Quotes about beginning
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“A civilization begins to decline the moment Life becomes its sole obsession.”
“The beginning is always today.”
“I don't see how he can ever finish, if he doesn't begin.”
Variant: Alice thought to herself "I don't see how he can ever finish, if he doesn't begin.
Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass
“Possession of anything begins in the mind.”
Part 6 "Beyond System — The Ultimate Source of Jeet Kune Do"
Jeet Kune Do (1997)
“When words leave off, music begins.”
As quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1977) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 343
“A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.”
Variant: You can get discouraged many times, but you are not a failure until you begin to blame somebody else and stop trying.
Source: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven
“Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.”
Variant: And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things.
Source: I Shall Wear Midnight
“We can only begin to live when we conceive life as
Tragedy.”
Source: Pride and Prejudice
“Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him.”
"Modern Fiction"
The Common Reader (1925)
Context: Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions — trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls differently from of old; the moment of importance came not here but there; so that, if a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted style, and perhaps not a single button sewn on as the Bond Street tailors would have it. Life is not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little mixture of the alien and external as possible? We are not pleading merely for courage and sincerity; we are suggesting that the proper stuff of fiction is a little other than custom would have us believe it.
Source: Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman's Soul
“It is because I dove into the abyss that I am beginning to love the abyss I am made of.”
Source: Kafka on the Shore
“All the soarings of my mind begin in my blood.”
Wartime Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke 1914-1921 (1940), translated by M.D. Herter Norton
“Our success has really been based on partnerships from the very beginning.”
“The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.”
“Life, for people, begins to crumble on the edges; they don't realize it.”
“Think where man's glory most begins and ends
And say my glory was I had such friends.”
The Municipal Gallery Revisited http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1659/, st. 7
Last Poems (1936-1939)
Variant: Think where man's glory most begins and ends. And say my glory was I had such friends.
Context: You that would judge me, do not judge alone
This book or that, come to this hallowed place
Where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon;
Ireland's history in their lineaments trace;
Think where man's glory most begins and ends
And say my glory was I had such friends.
“Security is a false God. Begin to make sacrifices to it and you are lost.”
Source: The Secret Garden
speech at Lord Mayor’s Luncheon, Mansion House, London, November 10, 1942 : ( partial text http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/EndoBegn.html)
Referring to the British victory over the German Afrika Korps at the Second Battle of El Alamein in Egypt.
The Second World War (1939–1945)
Variant: This is not the end, this is not even the beginning of the end, this is just perhaps the end of the beginning.
Source: Their Finest Hour
“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as from nature.”
Source: How to Read a Book: The Classic Bestselling Guide to Reading Books and Accessing Information
“From the very beginning of his education, the child should experience the joy of discovery.”
Toutes choses sont dites déjà; mais comme personne n'écoute, il faut toujours recommencer.
Le Traité du Narcisse https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Le_Trait%C3%A9_du_narcisse (The Treatise of the Narcissus)
Nothing is said that has not been said before. -- Terence
“In dreams begins responsibility.”
Variant: In Dreams begins Responsibility.
Source: Epigraph to the book Responsibilities (1914); this was later adapted as the title of the story "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities" (1937) by Delmore Schwartz.
Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy
“Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.”
“Meet me where the sky touches the sea. Wait for me where the world begins.”
“Our old history ends with the Cross; our new history begins with the resurrection.”
Source: The Normal Christian Life
Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
As quoted in Women on War : Essential Voices for the Nuclear Age (1988), by Daniela Gioseffi, p. 103
Variant: A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that. No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There's too much work to do.
As quoted in Singing the Living Tradition (1993) by the Unitarian Universalist Association, p. 560
Context: What I want to bring out is how a pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. And each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that. Going to jail for distributing leaflets advocating war tax refusal causes a ripple of thought, of conscience among us all. And of remembrance too. …. There may be ever improving standards of living in the U. S., with every worker eventually owning his own home and driving his own car; but our modern economy is based on preparation for war. … The absolutist begins a work, others take it up and try to spread it. Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.
Source: Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1961 - 1970, Diary of a Genius (1964), p. 82
Act I
A Woman of No Importance (1893)
“Character building begins in our infancy and continues until death.”
“Often on a wet day I begin counting up; what I've read and what I haven't read.”
Source: Between the Acts
Source: 1900s, Our National Parks (1901), chapter 1: The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West
“All true stories begin and end in a cemetery" - The Shadow of the Wind”
Source: The Shadow of the Wind
Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“When the fight begins within himself,
A man's worth something.”
"Bishop Blougram's Apology".
Men and Women (1855)
J'accuse! (1898)
Context: These military tribunals have, decidedly, a most singular idea of justice.
This is the plain truth, Mr. President, and it is terrifying. It will leave an indelible stain on your presidency. I realise that you have no power over this case, that you are limited by the Constitution and your entourage. You have, nonetheless, your duty as a man, which you will recognise and fulfill. As for myself, I have not despaired in the least, of the triumph of right. I repeat with the most vehement conviction: truth is on the march, and nothing will stop it. Today is only the beginning, for it is only today that the positions have become clear: on one side, those who are guilty, who do not want the light to shine forth, on the other, those who seek justice and who will give their lives to attain it. I said it before and I repeat it now: when truth is buried underground, it grows and it builds up so much force that the day it explodes it blasts everything with it. We shall see whether we have been setting ourselves up for the most resounding of disasters, yet to come.
Source: A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog
Source: Will the Real Me Please Stand Up?: 25 Guidelines for Good Communication
“Whatever you do or dream you can do—begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it.”
Source: Deep Blue
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Source: The Angel's Game
Source: Metamorphoses
Source: Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
Source: Unpopular Essays
Mrs. Arbuthnot http://books.google.com/books?id=RHkWAAAAYAAJ&q=%22Children+begin+by+loving+their+parents+after+a+time%22+%22they+judge+them+rarely+if+ever+do+they+forgive+them%22&pg=PA187#v=onepage, Act IV
A Woman of No Importance (1893)
Variant: Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Source: Northern Farm
“When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.”
As quoted in Hard-to-Solve Cryptograms (2001) by Derrick Niederman, p. 96
Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence
B 730; Variant translation: All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.
Variant: All human knowledge begins with intuitions, proceeds from thence to concepts, and ends with ideas.
Source: Critique of Pure Reason (1781; 1787)