Quotes about beginning
page 4

Virginia Woolf photo
Eleanor Roosevelt photo

“When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

As quoted in Eleanor : The Years Alone (1972) by Joseph P. Lash

Leonardo Da Vinci photo
Lorrie Moore photo
Mark Twain photo
Haruki Murakami photo
Rainer Maria Rilke photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Stephen King photo

“Words create sentences; sentences create paragraphs; sometimes paragraphs quicken and begin to breathe.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Ronald Reagan photo

“All great change in America begins at the dinner table.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)
Virginia Woolf photo
Jenny Han photo
Robert Frost photo

“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Variant: A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

Oscar Wilde photo

“Art only begins where Imitation ends.”

Source: De Profundis

Lewis Carroll photo

“I could tell you my adventures—beginning from this morning,” said Alice a little timidly; “but it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass

Alfred North Whitehead photo
H.L. Mencken photo

“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”

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

Source: 1910s, Prejudices, First Series (1919), Ch. 6, "The New Poetry Movement"
Source: Prejudices: First Series

Virginia Woolf photo
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien photo
Paula Modersohn-Becker photo
C.G. Jung photo
Jordan Peterson photo
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu photo
Barack Obama photo
Jean Vanier photo
Bertrand Russell photo
Paul Klee photo
Eduardo Galeano photo
Plato photo

“Socrates: The disgrace begins when a man writes not well, but badly.
Phaedrus: Clearly.
Socrates: And what is well and what is badly—need we ask Lysias, or any other poet or orator, who ever wrote or will write either a political or any other work, in metre or out of metre, poet or prose writer, to teach us this?”

258d (tr. Benjamin Jowett)
paraphrased in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig: "And what is good, Phaedrus, and what is not good—need we ask anyone to tell us these things?"
Phaedrus

Barack Obama photo
Max Planck photo

“Both religion and science require a belief in God. For believers, God is in the beginning, and for physicists He is at the end of all considerations… To the former He is the foundation, to the latter, the crown of the edifice of every generalized world view.”

Max Planck (1858–1947) German theoretical physicist

Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers as translated by F. Gaynor (1949), p. 184
Variant translations:
Both religion and science need for their activities the belief in God, and moreover God stands for the former in the beginning, and for the latter at the end of the whole thinking. For the former, God represents the basis, for the latter – the crown of any reasoning concerning the world-view.
Religion und Naturwissenschaft (1958 edition), p. 27, as quoted in 50 Nobel Laureates and Other Great Scientists Who Believe in God (2008) by Tihomir Dimitrov http://nobelist.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/50-nobelists.pdf
While both religion and natural science require a belief in God for their activities, to the former He is the starting point, to the latter the goal of every thought process. To the former He is the foundation, to the latter the crown of the edifice of every generalized world view.
Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers (1968 edition)
Religion and Natural Science (1937)

Barack Obama photo

“Hopefully, more and more people will begin to feel their story is somehow part of this larger story of how we're going to reshape America in a way that is less mean-spirited and more generous.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

on sexism and racism, in * 1990-05-03
Harvard Student Tackles Racism At Core
Illinois Daily Herald
Allison J.
Pugh
Section 3, Page 2
quoted in * 2012-03-14
Obama 1990 Interview: ‘We’re Going To Reshape Mean Spirited Selfish America, I Hope To Be Part Of Transformation’
velvethammer
Ironic Surrealism
http://ironicsurrealism.com/2012/03/14/obama-1990-interview-were-going-to-reshape-mean-spirited-america
2012-03-20; and * 2012-03-18
Rachel Maddow Asks Why Both Presidents George Bush ‘Hate America’ Like Barack Obama
Tommy
Christopher
Mediaite
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/rachel-maddow-asks-why-both-presidents-george-bush-hate-america-like-barack-obama/
2012-03-20
1990s

Bertrand Russell photo

“To understand the actual world as it is, not as we should wish it to be, is the beginning of wisdom.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1930s, Mortals and Others (1931-35)

