Quotes about beginning
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“We is in Dream Country,' the BFG said. 'This is where all dreams is beginning.”

Roald Dahl The BFG

Source: The BFG

Dreams, Country

“It was like the beginning of life and laughter. It was the real meaning of the sun”

Charles Bukowski book Factotum

Source: Factotum

Life, Laughter, Sun

“Of course in the present day […] the world of work begins to become — threatens to become — our only world, to the exclusion of all else. The demands of the working world grow ever more total, grasping ever more completely the whole of human existence.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, pp. 64–65
Source: Leisure: The Basis Of Culture

World

“It isn't all over; everything has not been invented; the human adventure is just beginning.”

Gene Roddenberry (1921–1991) American television screenwriter and producer

“Let the Seventy-forth Hunger Games begin, Cato, I think. Let them begin for real.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Hunger, Game, Thinking

“Begin with the end in mind. Start with the end outcome and work backwards to make your dream possible.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

Dreams

“Before I begin, may I ask how old you are?"
"You may ask."
"How old are you?"
"It's none of your business”

Christopher Pike book The Last Vampire

Source: The Last Vampire

Business

“Some people are afraid of what they might find if they try to analyze themselves too much. But you have to crawl into your wounds to discover where your fears are. Once the bleeding starts, the cleansing can begin.”

Tori Amos (1963) American singer

People, Fear

“Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into the nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas.”

Thomas Wolfe book Look Homeward, Angel

Source: Look Homeward, Angel

Love, Night

“I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.”

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

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Source: Self-Reliance and Other Essays
Context: But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in communication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other men. We must go alone. I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

“Begin to see yourself as a soul with a body rather than a body with a soul.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

Soul

“A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

Time

“I do not think that you can be changing the end of a song or a story like that, as though it were quite separate from the rest. I think the end of a story is part of it from the beginning.”

Rosemary Sutcliff (1920–1992) English author

Thinking, Change, Parting

“Ask the dust on the road! Ask the Joshua trees standing alone where the Mojave begins. Ask them about Camilla Lopez, and they will whisper her name.”

John Fante (1909–1983) 1909–1983; American novelist, short story writer and screenwriter of Italian descent

Source: The Big Hunger

Tree

“I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul as thin as a playing card…and somehow the activity of writing changes everything.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

Soul, Change

“There is certainty in a ring.
The non-ending, the non-beginning.
The ongoing.
The way it holds on to you
not because it's fastened
or stretched or adhered.
It holds on
because it fits.”

David Levithan The Realm of Possibility

Source: The Realm of Possibility

Way

“You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler.”

Italo Calvino (1923–1985) Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels

Source: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Travel, Winter, Reading, Night

“If you are trying to transform a brutalized society into one where people can live in dignity and hope, you begin with the empowering of the most powerless. You build from the ground up.”

Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) American poet, essayist and feminist

People, Hope

“sometimes we have absolutely no idea where we are, we need the smallest clue to show us where to begin.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: The Book of Tomorrow

Idea

“She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.”

Jane Austen book Persuasion

Source: Persuasion

Youth, Nature, Learning

“…the end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.”

Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man

Prologue.
Invisible Man (1952)

“That day was the beginning of my friendship with Sebastian, and thus it came about, that morning in June, that I was lying beside him in the shade of the high elms watching the smoke from his lips drift up into the branches.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

Source: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

Friendship, Lying

“The difference between a cow and a bean is a bean can begin an adventure.”

Stephen Sondheim (1930) American composer and lyricist

Source: Into the Woods

“I was reminded of the Four Immutable Laws of the Spirit: Whoever is present are the right people. Whenever it begins is the right time. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened. And when it's over, it's over.”

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

Source: Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son's First Son

People, Law, Time

“I can remember my first one-night stand like it was yesterday. Well, maybe not the first. Or the second… or the fifth. I'll just begin with what I can remember and not concern myself with order.”

