Quotes about first
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“You can't kill us all, human.'
He was right. I raised the machine gun a little. 'True, but who's going to be first in line?”

Laurell K. Hamilton book The Killing Dance

Source: The Killing Dance

“Call me or I’ll call you, but one of us will call, yes? What I mean is it’s not a competition. You don’t lose I you phone first.”

David Nicholls book One Day

Source: One Day

“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.
Never.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Source: Night (1960)

Life, God, Children, Faith

“The best sex takes place in the mind first”

Jenna Jameson book How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale

Source: How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale

Sex

“Don’t lie. You know you like to view but not to buy. I have found that I am not a space where people want to live, at least not without decorating first. And that is the stubbornness in me: I do not want to be someone’s little home.”

Jeanette Winterson book Gut Symmetries

Source: Gut Symmetries

People, Lie, Home

“Let me get this straight. First you decide I'm a demon because of a power I didn't ask for and don't even understand. Then when that falls through you label me a fallen sybil and a ho. Am I missing something or do you just not like me”

Karen Chance book Touch the Dark

Source: Touch the Dark

Understanding

“The history of the twentieth century was dominated by the struggle against totalitarian systems of state power. The twenty-first will no doubt be marked by a struggle to curtail excessive corporate power.”

Eric Schlosser book Fast Food Nation

Source: Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

History

“Grandma said […] when you come on something that is good, first thing to do is share it with whoever you can find; that way, the good spreads out to where no telling it will go.”

Forrest Carter book The Education of Little Tree

Source: The Education of Little Tree

Way, Grandma

“She must be assured that it is not a criminal offense to love at first sight.”

E.M. Forster book Howards End

Source: Howards End

Love

“Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter.”

Homér Iliad

Source: The Iliad

Men

“When you told me the first time that Valentine was your father, I didn't believe it. Not just because I didn't want it to be true, but because you weren't anything like him. I've never thought you're anything like him. But you are. You are.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Time

“Lonely was the first flavor I had tasted in my life, and it was always there, hidden inside the crevices of my mouth, reminding me.”

Elizabeth Strout (1956) American writer

Source: My Name is Lucy Barton

Life

“The first sentence of every novel should be: Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human.”

Michael Ondaatje book In the Skin of a Lion

Source: In the Skin of a Lion

Time

“Wow. What'd he do to deserve that? Rescue orphans from a burning building? If so, you might want to make sure he didn't set the building on fire in the first place.”

Richelle Mead book Frostbite

Source: Frostbite

“The first step to expanding your reality is to discard the tendency to exclude things from possibility.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Reality

“The first duty of love is to listen.”

Paul Tillich (1886–1965) German-American theologian and philosopher

Love, For Him, love

“When you stop drinking, you have to deal with this marvelous personality that started you drinking in the first place.”

Jimmy Breslin (1928–2017) American journalist and author

Drink, Personality

“I think you ought to let me take poor Tessa into town to get some new clothes. Otherwise, the first time she takes a deep breath, that dress will fall right off her."
Will looked interested. "I think she should try that out now and see what happens.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Thinking, Time, Clothes

“Their mother had always stressed the importance of taking care of yourself first, your family second and everyone else not at all..

darkest surrender”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Family

“I had read a Tale of Two Cities and found it up to my standards as a romantic novel. She opened the first page and I heard poetry for the first time in my life… her voice slid in and curved down trough and over the words. She was nearly singing.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Life, Singing, Time, Reading

“Now do you see why war irritates me? It's always the same. A lot of people get killed, but in the end, the whole thing is settled at the conference table. The notion of having the conference first doesn't seem to occur to people.”

David Eddings book Belgarath the Sorcerer

Source: Belgarath the Sorcerer

War, People

“Mari began to suspect that this reflection was going to prove to be like that little computer paperclip assistant -- at first it helps, but after a while you just want the paperclip to die.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night

Help

“Chance is the first step you take, luck is what comes afterward.”

Amy Tan The Kitchen God's Wife

Source: The Kitchen God's Wife

Chance

“Take her home. And-"
"Say nothing- yes, yes, I heard you the first seven hundred times," Myrnin said, much too sharply. "I'm ancient. I'm not deaf.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Bite Club

Home, Time

“Childhood, after all, is the first precious coin that poverty steals from a child.”

