Quotes about beginning
page 9

“The only
thing that matters my goal my reward my beginning my end is the work itself.
My work done my way.
A private personal selfish egotistical motivation. That’s the
only way I function. That’s all I am.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Way, Motivation, Personality, Selfishness

“My mind begins to seem like a video game: I can either play it intelligently, learning more in each round, or I can be killed in the same spot by the same monster, again and again.”

Sam Harris book Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion

Source: Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion

Game, Intelligence, Learning

“We both wondered whether these contradictions that one can't avoid if one begins to think of time and space may not really be proofs that the whole of life is a dream, and the moon and stars bits of nightmare.”

Arthur Machen (1863–1947) Welsh author and mystic

Source: The Terror

Life, Dreams, Star, Thinking

“I was beginning to understand. My grandmother's love was cold because she was afraid of things; that was why everything had to be perfect.”

Alice Hoffman (1952) Novelist, young-adult writer, children's writer

Source: Incantation

Love, Understanding, Perfection

“The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

Life, Happiness, Understanding

“There seemed to be no end to this wood, and no beginning, and no difference in it, and, worse of all, no way out”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Source: The Wind in the Willows

Way

“How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me?”

Leonard Cohen book Beautiful Losers

Source: Beautiful Losers

“Hello, companion," said Magnus.

The monkey made a terrible sound, half snarl and half hiss.

"I begin to rather doubt the beauty of our friendship," said Magnus.”

Cassandra Clare The Bane Chronicles

Magnus Bane to a monkey in 1791, p. 12.
Source: The Bane Chronicles, What Really Happened in Peru (2013)
Context: He paused and admired the bromeliads, huge iridescent flower-like bowls made out of petals, shimmering with color and water. There were frogs inside the jewel-bright recesses of the flowers.
Then he looked up into the round brown eyes of a monkey.
'Hello, companion,' said Magnus.
The monkey made a terrible sound, half snarl and half hiss.
'I begin to rather doubt the beauty of our friendship,' said Magnus.

Friendship, Beauty

“Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth — look at the dying man’s struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment.”

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

Birth, Cry

“When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

Love, People, Hurt

“When you begin a journey of revenge, start by digging two graves: one for your enemy, and one for yourself.”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

Revenge

“There's a taste in the air, sweet and vaguely antiseptic, that reminds him of his teenage years in these streets, and of a general state of longing, a hunger for life to begin that from this distance seems like happiness.”

Ian McEwan Saturday

Source: Saturday

Life, Hunger, Happiness

“You see. No shock. No engulfment. No tearing assunder. What you feared would come like an explosion is like a whisper. What you thought was the end is the beginning.”

Rod Serling (1924–1975) American screenwriter

Fear, Tear

“The old woman I shall become will be quite different from the woman I am now. Another I is beginning.”

George Sand (1804–1876) French novelist and memoirist; pseudonym of Lucile Aurore Dupin

“If this were a made-up story, it would begin at night, with a storm blowing and owls hooting and rattling noises under the bed.”

Darren Shan book Cirque du Freak

Source: A Living Nightmare

Night

“How many beginnings before you see the lies in your excitement?”

Don DeLillo Point Omega

Source: Point Omega

“It is of great importance, when we begin to practise prayer, not to let ourselves be frightened by our own thoughts.”

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint

Source: The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila by Herself

“Love is a vessel that contains both security and adventure, and commitment offers one of the great luxuries of life: time. Marriage is not the end of romance, it is the beginning.”

Esther Perel (1958) Belgian Psychotherapist and Author

Source: Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

Love, Life, Marriage, Time

“Your tears come easy, when you're young, and beginning the world. Your tears come easy, when you're old, and leaving it.”

