you thin”

Lorrie Moore (1957) American writer

Source: Self-Help

“Man, wow, there's so many things to do, so many things to write! How to even begin to get it all down and without modified restraints and all hung-up on like literary inhibitions and grammatical fears…”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

Fear

“Remember tonight… for it's the beginning of forever. - Dante Alighieri”

Dan Brown book Inferno

Source: Inferno

“I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

World

“A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her,—the light which, showing the way, forbids it.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

Way, Light

“Everything begins with a decision. Then, we have to manage that decision for the rest of your life.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

Life, Decision

“The final end of Eternity, and the beginning of Infinity”

Isaac Asimov The End of Eternity

Source: The End of Eternity

“Freedom begins the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story and it's time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself.”

Bill Moyers (1934) American journalist

Freedom, Time

“Philosophy begins where religion ends, just as by analogy chemistry begins where alchemy runs out, and astronomy takes the place of astrology.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Source: god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

Religion

“A poem…begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion finds the thought and the thought finds the words.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Letter to Louis Untermeyer (1 January 1916)
1910s

Sense, Effort

“To write a novel, you begin with what you can see and then you add what came before and what came after.

… You must understand that when you are writing a novel you are not making anything up. It's all there and you just have to find it.”

Thomas Harris Red Dragon

Source: Red Dragon

Understanding

“Turn the page, continue reading, and let the next story begin…”

Suzanne Weyn book Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

Source: Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

Reading

“Well, perhaps; but I begin to think there are better things than being comfortable.”

George MacDonald book At the Back of the North Wind

Source: At the Back of the North Wind

Thinking

“Later on in life, you expect a bit of rest, don't you? You think you deserve it. I did, anyway. But then you begin to understand that the reward of merit is not life's business.”

Julian Barnes book The Sense of an Ending

Source: The Sense of an Ending

Life, Understanding, Business, Thinking

“Don't lose heart if it's very difficult at times, everything will come out all right and nobody can in the beginning do as he wishes.”

Vincent Van Gogh book The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Source: The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Time, Heart

“When you believe that you are not worthwhile in and of yourself, in the back of your mind you also begin to believe that life is not worthwhile in and of itself. It is only worthwhile insofar as it relates to your crusade. It is a kamikaze mission.”

Marya Hornbacher book Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Source: Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Life

“Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

“When she saw him face to face their eyes met and brushed like birds’ wings. After that everything was all right, everything was wonderful, she knew that he was beginning to fall in love with her.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book Tender Is the Night

Source: Tender Is the Night

Love, Bird

“I've discovered that in order to make big changes in the world, we have to begin at home -- within ourselves”

Ann M. Martin (1955) American writer of children's literature

Source: Dawn Saves the Planet

World, Home, Change

“To new beginnings. To the pursuit of… somethingness.”

Cecelia Ahern book Thanks for the Memories

Source: Thanks for the Memories

“What we don't let out traps us. We think, "No one else feels this way, I must be crazy." So we don't say anything. And we become enveloped by a deep loneliness, not knowing where our feelings come from or what to do with them. "Why do I feel this way? Last week, I was on top of the world and now my feelings don't make sense." Voicing it, getting it out and letting it other people hear it, helps to dissipate it. The fears and self-criticisms begin to leak. And we begin to heal.”

Sabrina Ward Harrison (1975) Canadian writer

Quoted by Katherine Martin in Women of Courage: Inspiring Stories from the Women Who Lived Them, p. 268 (1999)

People, World, Fear, Way

“In the flesh,” Maharet said. “In the flesh all wisdom begins. Beware the thing that has no flesh. Beware the gods, beware the, beware the devil.”

Anne Rice book The Queen of the Damned

Source: The Queen of the Damned

Wisdom, God

“Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world. No hope so bright but is the beginning of its own fulfilment.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Progress of Culture Phi Beta Kappa Address (July 18, 1867) <br class="br">1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Books, Letters and Social Aims http://www.rwe.org/comm/index.php?option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=5&id=74&Itemid=149 (1876)

Men, World, Hope

“Thus, though I dislike to differ with such a great man, was simply ludicrous when he said that if god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. The human invention of god is the problem to begin with.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Source: god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

God, Problem

“And that's when I know it's over. As soon as you start thinking about the beginning, it's the end.”