Anthony Horowitz book The House of Silk

Source: The House of Silk

Childhood

“You can't change laws without first changing human nature.'
-Nurse Greta

You can't change human nature without first changing the law.'
-Nurse Yvonne”

Neal Shusterman book Unwind

Source: Unwind

Law, Nature, Change

“Magnus knelt first. Clary would never have guessed that. Magnus was so proud, but then it was a pride that transcended the emptiness of gestures. She doubted it would shame him to kneel when it meant nothing to him.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

“I was always sweet, at first. Oh, it's so easy to be sweet to people before you love them.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Source: Collected Stories

Love, People

“But to be quite oneself one must first waste a little time.”

Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973) Irish writer

Time

“Because I'm not, in fact, depressed, Prozac makes me manic and numb - one of the reasons I slice my arm in the first place is that I'm coked to the gills on something utterly wrong for what I have.”

Marya Hornbacher (1974) American journalist

Source: Madness: A Bipolar Life

“First with the head, then with the heart, you'll be ahead from the start.”

Bryce Courtenay The Power of One

Variant: First with the head, then with the heart.
Source: The Power of One

Heart

“Chick Lit uses humor to reflect life back to us. It's a very comforting genre, and it's the first time our generation has had a voice. It's a very important genre for all of those reasons.”

Marian Keyes (1963) Irish writer

Life, Time

“People have wanted to narrate since first we banged rocks together & wondered about fire. There’ll be tellings as long as there are any of us here, until the stars disappear one by one like turned-out lights.”

China Miéville book Railsea

Source: Railsea

People, Star, Light

“I wondered about her chicken-and-egg relationship with Dad. Which came first? Her helplessness or his controlling?”

Justina Chen (1968) American writer

Source: North of Beautiful

“Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, it's at the end of your arm, as you get older, remember you have another hand: The first is to help yourself, the second is to help others.”

Sam Levenson (1911–1980) American journalist

Help

“Optimism is the first cousin of love, and it's exactly like love in three ways: it's pushy, it has no real sense of humour, and it turns up where you least expect it.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Love, Way, Optimism, Sense

“I remembered something my first partner had told me. Never wrestle with a pig, Lindsay. You both get dirty. The pig likes it.”

James Patterson 1st to Die

Source: 1st to Die

“We took the elevator back down from the first observation level of the Eiffel Tower and started walking in he direction of the Taj Mahal”

D.J. MacHale The Soldiers of Halla

Source: The Soldiers of Halla

“Well, the first thing is that I love monsters, I identify with monsters.”

Guillermo del Toro (1964) Mexican film director

Source: The Monsters Of Hellboy II

Love

“There is this quality, in things, of the right way seeming wrong at first.”

John Updike book Rabbit, Run

Source: Rabbit, Run

Way

“The true birthplace is that wherein for the first time one looks intelligently upon oneself; my first homelands have been books.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book Memoirs of Hadrian

Le véritable lieu de naissance est celui où l'on a porté pour la première fois un coup d'oeil intelligent sur soi-même: mes premières patries ont été des livres.
Source: Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), p. 33

Books, Intelligence, Time

“First, the candy and flowers, then the apology letters, then the ravenous demon hordes. In that order." -Jace Wayland”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Variant: It wouldn't be my move," Jace agreed. "First the candy and flowers, then the apology letters, then the ravenous demon hordes. In that order.
Source: City of Bones

Flowers

“You're so afraid of being hurt that you attack first. Only those who really care about you will weather the assault of your verbal attacks and stay. The rest will fall away.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of the Night

Hurt, Weather

“The person we know at first, she thinks, is not the one we know at last.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Thinking, Personality

“I don't even remember the season. I just remember walking between them and feeling for the first time that I belonged somewhere.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Feeling, Time, Season

“Eve: She told me last!
Shane: Boyfriend!
Michael: Landlord!
Eve: Crap. Right. Next time you sell your soul to the devil, I get first contact!”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Midnight Alley

Soul, Time

“No. Haven’t you been listening?”