Wilkie Collins book The Moonstone

[Street, 1868] ( p. 86 https://books.google.com/books?id=sAqXBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA82) <br class="br">Also in Soulsalsa: 17 Surprising Steps for Godly Living in the 21st Century https://books.google.com/books?id=E2S3nWp-lAgC&pg=PT61 by Leonard Sweet [Zondervan, 2009, ISBN 0-310-83380-9] <br class="br">Source: The Moonstone (1868)

World, Tear

“You know, it's quite a job starting to love somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment, in the very beginning, when you have to jump across a precipice: if you think about it you don't do it.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Variant: It's quite an undertaking to start loving somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment right at the start where you have to jump across an abyss: if you think about it you don't do it.
Source: Nausea (1938)
Context: I know. I know that I shall never again meet anything or anybody who will inspire me with passion. You know, it's quite a job starting to love somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment, in the very beginning, when you have to jump across a precipice: if you think about it you don't do it. I know I'll never jump again.

Love, Thinking

“Due to attachment, anger, and foolishness, I have committed numberless mistakes in speech, deed and thought. I bow my head and repent. I vow from today to begin anew, to live day and night in mindfulness, and not to repeat my previous mistakes.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Anger, Night

“Death is just a new beginning…at least in my religion. And extreme inebriation seriously helps. (Syn)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of the Night

Death, Religion, Help

“You may do this, I tell you, it is permitted. Begin again the story of your life.”

Jane Hirshfield (1953) Poet

Source: The Lives of the Heart

Life

“He is always doing something--the very best thing, the thing we ourselves would certainly choose if we knew the end from the beginning. He is at work to bring us to our full glory.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

“Only in our darkest hour do we find the light. Humans are destructive by nature. The world is lacking balance. Terrors are beginning to triumph over the simple joys. Stand back and watch, because you're going to be here when we fall.”

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (1984) Novelist

World, Nature, Light, Joy

“I begin with writing the first
sentence—and trusting to Almighty
God for the second.”

Laurence Sterne book The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Source: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

God

“But as the Roman playwright Terence once wrote, From many a bad beginning great friendships have formed”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Seize the Night

Friendship

“Choice is the doorway to our creative power. To unleash this power, we must begin from the state of beingness.”

Ilchi Lee (1950) South Korean businessman

Source: Human Technology: A Toolkit for Authentic Living

“All resistance is a rupture with what is. And every rupture begins, for those engaged in it, through a rupture with oneself.”

Alain Badiou (1937) French writer and philosopher

Source: Metapolitics

“Every ending is a new beginning. Through the grace of God, we can always start again. (Page 120.)”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: Everyday Grace: Having Hope, Finding Forgiveness And Making Miracles

God

“In a dark time, the eye begins to see.”

Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) American poet

Time

“The unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy.”

Djuna Barnes book Nightwood

Source: Nightwood

Joy

“Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand--and melting like a snowflake…”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

Star, New Year

“But then, I suppose, when with the benefit of hindsight one begins to search one's past for such 'turning points', one is apt to start seeing them everywhere.”

Kazuo Ishiguro The Remains of the Day

Source: The Remains of the Day

Search, Past

“I think she is growing up, and so begins to dream dreams, and have hopes and fears and fidgets, without knowing why or being able to explain them.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Fear, Dreams, Hope, Thinking

“When I only begin to read, I forget I'm on this world. It lifts me on wings with high thoughts.”

Anzia Yezierska (1880–1970) American writer

World, Reading, Forgetting

“I, too, am beginning to feel an immense need to become a savage and create a new world.”

August Strindberg (1849–1912) Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter

World, Feeling

“Love is blind, there was no doubt about it. In Tara's case it was also deaf, dumb, dyslexic, had a bad hip and the beginnings of Alzheimer's”

Marian Keyes (1963) Irish writer

Source: Last Chance Saloon

Love

“Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

Source: A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There

Beauty, Art, Nature, Success

“The day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to die”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Truth

“If I didn't know the ending of a story, I wouldn't begin. I always write my last lines, my last paragraph first, and then I go back and work towards it. I know where I'm going. I know what my goal is. And how I get there is God's grace.”

Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist

God

“Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark. Begin at the beginning. Tell Gregory a story. Make some light.”

Kate DiCamillo book The Tale of Despereaux

Source: The Tale of Despereaux (2004)

World, Light

“We can begin the restructuring of thought by declaring legitimate what we have denied for so long. Lets us declare Nature to be legitimate. The notion of illegal plants is obnoxious and ridiculous in the first place.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Source: Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge

Nature

“Don’t waste time waiting for inspiration. Begin, and inspiration will find you.”

H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (1940) American writer

Time, Waiting

“Thinking only begins at the point where we have come to know that Reason, glorified for centuries, is the most obstinate adversary of thinking.”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

Thinking

“I need to write. It keeps me focused for long enough to complete thoughts. To let each train of thought run to its conclusion and let a new one begin. It keeps me thinking. I’m afraid that if I stop writing I’ll stop thinking and start feeling.”

Carrie Fisher book The Princess Diarist

Source: The Princess Diarist

Feeling, Thinking, Training

“where would the shout of love begin, if not from the summit of sacrifice?”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Love

“I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

“Civilization begins with distillation”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

“The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

“In the beginning was simplicity.”

Richard Dawkins book The Selfish Gene

Source: The Selfish Gene

“He is in my soul and i am in his, and we are in bed but we are in a desert, and i do not know where he begins and i end - Mac”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Dreamfever

Soul

“There's a fine edge to new grief, it severs nerves, disconnects reality--there's mercy in a sharp blade. Only with time, as the edge wears, does the real ache begin.”

Christopher Moore (1957) American writer of comic fantasy

Reality, Time

“Nothing important, or meaningful, or beautiful, or interesting, or great ever came out of imitations. The thing that is really hard and really amazing is to give up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.”

Anna Quindlen (1952) journalist, Novelist

Beauty, Perfection

“Because a sound tree doesn't have bad roots, Amara. No enterprise of greatness
begins with treachery, with lying to the people who trust and love you”

Jim Butcher Furies of Calderon

Source: Furies of Calderon

Love, People, Lying, Tree

“That is the way it is with a wound. The wound begins to close in on itself, to protect what is hurting so much. And once it is closed, you no longer see what is underneath, what started the pain.”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

Source: The Joy Luck Club

Pain, Way, Hurt

“Well I talk a little about that, but I don't admit that from the beginning I knew we were not meant to be together.”

Jodi Picoult book Keeping Faith

Source: Keeping Faith

“A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Weather

“I have a lot on my mind and not a lot to do so it's going to come out, all of it, and then, then, it may begin to make a sort of sense”

Bryan Lee O'Malley book Lost at Sea

Source: Lost at Sea

Sense

“Tessa, surprising herself, let out a gasp of laughter. Will looked at her, his mouth just beginning to quirk up in a grin. "I must be more amusing than I thought. Which would make me very amusing indeed.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Laughter

“The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.”

Anna Quindlen (1952) journalist, Novelist

Perfection, Motivational, Happy

“I know beginnings, I know endings too,
and life-in-death, and something else
I'd rather not recall just now.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

"This Cruel Age has deflected me..." (1944)
Source: The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

Life, Death

“She shook her head as she confessed, "I want it so much, I'm afraid to hope."
"Never be afraid to hope," Rohan said gently. "It's the
only way to begin."

-Rohan to Win”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Mine Till Midnight

Hope, Way

“Sometimes I imagine myself looking back on right now and I think like where will I be standing when I look back Will right now look like the beginning of a great life or… or what”

Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad

Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad

Life, Imagination, Thinking

“Beginning with Santa in infancy, and ending with the Tooth Fairy as the child acquires adult teeth. Or, plainly put, beginning with all the possibility of childhood, and ending with an absolute trust in the national currency.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Rant

Source: Rant

Childhood

“But in the end she merely shrugged, knowing at the very least it would be interesting. Knowing, in her gut, it might just be the beginning.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Double Crossed: A Spies and Thieves Story

“Freedom begins way back. It begins not with doing what you want but with doing what you ought - that is, with discipline.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Source: Let Me be a Woman

Way, Freedom

“There has to be a moment at the beginning when you wonder whether you’re in love with the person or in love with the feeling of love itself.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Love, Feeling, Personality

“My Saturday Night. My Saturday night is like a microwave burrito. Very tough to ruin something that starts out so bad to begin with.”