Chelsea Handler (1975) American comedian, actress, author and talk show host

Night

“Once you call something a story, it's set in stone. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end that can't be transformed, because by definition, if you do that, it's not the same story anymore”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Between the Lines

“Every beginning, after all, is nothing but a sequel, and the book of events is always open in the middle.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

Books

“Not everything's perfect, especially in the beginning. And its all right to have a little bit of regret every once in a while. It's when you feel it all the time and can't do anything about it… that's when you get into trouble”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

Feeling, Time, Perfection

“A poem is never a put-up job, so to speak. It begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is never a thought to begin with.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Sense

“From quiet homes and first beginning,
Out to the undiscovered ends,
There's nothing worth the wear of winning,
But laughter and the love of friends.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

"Dedicatory Ode", stanza 22
Verses (1910)

Love, Home, Laughter

“Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art.”

Will Durant book The Story of Philosophy

The Story of Philosophy (1926)

Art, Science

“It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live.”

John Fowles book The French Lieutenant's Woman

Source: The French Lieutenant's Woman

“And suddenly solitude fell across his heart like a dusty reflection. He closed his eyes. The dark doors within him opened and he entered. The next performance in the theater of Grenouille's soul was beginning.”

Patrick Süskind (1949) German writer and screenwriter

Source: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Soul, Solitude, Heart

“In the beginning there was only a small amount of injustice abroad in the world, but everyone who came afterwards added their portion, always thinking it was very small and unimportant, and look where we have ended up today.”

Paulo Coelho book The Devil and Miss Prym

Source: The Devil and Miss Prym

World, Thinking

“In the beginning was the thing. And one thing led to another.”

Tom Robbins Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

Source: Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

“Now you are beginning to think for yourself instead of letting others think for you. That’s the beginning of wisdom.”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

Wisdom, Thinking

“Whose work is it but your own to open your eyes? But indeed the business of the universe is to make such a fool out of you that you will know yourself for one, and begin to be wise.”

George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist

Source: Lilith A and Lilith, 1896: A Duplex

Fools, Business, Universe

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Life, Tree, Summer

“I am beginning to feel the need of a glass of wine to fortify myself against this conversation.”

Naomi Novik book His Majesty's Dragon

Source: His Majesty's Dragon

Feeling, Wine

“A promise is a commitment to do something later, and a vow is a binding commitment to begin doing something now and to continue to do it for the duration of the vow. Some vows, or contracts, are for life; others are for limited periods of time.”

Myles Munroe (1954–2014) Bahamian Evangelical Christian minister

Source: The Purpose and Power of Love & Marriage

Life, Time

“The first rule of hurricane coverage is that every broadcast must begin with palm trees bending in the wind.”

Carl Hiaasen (1953) journalist, columnist and novelist from the United States

Tree

“Our story has three parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end. And although this is the way all stories unfold, I still can't believe that ours didn't go on forever.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Way, Parting

“En Ma Fin Est Ma Commencement - In my end is my beginning.”

Philippa Gregory book The Other Queen

Source: The Other Queen

“The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

1848
1840s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1840s
Source: The Journals of Kierkegaard

“I begin with the young. We older ones are used up but my magnificent youngsters! Are there finer ones anywhere in the world? Look at all these men and boys! What material! With you and I, we can make a new world.”

Adolf Hitler book Hitler's Letters and Notes

Adolf Hitler c. 1933; as quoted in Hitler Speaks http://books.google.com/books?id=PndurCstDZMC&pg=PA251 (1939), by Hermann Rauschning, London: Thornton Butterworth, p. 247. <br class="br">Misattributed <br class="br">Source: Hitler's Letters and Notes <br class="br">Context: I am beginning with the young. We older ones are used up. Yes, we are old already. We are rotten to the marrow. We have no unrestrained instincts left. We are cowardly and sentimental. We are bearing the burden of a humiliating past, and have in our blood the dull recollection of serfdom and servility. But my magnificent youngsters! Are there finer ones anywhere in the world? Look at these young men and boys! What material! With them, I can make a new world.

Men, World, Boy

“Let it die. Let there be a new beginning. It’s awful. Goodnight.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“It's very hard in the beginning to understand that the whole idea is not
to beat the other runners. Eventually you learn that the competition is
against the little voice inside you that wants you to quit.”