Marcus would always remember that moment. It was to be the first time he would ever be faced with that most vexing of female quirks: the question that had nothing but wrong answers.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: Just Like Heaven

Question, Time

“If you run into a psychic wall face-first, do you wind up with psychic bruises?
-Clary, pg.239”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

“But first, are you experienced?
Uh-have you ever been experienced? Well, I have”

Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970) American musician, singer and songwriter

Are You Experienced?
Song lyrics, Are You Experienced? (1967)
Context: We’ll hold hands and then we’ll watch the sunrise
From the bottom of the sea
But first, are you experienced?
Uh-have you ever been experienced? Well, I have

“Chumps always make the best husbands. When you marry, Sally, grab a chump. Tap his head first, and if it rings solid, don't hesitate. All the unhappy marriages come from husbands having brains. What good are brains to a man? They only unsettle him.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Doctor Sally

Source: Doctor Sally

Marriage

“Sorry. Was it awful?”
“Being a rat? No. First it was disorienting. I was suddenly at ankle-level with everyone. I thought I'd drunk a shrinking potion, but I couldn't figure out why I had this urge to chew used gum wrappers.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

“I cannot be awake, for nothing looks to me as it did before, or else I am awake for the first time, and all before has been a mean sleep.”

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

Sleep, Time

“If I don't have time to live my life well the first time, when am I going to find the time to go back and live it over?”

Robert Fulghum (1937) American writer

Source: Uh-Oh

Life, Time

“To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the target”

Ashleigh Brilliant (1933) American author and cartoonist

Funny

“Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s minds & then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

People, Color, Clothes, Dead

“To learn something, to master something, anything, is as sweet as first love.”

Geoffrey Wolff (1937) American writer

Love, Learning

“Even at the end of the road, read the first sentence, there is a road. Even at the end of the road, a new road stretches out, endless and open, a road that may lead anywhere. To him who will find it, there is always a road.”

D.J. MacHale (1955) American television director and producer

Source: Pendragon Before The War: Book Two Of The Travelers (Pendragon

Reading

“I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed, without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.”

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

1960s, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam (1967)
Context: As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through non-violent action; for they ask and write me, "So what about Vietnam?" They ask if our nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without first having spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence I cannot be silent.

World

“We were screwed and he didn't even kiss us first.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Burns

Kiss

“She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Their Eyes Were Watching God

Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God

Love, Marriage, Making love, Dreams

“No, this trick won't work. The same trick does not work twice. How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

A comment to T. H. Morgan, as recalled by Henry Borsook. Einstein was visiting Cal Tech where Morgan and Borsook worked, and Morgan explained to Einstein that he was trying to bring physics and chemistry to bear on the problems of biology, to which Einstein gave this response. Borsook's recollection was published in Symposium on Structure of Enzymes and Proteins (1956), p. 284 http://books.google.com/books?id=H4QjXb4gnEIC&q=%22so+important+a+biological%22#search_anchor, as part of a piece titled "Informal remarks 'by way of a summary'". Context for this story is also given in The Molecular Vision of Life by Lily E. Kay (1993), p. 95 http://books.google.com/books?id=vEHeNI2a8OEC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA95#v=onepage&q&f=false <br class="br">Attributed in posthumous publications

Love

“She breathed deeply of the scent of decaying fiction, disintegrating history, and forgotten verse, and she observed for the first time that a room full of books smelled like dessert: a sweet snack made of figs, vanilla, glue, and cleverness.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Source: NOS4A2

Books, History, Time

“What's so hard about that first sentence is that you're stuck with it. Everything else is going to flow out of that sentence. And by the time you've laid down the first two sentences, your options are all gone.”

Joan Didion (1934) American writer

Time

“Reminds me of the red dress you wore the first time I had you. That was it for me, you know. You devastated me. There was no coming back from that.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Entwined with You

Time

“The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man. Unless he understands this, he does not grasp the essential meaning of his life.”