Pope John Paul II photo

“Right from the beginning of my ministry in St. Peter’s See in Rome, I consider this message [of divine mercy] my special task. Providence has assigned it to me in the present situation of man, the Church and the world. It could be said that precisely this situation assigned that message to me as my task before God.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

November 22, 1981 at the Shrine of Merciful Love in Todi-Collevalenza, Italy
Source: The Divine Mercy http://thedivinemercy.org/message/johnpaul/quotes.php

Isaac of Nineveh photo
Plato photo
Edgar Allan Poe photo
Abraham Lincoln photo
José Saramago photo
Alejandro Jodorowsky photo
Gabriel Iglesias photo

“The first time I came here, I got the chance to meet some people, and they said, "You know what, Gabriel, have you ever been here, have you ever been to Chicago?" I'm like, "No, it's my first time." They said, "Well, you know, we'd like to take you out eat if you're down." And I'm like, "Well, hello!" [Audience laughs] "I'm very down!" They took me to a restaurant called Portillo's." [Audience cheers] You've heard of it? So, we get there, and it was, it was very, very good. The hot dogs were delicious, I had a chicken chopped salad, it was amazing. I had a beef dip, really really good. But it wasn't until the meal was almost over that these new friends of mine said, "We'd like for you to try something you've might not have ever had before." And I'm like, "That's not likely." I said, "So, what is it you want me to try?" And they said, "Well, they sell a thing here at Portillo's called a Chocolate Cake Shake." [Audience cheers] I said, "You had me at 'Chocolate'." They said, "Well, you gotta go to the special window and you gotta order it from the lady." I go, "Okay, cool." So, I get up and walk to the lady, and she's like, "Can I help you?" I said, "Yes, my friends are telling me that I need to try this thing, called a 'Chocolate Cake Shake'." "Okay, what size would you like?" "How good is it?" "You'll want a large." [Audience laughs] "Alright, can I please have a large Chocolate Cake Shake?" "No problem." [Imitates her entering the order in on the cash register] And I pay, and she turns around and walks over to this little refrigerator that's on the counter, and she opens it up, and she pulls out a piece of chocolate cake. And I'm thinking to myself, "She must have misunderstood what I said. I didn't ask for a piece of chocolate cake, I asked for a Chocolate Cake Shake." She must've heard what I was thinking, because she's walking by and she's like, "It's gonna happen." She walks over to the blender, she takes the freaking lid off, she just looks at me and does this. [Mimes the cashier turning her hand over, dropping the chocolate cake in the blender] And I was like, "NO!" And she's like, "Oh, yeah." [Mimes the lady pushing the button and the blender blending the cake] And she pours it, and she hands me this, like, 44-ounce chocolate shake, which is WAY more than anybody should be drinking. The straw was so thick, you could almost put your thumb in it, okay? So, I grab this shake, and I begin to attempt to drink it. So, I'm [Mimics him trying to suck the shake through the straw, making heavy "MMM" sounds], and I can see the shake coming up. [Still makes the "MMM" sounds, while using his finger to show how show the shake's coming up the straw] And it hit, and then, all of a sudden, [Mimics his nipples getting hard] "WOOOOO!"”

Gabriel Iglesias (1976) American actor

I'm Sorry For What I Said When I Was Hungry (2016)

Daniel Handler photo

“If you have ever peeled an onion, then you know that the first thin, papery layer reveals another thin, papery layer, and that layer reveals another, and another, and before you know it you have hundreds of layers all over the kitchen table and thousands of tears in your eyes, sorry that you ever started peeling in the first place and wishing that you had left the onion alone to wither away on the shelf of the pantry while you went on with your life, even if that meant never again enjoying the complicated and overwhelming taste of this strange and bitter vegetable.