Junot Díaz book This Is How You Lose Her

Source: This Is How You Lose Her

Thinking

“Leaving New Orleans also frightened me considerably. Outside of the city limits the heart of darkness, the true wasteland begins.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

Heart

“where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and who can say which has the wider vision?”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“There is a resemblance between men and women, not a contrast. When a man begins to recognize his feeling, the two unite. When men accept the sensitive side of themselves, they come alive.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: In Favor of the Sensitive Man and Other Essays

Women, Men, Feeling

“When I begin to doubt my ability to work the word, I simply read another writer and know I have nothing to worry about. My contest is only with myself, to do it right, with power, and force, and delight, and gamble.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Reading

“Art begins… when someone interprets, when someone sees the world through his own eyes. Art happens when what is seen becomes mixed with the inside of the person who is seeing it.”

Chaim Potok book The Gift of Asher Lev

Source: The Gift of Asher Lev

World, Art, Personality

“making a decision was only the beginning of things. When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Dreams, Decision, Strong

“Let God have you, and let God love you - and don’t be surprised if your heart begins to hear music you’ve never heard and your feet learn to dance as never before.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Love, God, Music, Learning

“A man begins dying at the moment of his birth. Most People live in denial of Death's patient courtship until, late in life and deep in sickness, they become aware of him sitting bedside.”

Dean Koontz book The Husband

Source: The Husband

Life, Death, People, Birth

“Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well.”

Jack Kornfield (1945) American writer

Source: Buddha's Little Instruction Book

Peace

“The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

Mountain, Deep

“Oh to be a pear tree – any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world!”

Zora Neale Hurston book Their Eyes Were Watching God

Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God

World, Kiss, Tree, Bee

“When a man does a queer thing, or two queer things, there may be a meaning to it, but when everything he does is queer, then you begin to wonder”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

“The ending is nearer than you think, and it is already written. All that we have left to choose is the correct moment to begin.”

Alan Moore V for Vendetta

Source: V for Vendetta

Thinking

“The minute we begin to think we have all the answers, we forget the questions.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: A Circle of Quiet

Question, Thinking, Forgetting

“Places have their own characters…. But the people begin to look the same.”

Joanne Harris book Chocolat

Source: Chocolat

People

“It's too late. Seventeen-year-olds don't need fathers.
Oh god. I'm thirty-four years old and I need a father. I can't even begin to think what my daughter needs.”

Melina Marchetta book Looking for Alibrandi

Source: Looking for Alibrandi

God, Thinking, Daughters

“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Law, Freedom, Time, Fight

“Courage is when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Variant: Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.
Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Courage

“When you have just been told that the girl you love is definitely betrothed to another, you begin to understand how Anarchists must feel when the bomb goes off too soon.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Summer Lightning

Source: Summer Lightning (1929)

Love, Feeling, Girl, Understanding

“Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's Prayer is about.”

N.T. Wright (1948) Anglican bishop

Source: Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

Life, God, People

“I would not sit waiting for some vague tomorrow, nor for something to happen. One could wait a lifetime, and find nothing at the end of the waiting. I would begin here, I would make something happen.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Source: Sackett's Land (1974), Ch. 4

Waiting

“When you open a book it's like going to the theater first you see the curtain then it is pulled aside and the show begins.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkheart

Books

“A First Sign of the Beginning of Understanding is the Wish to Die.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Understanding

“I'm a good person. In most ways. But I'm beginning to think that being a good person in most ways doesn't count for anything very much, if you're a bad person in one way.”

Nick Hornby (1957) English novelist

Way, Thinking, Personality

“"Is," "is." "is" — the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don't know what anything "is"; I only know how it seems to me at this moment.”

Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath

The Historical Illuminatus as spoken by Sigismundo Celine
Source: Nature's God

Sense

“It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

“It doesn't matter who you are, where you come from. The ability to triumph begins with you - always.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

“Only through our connectedness to others can we really know and enhance the self. And only through working on the self can we begin to enhance our connectedness to others.”

Harriet Lerner (1944) American psychologist

“A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Article on Biography.
1820s, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855)
Variant: For love is ever the beginning of Knowledge, as fire is of light.

Love, Knowledge, Heart, Wise

“Things have their root and their branches. Affairs have their end and their beginning. To know what is first and what is last will lead near to what is taught in the Great Learning.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Great Learning

Learning

“… there are only some many times you can utter "It does not hurt" before it begins to hurt even more than the hurt.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

Time, Hurt

“Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Source: Middlemarch (1871)
Context: Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending. Who can quit young lives after being long in company with them, and not desire to know what befell them in their after-years? For the fragment of a life, however typical, is not the sample of an even web: promises may not be kept, and an ardent outset may be followed by declension; latent powers may find their long-waited opportunity; a past error may urge a grand retrieval.

“To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.”

Karl Barth (1886–1968) Swiss Protestant theologian

World

“Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.”

Harper Lee book Go Set a Watchman

Source: Go Set a Watchman

Faith

Quotes about beginning page 10

Quotes about beginning
page 10