George Sheehan Irish footballer

Idea, Understanding, Learning

“It starts when you begin to overlook good manners. Any time you quit hearing Sir and Mam the end is pretty much in sight…”

Cormac McCarthy book No Country for Old Men

Source: No Country for Old Men

Time

“You have a conscience, and a conscience is a valuable attribute, but not if it begins to make you think you were to blame for what is far beyond the scope of your responsibility.”

Philip Roth book Nemesis

Source: Nemesis

Thinking

“Kaname: Ichijou… about Aido…
Ichijou: Hmmm?
Kaname: He's beginning to get on my nerves…
Ichijou: Well, he's in love with you.”

Matsuri Hino Japanese manga artist

Love

“I'm not saying she was lying to me, but she just acted so different before I got to know her, and if she really isn't like what she was at the beginning, I wish she could have just said so.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Lying

“I wonder if children don't begin to reject both poetry and religion for similar reasons, because the way both are taught takes the life out of them.”

Kathleen Norris (1880–1966) American writer

Source: The Cloister Walk

Life, Children, Religion, Way

“One could come from less than humble beginnings, to become a winner from within.”

Dave Pelzer (1960) American author

Source: A Child Called "It"

“Ages fourteen to eighteen, a girl needs something to kill all that time, that endless itchy waiting, every hour, every day for something — anything — to begin.”

Megan Abbott book Dare Me

Source: Dare Me

Age, Girl, Time, Waiting

“I'm beginning to think I need you like I need oxygen”

Rachel Gibson (1961) American writer

Source: Not Another Bad Date

Thinking

“I'm beginning to realize that things don't turn out the way you want them to. And sometimes, when they don't they can turn out just a little bit better.”

Melina Marchetta book Looking for Alibrandi

Source: Looking for Alibrandi

Way

“There comes a moment, when you get lost in the woods, when the woods begin to feel like home.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Marriage Plot

Source: The Marriage Plot

Feeling, Home

“And telling a story, I suppose, is like winding a skein of spun yarn- you sometimes lose track of the beginning.”

Edith Pattou book East

Source: East

“The fear of death is the beginning of slavery.”

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

Source: The Golden Apple

Death, Fear

“In my end is my beginning.”

T.S. Eliot book Four Quartets

Source: Four Quartets

“It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same for love.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)
Variant: A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
Context: It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same for love.

Love, Wisdom

“When you live in the dark for so long, you begin to love it. And it loves you back, and isn’t that the point? You think, the face turns to the shadows, and just as well. It accepts, it heals, it allows. But it also devours.”

Raymond Carver (1938–1988) American short story author and poet

Love, Thinking

“I thought I'd begin by reading a poem by Shakespeare, but then I thought, why should I? He never reads any of mine.”

Spike Milligan (1918–2002) British-Irish comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright, soldier and actor

Spike Milligan with Jeremy Taylor Live at Cambridge University. Recorded at Cambridge University on December 2, 1973, this was previously released as a double LP, and later re-issued as a 2 CD set. Milligan used variations on the Shakespear line throughout his later life.

Reading

“[He] saw that a peculiar expression had come into his nephew's face; an expression a little like that of a young hindu fakir who having settled himself on his first bed of spikes is beginning to wish that he had chosen one of the easier religions.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Religion

“When you begin to realize that your past does not necessarily dictate the outcome of your future, then you can release the hurt. It is impossible to inhale new air until you exhale the old.”

T.D. Jakes (1957) American bishop

Source: Healing the Wounds of the Past

Past, Future, Hurt, Hurtful

“All of us have a path to follow and the path begins on earth.”

Richard Matheson book What Dreams May Come

Source: What Dreams May Come

“I had carried on when all I wanted was to be dead. I had stayed alive for other people. I never stayed alive for myself. I cannot begin to describe the intensity of that effort.”

Sally Brampton (1955–2016) British writer

Source: Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression

People, Effort, Dead

“We were, the two of us, still fragmentary beings, just beginning to sense the presence of an unexpected, to be-aquired reality that would fill us and make us whole.”