In this way, the story of the Baudelaire orphans is like an onion, and if you insist on reading each and every thin, papery layer in A Series of Unfortunate Events, your only reward will be 170 chapters of misery in your library and countless tears in your eyes. Even if you have read the first twelve volumes of the Baudelaires' story, it is not too late to stop peeling away the layers, and to put this book back on the shelf to wither away while you read something less complicated and overwhelming. The end of this unhappy chronicle is like its bad beginning, as each misfortune only reveals another, and another, and another, and only those with the stomach for this strange and bitter tale should venture any farther into the Baudelaire onion. I'm sorry to tell you this, but that is how the story goes.”

Source: The End (2006), Chapter 1

Paul Auster photo
Ronald Reagan photo
C.G. Jung photo

“The overdevelopment of the maternal instinct is identical with that well-known image of the mother which has been glorified in all ages and all tongues. This is the motherlove which is one of the most moving and unforgettable memories of our lives, the mysterious root of all growth and change; the love that means homecoming, shelter, and the long silence from which everything begins and in which everything ends. Intimately known and yet strange like Nature, lovingly tender and yet cruel like fate, 'oyous and untiring giver of life-mater dolorosa and mute implacable portal that closes upon the dead. Mother is motherlove, my experience and my secret. Why risk saying too much, too much that is false and inadequate and beside the point, about that human being who was our mother, the accidental carrier of that great experience which includes herself and myself and all mankind, and indeed the whole of created nature, the experience of life whose children we are? The attempt to say these things has always been made, and probably always will be; but a sensitive person cannot in all fairness load that enormous burden of meaning, responsibility, duty, heaven and hell, on to the shoulders of one frail and fallible human being-so deserving of love, indulgence, understanding, and forgiveness-who was our mother. He knows that the mother carries for us that inborn image of the mater nature and mater spiritualis, of the totality of life of which we are a small and helpless part.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

"Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype" (1939) In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious P.172

Henri Matisse photo

“For me all is in the conception. I must therefore have a clear vision of the whole from the beginning.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

1905 - 1910, Notes of a Painter' (1908)

Thomas Mann photo
Bukola Saraki photo
Daniel Radcliffe photo
Jacob Bronowski photo
Origen photo
Arthur Miller photo

“The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

Commenting on After the Fall (1964) in The Saturday Evening Post (1 February 1964)

Robert Fripp photo

“We begin with the possible, and move gradually towards the impossible.”

Robert Fripp (1946) English guitarist, composer and record producer

The Six Principles of the Performance Event

V.S. Naipaul photo
Parmenides photo

“It is indifferent to me where I am to begin, for there shall I return again.”

Parmenides (-501–-470 BC) ancient Greek philosopher

Frag. B 5, quoted by Proclus, Commentary on the Parmenides, 708

Wilhelm Von Humboldt photo

“The impetuous conquests of Alexander, the more politic and premeditated extension of territory made by the Romans, the wild and cruel incursions of the Mexicans, and the despotic acquisitions of the incas, have in both hemispheres contributed to put an end to the separate existence of many tribes as independent nations, and tended at the same time to establish more extended international amalgamation. Men of great and strong minds, as well as whole nations, acted under the influence of one idea, the purity of which was, however, utterly unknown to them. It was Christianity which first promulgated the truth of its exalted charity, although the seed sown yielded but a slow and scanty harvest. Before the religion of Christ manifested its form, its existence was only revealed by a faint foreshadowing presentiment. In recent times, the idea of civilization has acquired additional intensity, and has given rise to a desire of extending more widely the relations of national intercourse and of intellectual cultivation; even selfishness begins to learn that by such a course its interests will be better served than by violent and forced isolation. Language more than any other attribute of mankind, binds together the whole human race. By its idiomatic properties it certainly seems to separate nations, but the reciprocal understanding of foreign languages connects men together on the other hand without injuring individual national characteristics.”

Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835) German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin

Kosmos (1847)

Humphrey Lyttelton photo
Richard Henry Dana Jr. photo
Ian Smith photo
Wilhelm Liebknecht photo
John Lennon photo
Alan Moore photo
Sofia Rotaru photo

“Replying to Anatolii Kirillovich and Ilya Savelievich to their jokes about Aurica Rotaru during one of the rehearsals in Krasnodar [Russia] ('93):
- One more time, one can't here Aurica!
- Well, she is echoing in Moldavian…
- She is not echoing in Moldavian. I'll show you, khokhols!! Just sing, Aurica.
- Well, I am not singing in the beginning…”

Sofia Rotaru (1947) Ukrainain soviet and Ukrainian musician, singer, songwriter, actress, author of Moldavian origin

I'm telling you: sing.
Source: Sofia Rotaru's sister, also singer, back-stage vocal in 1993
Source: a Russian term used to describe a style of man's haircut that features a lock of hair sprouting from the top or the front of an otherwise closely shaven head. The word is also commonly used mostly by Russians as a derogatory name for Ukrainians, as it was a common haircut of Ukrainian Cossacks. [Sofia Rotaru is Ukrainian national, although of Moldavian origin considering herself also Russian]

Thomas Cranmer photo

“It is not also taught you in Scripture, that you should desire St. Rock to preserve you from the pestilence, to pray to St. Barbarra to defend you from thunder or gun-shot, to offer St. Loy an horse of wax, a pig to St. Anthony, a candle to St, Sithine. But I should be too long, if I were to rehearse unto you all the superstitions that have grown out of the invocation and praying to saints departed, wherewith men have been seduced, and God's honour given to creatures.
This was also no small abuse that we called the images by the names of the things, whom they did represent. For we were won't to say, "This is St. Ann's altar;"-"My father is gone a pilgrimage to our Lady of Walsingham;"-" In our church St. James standeth on the right hand of the high altar." These speeches we were wont to use, although they be not to be commended. For St. Austin in the exposition of the 113th Psalm affirmeth, that they who do call such images, as the carpenter hath made, do change the truth of God into a lie. It is not also taught you in all Scripture.
Thus, good children, I have declared how we were wont to abuse images, not that hereby I condemn your fathers, who were men of great devotion, and had an earnest love towards God, although their zeal in all points was not ruled and governed by true knowledge, but they were seduced and blinded partly by the common ignorance that reigned in their time, partly by the covetousness of their teachers, who abused the simplicity of the unlearned people to the maintenance of their own lucre and glory. But this be profitable, for if they had, either Christ would have taught it or the Holy Ghost would have revealed it unto the Apostles, which they did not. And if they did, the Apostles were very negligent that would not make some mention of it, and speak some good word for images, seeing that they speak so many against them. And by this means Anti-christ and his holy Papists had more knowledge or fervent zeal to give s godly things ad profitable for us, than had the very holy saints of Christ, yea more than Christ himself and the Holy Ghost. Now forasmuch, good children, as images be neither necessary nor profitable in our churches and temples, nor were not used at the beginning in Christ's nor the Apostles' time, nor many years after, and that at length they were brought in by bishops of Rome, maugre emperors' teeth; and seeing also, that they be very slanderous to Christ's religion, for by them the name of God is blasphemed among the infidels, Turks, and Jews, which because of our images do call Christian religion, idolatry and worshiping of images: and for as much also, as they have been so wonderfully abused within this realm to the high contumely and dishonor of God, and have been great cause of blindness and of much contention among the King's Majesty's loving subjects and are like so to be still, if they should remain: and chiefly seeing God's word speaketh so much against them, you may hereby right well consider what great causes and ground the King's Majesty had to take them away within his realm, following here in the example of the godly King Hezekias, who brake down the brazen serpent, when he saw it worshiped, and was therefore praised of God, notwithstanding at the first the same was made and set up by God's commandment, and was not only a remembrance of God's benefits, before received, but also a figure of Christ to come. And not only Hezekias, but also Manasses, and Jehosaphat, and Josias, the best kings that were of the Jews, did pull down images in the time of their reign.”

Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556) leader of the English Reformation and Archbishop of Canterbury

The Life, Martyrdom, and Selections from the Writings of Thomas Cranmer https://books.google.com/books?id=FvNeAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=The+Life,+Martyrdom,+and+Selections+from+the+Writings+of+Thomas+Cranmer+...&source=bl&ots=LbXiMjz5Zp&sig=0pi5SHuxfdt_YUoiJcxvLgr7x5E&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjzmZL_wsfaAhVl6YMKHWubBkcQ6AEILDAB by Thomas Cranmer, p.139-142, (1809)

Michael Moorcock photo
Pope John Paul II photo

“In the "unity of the two", man and woman are called from the beginning not only to exist "side by side" or "together", but they are also called to exist mutually "one for the other."”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem, 15 August 1988
Source: www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_letters/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_15081988_mulieris-dignitatem_en.html

Voltaire photo

“It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Il faut vingt ans pour mener l’homme de l’état de plante où il est dans le ventre de sa mère, et de l’état de pur animal, qui est le partage de sa première enfance, jusqu’à celui où la maturité de la raison commence à poindre. Il a fallu trente siècles pour connaître un peu sa structure. Il faudrait l’éternité pour connaître quelque chose de son âme. Il ne faut qu’un instant pour le tuer.
"Man: General Reflection on Man" (1771)
Citas, Questions sur l'Encyclopédie (1770–1774)

Nisargadatta Maharaj photo
George Washington photo

“Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Letter to James Madison http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/letter-to-james-madison-12/ (2 March 1788)
1780s

José Saramago photo

“Where do begin, he asked, Where you always have to begin, at the beginning”

Source: The Cave (2000), p. 53 (Vintage 2003)

Zoroaster photo

“In the beginning there were two primal spirits,
Twins spontaneously active,
These are the Good and the Evil, in thought, and in word, and in deed.”

Zoroaster Persian prophet and founder of Zoroastrianism

Ahunuvaiti Gatha; Yasna 30, 3.
The Gathas

Steve Martin photo

“Why is it we don't always recognize the moment when love begins, but we always know when it ends?”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

As Harris K. Telemacher in "L.A. Story" (1991)

Stephen Hawking photo
Van Morrison photo
Kurt Vonnegut photo
Leon Trotsky photo
Friedrich Schiller photo
Subcomandante Marcos photo
Jahangir photo

“Immediately after Akbar’s death “Mulla Shah Ahmad, one of the greatest religious leaders of the age, wrote to various court dignitaries exhorting them to get this state of things altered in the very beginning of (Jahangir’s) reign because otherwise it would be difficult to accomplish anything later on.””

Jahangir (1569–1627) 4th Mughal Emperor

V.A. Smith, Akbar the Great Mogul, p.233. Smith writes on the authority of Du Jarric, III, p.133. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 4

Stephen Hawking photo
Edgar Allan Poe photo
Edgar Allan Poe photo

“How many good books suffer neglect through the inefficiency of their beginnings!”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

Marginalia http://www.easylit.com/poe/comtext/prose/margin.shtml (November 1844)

Steve Biko photo
Albert Schweitzer photo
John Locke photo
Mark Twain photo
Françoise Sagan photo

“Curiosity is the beginning of all wisdom.”

Dans un mois, dans un an (1957, Those Without Shadows, translated 1957)

Arthur Miller photo
Claude Monet photo
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec photo
Steve Bannon photo
Ibn Khaldun photo
Robert Browning photo

“He who did well in war just earns the right
To begin doing well in peace.”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

Luria, Act ii.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Carl Linnaeus photo

“Every genus is natural, created as such in the beginning, hence not to be rashly split up or stuck together by whim or according to anyone's theory.”

Systema naturae (1735) (quoted in Ramsbottom 1938:197)
Original in Latin: Genus omne est naturale, in primordio tale creatum, hinc pro libitu & secundem cujuscimque theoriam non proterve discindendum aut conglutinandum.
Systema Naturae

Emil M. Cioran photo

“As long as one believes in philosophy, one is healthy; sickness begins when one starts to think.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Tears and Saints (1937)

Carl Linnaeus photo
Antisthenes photo

“The investigation of the meaning of words is the beginning of education.”

Antisthenes (-444–-365 BC) Greek philosopher

Arrian, Discourses of Epictetus, i. 17

Novalis photo