Michael Chabon book The Yiddish Policemen's Union

Source: The Yiddish Policemen's Union

Night

“It is the beginning of wisdom when you recognize that the best you can do is chooserules you want to live by, and it's persistent and aggravated imbecility to pretend you can live without any.”

Wallace Stegner (1909–1993) American historian, writer, and environmentalist

Source: All the Little Live Things

Wisdom

“You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.”

Charles Bukowski book Women

Variant: You begin saving the world by saving one person at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.
Source: Women

World, Time

“There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Age

“Our lives were just beginning, our favorite moment was right now, our favorite songs were unwritten.”

Rob Sheffield (1966) American music journalist

Source: Love Is a Mix Tape

“I can’t begin to tell you the things I discovered while I was looking for something else.”

Shelby Foote (1916–2005) Novelist, historian

“Life seems sometimes like nothing more than a series of losses, from beginning to end. That's the given. How you respond to those losses, what you make of what's left, that's the part you have to make up as you go.”

Katharine Weber (1955) American novelist

Source: The Music Lesson

Life, Loss, Parting

“The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)

“There are so many doors to open. I am impatient to begin."

--Charlie Gordan”

Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon

Source: Flowers for Algernon

“It's just like Yeats said. In dreams begin responsibilities. Flip this around and you could say that where there's no power to imagine, no responsibility can arise.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Dreams, Imagination

“We must begin our practice by walking the narrow path of simplicity, the hinayana path, before we can walk upon the open highway of compassionate action, the mahayana path.”

Chögyam Trungpa (1939–1987) Tibetan Buddhist lama and writer

Source: The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation

“You seem a lot like me," he said. "You don't gawk at me like I'm a freak."

"I'll kick anyone who does."

"I think you already did. Or at least smacked him with a tennis racket."

-Alexander and Raven, Vampire Kisses, Pg.127, The Beginning”

Ellen Schreiber book Vampire Kisses

Source: Vampire Kisses

Kiss, Thinking

“Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.”

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

War

“All our dreams begin in youth.”

Heinrich Harrer book Seven Years in Tibet

Source: Seven Years in Tibet

Youth, Dreams

“Word by word, the language of women so often begins with a whisper.”

Terry Tempest Williams (1955) American writer

Source: When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

Women

“But anyone can begin. It was the part with all the promise, the potential, the things I loved. More and more, though, I was finding myself wanting to find out what happened in the end..”

Sarah Dessen book What Happened to Goodbye

Source: What Happened to Goodbye

Love, Parting

“Life goes on, unmindful of beginning, end…crisis or catharsis, moving forward like a slow, dusty caravan of kochis (nomads).”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Source: The Kite Runner

Life

“In the beginning, the price of giving great love is risking that it won't be returned. Until you understand, of course, that great love is always returned. With interest.”

Mike Dooley (1961) American writer

Love, Understanding

“But now, I was beginning to wonder if you didn't always have to choose between turning away for good or rushing in deeper. In the moments that it really counts, maybe it's enough- more than enough, even- just to be there.
~Ruby, pg 399”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Variant: If you didn't always have to choose between turning away for good or rushing in deeper. In the moments that it really counts, maybe it's enough - more than enough, even - just to be there.
Source: Lock and Key

“Lucian was beginning to get used to hearing her small observations at night. More than anything, he realized he liked her voice in the dark. It made him feel less lonely.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Froi of the Exiles

Feeling, Night

“Study the historian before you begin to study the facts.”

Edward Hallett Carr What Is History?

Source: What Is History?

Study