Huey P. Newton book Revolutionary Suicide

Source: Revolutionary Suicide (1973), p. 3

Life, Understanding, Learning

“Habit 1: Be Proactive
Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
Habit 3: Put First Things First
Habit 4: Think Win/Win
Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
Habit 6: Synergize
Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw”

Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Understanding, Thinking

“Annabeth came up to me. She was dressed in black camouflage with her Celestial bronze knife strapped to her arm and her laptop bag slung over her shoulder—ready for stabbing or surfing the Internet, whichever came first.”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

“I learned: the first lesson of my life: nobody can face the world with his eyes open all the time.”

Salman Rushdie book Midnight's Children

Source: Midnight's Children

Life, World, Learning, Time

“It was war, and in war the truth was almost always the first casualty.”

Vince Flynn book Executive Power

Source: Executive Power

War, Truth

“Here's how bizarre the war is that we're in in Iraq, and we should have known this right from the get-go: When we first went into Iraq, Germany didn't want to go. Germany. The Michael Jordan of war took a pass.”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

Stand-up performance at RIT (2005)

War

“Three things know a secret-
First; the lady in a dream,
The dog that barks no warning,
And a maid that does not scream.”

Mercedes Lackey book By the Sword

Source: By the Sword

Secret, Dogs, Dreams

“Believe it or not, that was the first time I recognized that in some ways she was just like the rest of us.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Source: A Walk to Remember

Way, Time

“Roza. You forgot my first lesson: Don’t hesitate.”- Dimitri Belikov (Blood Promise)”

Richelle Mead Blood Promise

Variant: You forgot my first lesson: don't hesitate.
Source: Blood Promise

“Do you live each day as if it's your first or your last? Either way you should probably have a diaper on.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Source: Seriously... I'm Kidding

Way

“At first, all is black and white.
Black on white.
That's where I'm walking, through pages.
These pages.
Sometimes it gets so that I have one foot in the pages and the words, and the other in what they speak of.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: Underdog

“Animals hear about death for the first time when they die.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Death, Time, Animals

“I'd been told that he had been created-literally created-just for me, as my "perfect other half." Let me tell you-if Dylan was my perfect other half, then i needed to give my first half a seriouis look-see.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Angel

Perfection

“You were in my arms for the first time, and you said my name, 'Tristan.'
I answered you: 'Isolde.'
Isolde. The world became a word.”

Jeanette Winterson book Lighthousekeeping

Source: Lighthousekeeping

World, Time

“Why won't you drown?" he wailed, pummeling me with his fists.
"I'm Poseidon's son," I said.
"Curse that upstart! I was here first!”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

“When we put God first, all other things fall into their proper place or drop out of our lives.”

Ezra Taft Benson (1899–1994) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

God

“For the first time I realize how perilous peace can be. I appreciate the tightrope that my grandfather has spent his whole life trying to walk. And now, more than ever, I grow terrified that I'm going to make us all fall down.”

Ally Carter book All Fall Down

Source: All Fall Down

Life, Peace, Time

“What makes you walk past thirty-thousand people without a second glance, and then you look at the thirty-thousandth-and-first person and know you'll never take your eyes off her again?”

Jodi Picoult book Second Glance

Source: Second Glance

People, Past, Personality

“The first ten million years were the worst," said Marvin, "and the second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third ten million years I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline.”

Douglas Adams book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Source: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“I'd learn that it's not just where you go, but how you choose to get there. So I pulled that sign off the green bike - ENJOY YOUR RIDE! - and went inside to take the first step toward doing just that.”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

Learning

“My sister, who never understood most of the things I wanted her to, might have been able to understand what had happened to me in this summer of weddings and beginnings. And she was right. The first boy was always the hardest. page 40000”

Sarah Dessen book That Summer

Source: That Summer (1996)

Boy, Understanding, Sister, Wedding

“Then I turned the page and at the top it said THINGS I MISS ABOUT M and there was a list of 15 things, and the first was THE WAY HE HOLDS THINGS. I did not understand how you can miss the way somebody holds things.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Way, Understanding

“Having, First, gained all you can, and, Secondly saved all you can, Then give all you can.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

Sermon 50 "The Use of Money" in The Works of the Reverend John Wesley, A.M. (1840) edited by John Emory, Vol. I, p. 446
Popularly paraphrased as:
Make all you can,
Save all you can,
Give all you can.
General sources