Haruki Murakami book South of the Border, West of the Sun

Source: South of the Border, West of the Sun

Reality, Sense

“The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

Feeling, Sense

“If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.”

Francis Bacon book The Advancement of Learning

Book I, v, 8
The Advancement of Learning (1605)
Source: The Advancement Of Learning
Context: The two ways of contemplation are not unlike the two ways of action commonly spoken of by the ancients: the one plain and smooth in the beginning, and in the end impassable; the other rough and troublesome in the entrance, but after a while fair and even. So it is in contemplation: If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.

“He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder.”

Tad Williams Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn

Author’s Warning
Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988)

Heart

“He was still frowning at the cake, looking at it as if he expected it to sprout dozens of legs and begin scuttling toward him, thin-lipped, teeth bared.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Faefever

“Incredible what slender threads you begin to hang your hopes on.”

Elizabeth Wein book Code Name Verity

Source: Code Name Verity

Hope

“Firsts are best because they are beginnings.”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

“When women are secret they are secret indeed; and more often then not they only begin to be secret with the advent of a second lover.”

Thomas Hardy book A Pair of Blue Eyes

Source: A Pair of Blue Eyes

Women, Secret, Lovers

“Let every dawn of morning be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Source: The Two Paths

Life, Sun

“… this beginning motion, this first time when a sail truly filled and the boat took life and knifed across the lake under perfect control, this was so beautiful it stopped my breath…”

Gary Paulsen (1939) American writer and musher

Source: Caught by the Sea

Life, Beauty, Time, Perfection

“Change is hardest at the beginning, messiest in the middle and best at the end.”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Source: The Leader Who Had No Title: A Modern Fable on Real Success in Business and in Life

Change

“The unselfish effort to bring cheer to others will be the beginning of a happier life for ourselves.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Life, Effort

“Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion and the beginning of morality”

Ian McEwan (1948) British author

Imagination

“First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

Imagination, Idea, Reality

“Our story is over, though in its end lies its beginning.”

Sally Gardner book The Red Necklace

Source: The Red Necklace

“I act as the tongue of you,
… tied in your mouth…. in mine it begins to be loosened.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

“Magic is always impossible…. It begins with the impossible and ends with the impossible and is impossible in between. That is why it's magic.”

Kate DiCamillo The Magician's Elephant

Source: The Magician's Elephant

“There are only so many times that you can utter ‘It does not hurt’ before it begins to hurt even more than the hurt. You become enlightened of the feeling of feeling hurt, which is worse, I am certain, than the existent hurt.”

Jonathan Safran Foer (1977) Novelist

Feeling, Time, Hurt

“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. What I’ve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head.”

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

Effort, Learning

“Over and over, we start our own tales, compose our own stories, whether our lives are short or long. Until at last all our beginnings come down to just one end, and the tale of who we are is done.”

Cameron Dokey (1956) American writer

Source: Before Midnight: A Retelling of Cinderella

“The real struggle is about you: you, a person who has to learn to live in the real world, to inhabit her own skin, to know her own heart, to stop waiting for life to begin.”

Caroline Knapp (1959–2002) American writer

Source: Appetites: Why Women Want

Life, World, Learning, Waiting

“where the world ends is where you must begin”

Stephen King book The Gunslinger

Source: The Gunslinger

World

“A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don’t get to choose our own hearts. We can’t make ourselves want what’s good for us or what’s good for other people. We don’t get to choose the people we are.”

Donna Tartt book The Goldfinch

Source: The Goldfinch

People, Understanding, Heart

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end.”

Gilda Radner (1946–1989) American comedian

Way, Learning, Perfection

“In the beginning, I was put off by the harshness of German. Someone would order a piece of cake, and it sounded as if it were an actual order, like, "Cut the cake and lie facedown in that ditch between the cobbler and the little girl."”

David Sedaris book Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls

I'm guessing this comes from having watched too many Second World War movies.

Essay, "Easy, tiger". p.80
Source: Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls (2013)

Lie, Girl