Quotes about beginning
page 11

“I'm beginning to think the only choice anyone has in life is between either a bad choice or a worse one.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infamous

“But I don't love you, Daisy, and you can't begin to know how sorry I am about that because if I could chose anyone in this world to love, it'd be you.”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Source: Kiss an Angel

Love, World

“The Warrior of the Light is a believer.

Because he believes in miracles, miracles begin to happen. Because he is sure that his thoughts can change his life, his life begins to change. Because he is certain that he will find love, love appears.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Warrior of the Light

Love, Life, Light, Appearance

“People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them while they’re reflecting too… Reflections of reflections and echoes of echoes. No beginning and no end. No center and no purpose.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

People

“How right it is to love flowers and the greenery of pines and ivy and hawthorn hedges; they have been with us from the very beginning.”

Vincent Van Gogh book The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Source: The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Love, Flowers

“Beginnings are sudden, but also insidious. They creep up on you sideways, they keep to the shadows, they lurk unrecognized. Then, later, they spring.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Spring

“When God gets us alone through suffering, heartbreak, temptation, disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted friendship - when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are totally speechless, unable to ask even one question, then He begins to teach us.”

Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) British missionary

God, Friendship, Disappointment, Question

“If you have felt hopeless, hold on! Wonderful changes are going to happen in your life as you begin to live it on purpose.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

Life, Change

“The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship. Most of your time is spent lying on your back. The brain has shut down. The flesh begins to soften. Nothing much new happens, and nothing is expected of you.”

Mary Roach book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Source: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Way, Lying, Time, Dead

“Our responsibility begins with our imagination.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Imagination

“When a woman conceives her true self, a miracle occurs and life around her begins again.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Life

“You don't change what you love or you never loved it to begin with.”

Lora Leigh (1965) American writer

Source: Nauti Dreams

Love, Change

“Oh, lord. I was beginning to think like Neith. Soon I'd be huddled in an underground bunker eating army rations and cackling as I sewed together the pockets of all the boys who'd jilted me.”

Rick Riordan book The Serpent's Shadow

Source: The Serpent's Shadow

Boy, Thinking

“I've lost track of where friendship ends and falling begins.
(this is the foolish refrain of the hopelessly devoted.)
there are times I want to kiss you midsentence.
undo the not-doing with one gesture.”

David Levithan The Realm of Possibility

Source: The Realm of Possibility

Friendship, Kiss, Time

“Perhaps the story you finish is never the one you begin.”

Salman Rushdie (1947) British Indian novelist and essayist

“Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.”

Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech author of Czech and French literature

Love, Memory

“Words and magic were in the beginning one and the same thing, and even today words retain much of their magical power.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Source: Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.
- Atticus Finch”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Pt. 1, ch. 11
Atticus Finch
Variant: Courage is not a man with a gun in his hand. It's knowing you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.
Source: To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
Context: I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.

Idea, Courage, Courageous

“I am beginning to measure myself in strength, not pounds. Sometimes in smiles.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

Smile

“But the truth is that no person ever understands another, from beginning to end of life, there is no truth that can be known, only the story we imagine to be true, the story they really believe to be true about themselves; and all of them lies.”

Orson Scott Card book Children of the Mind

Source: Children of the Mind

Life, Truth, Imagination, Understanding

“I believe the choice to be excellent begins with aligning your thoughts and words with the intention to require more from yourself.”

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

“When I cannot bear outer pressures anymore, I begin to put order in my belongings… As if unable to organize and control my life, I seek to exert this on the world of objects.”

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

Life, World

“But you can't muscle through a five-hour run that way; you have to relax into it like easing your body into a hot bath, until it no longer resists the shock and begins to enjoy it.”

Christopher McDougall (1962) American journalist and writer

Source: Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

Way

“The only impossible journey is the one you never begin.”

Anthony Robbins (1960) Author, actor, professional speaker

Wise, Deep, Life, Graduation

“With the beginning of life, comes the thirst for truth, whereas the ability to lie is gradually acquired in the process of trying to stay alive.”

Gao Xingjian (1940) Chinese novelist and playwright

Life, Truth, Lie

“Because the question for me was always whether that shape we see in our lives was there from the beginning or whether these random events are only called a pattern after the fact. Because otherwise we are nothing.”

Cormac McCarthy (1933) American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter

Source: All The Pretty Horses: All The Pretty Horses

Question

“Within the soul of each Vietnam veteran there is probably something that says “Bad war, good soldier.” Only now are Americans beginning to separate the war from the warrior.”

Max Cleland (1942) American politician

War, Soul

“One never realizes how different a husband and wife can be until they begin to pack for a trip.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…

“I will meet you on the nape of your neck one day, on the surface of intention, word becoming act.
We will breathe into each other the high mountain tales, where the snows come from, where the waters begin.”
-In the yellow time of pollen”

Luke Davies (1962) Australian writer

Mountain, Water, Time

“I'm not through with you yet. Are you prepared to accept your punishment?"
I nodded reluctantly. I wasn't sure what a vampire's punishment might be. But I was ready to find out.
"I sentence you to a thousand kisses," he said.
"Can I begin now?”

Ellen Schreiber (1967) American writer

Source: Royal Blood

Kiss

“The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning.”

Rebecca West (1892–1983) British feminist and author

World

“Mr. Knightley seemed to be trying not to smile; and succeeded without difficulty, upon Mrs. Elton's beginning to talk to him.”

Jane Austen book Emma

Source: Emma

Smile

“Sometimes the day begins with nothing to look forward to…”

Shaun Tan book The Red Tree

Source: The Red Tree

“For a well-made cup of coffee is the proper beginning to an idle day. Its aroma is beguiling, its taste is sweet; yet it leaves behind only bitterness and regret. In that, it resembles, surely, the pleasures of love.”

Anthony Capella (1962) British writer

Source: The Various Flavours Of Coffee

Love, Pleasure, Coffee

“I’m beginning to think I’ve led a much too sheltered life.”

Diana Wynne Jones House of Many Ways

Source: House of Many Ways

Life, Thinking

“The beginning of wisdom, as they say. When you're seventeen you know everything. When you're twenty-seven if you still know everything you're still seventeen.”

Ray Bradbury book Dandelion Wine

Source: Dandelion Wine (1957), p. 142
Context: “I don’t know,” he admitted.
“Well.” She started pouring tea. “To start things off, what do you think of the world?”
“I don’t know anything.”
“The beginning of wisdom, as they say. When you’re seventeen you know everything. When you’re twenty-seven if you still know everything you’re still seventeen.”
“You seem to have learned quite a lot over the years.”
“It is the privilege of old people to seem to know everything. But it’s an act and a mask, like every other act and mask. Between ourselves, we old ones wink at each other and smile, saying, How do you like my mask, my act, my certainty? Isn’t life a play? Don’t I play it well?”
They both laughed quietly.

Wisdom