Quotes about first
page 20
Source: That Summer (1996)
Context: Maybe not, she said as we came to the car. But maybe that isn't so bad. You can't love anyone that way more than once in a lifetime. It's too hard and it hurts too much when it ends. The first boy is always the hardest to get over, Haven. It's just the way the world works.
Source: The Painted Bird
“The first duty of a man is to think for himself”
Source: Quoted, The Crack-Up (1936)
Context: Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation – the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the "impossible," come true.
“One cannot alter a condition with the same mind set that created it in the first place.”
Variant: Problems cannot be solved with the same mind set that created them.
“In order to be a teacher you've got to be a student first”
Source: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Source: The Mysterious Benedict Society
“We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his hands for masturbation.”
Source: Morning's Refrain
Source: The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
Source: A Prisoner in Fairyland
Variant translation:
It is very important to give advice to a man to help him mend his ways. It is a compassionate and important duty. However, it is extremely difficult to comprehend how this advice should be given. It is easy to recognise the good and bad points in others. Generally it is considered a kindness in helping people with things they hate or find difficult to say. However, one impracticality is that if people do not take in this advice they will think that there is nothing they should change. The same applies when we try to create shame in others by speaking badly of them. It seems outwardly that we are just complaining about them. One must get to know the person in question. Keep after him and get him to put his trust in you. Find out what interests he has. When you write to him or before you part company, you should express concrete examples of your own faults and get him to recall to mind whether or not he has the same problems. Also positively praise his qualities. It is important that he takes in your comments like a man thirsting for water. It is difficult to give such advice. We cannot easily correct our defects and weak points as they are dyed deeply within us. I have had bitter experience of this.
Hagakure (c. 1716)
Source: Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai
Context: To give a person an opinion one must first judge well whether that person is of the disposition to receive it or not. One must become close with him and make sure that he continually trusts one's word. Approaching subjects that are dear to him, seek the best way to speak and to be well understood.
Context: To give a person one's opinion and correct his faults is an important thing. It is compassionate and comes first in matters of service. But the way of doing this is extremely difficult. To discover the good and bad points of a person is an easy thing, and to give an opinion concerning them is easy, too. For the most part, people think that they are being kind by saying the things that others find distasteful or difficult to say. But if it is not received well, they think that there is nothing more to be done. This is completely worthless. It is the same as bringing shame to a person by slandering him. It is nothing more than getting it off one's chest.
To give a person an opinion one must first judge well whether that person is of the disposition to receive it or not. One must become close with him and make sure that he continually trusts one's word. Approaching subjects that are dear to him, seek the best way to speak and to be well understood. Judge the occasion, and determine whether it is better by letter or at the time of leave-taking. Praise his good points and use every device to encourage him, perhaps by talking about one's own faults without touching on his, but so that they will occur to him. Have him receive this in the way that a man would drink water when his throat is dry, and it will be an opinion that will correct faults.
This is extremely difficult. If a person's fault is a habit of some years prior, by and large it won't be remedied. I have had this experience myself. To be intimate with all one's comrades, correcting each other's faults, and being of one mind to be of use to the master is the great compassion of a retainer. By bringing shame to a person, how could one expect to make him a better man?
“I am a hundred and forty six years old and this is not my first unwinnable war.”
Source: City of Heavenly Fire
“love be damned now
as love was damned when it
first arrived.”
Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last
“Every artist was first an amateur.”
Progress of Culture (see also: Art)
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Books, Letters and Social Aims http://www.rwe.org/comm/index.php?option=com_content&task=category§ionid=5&id=74&Itemid=149 (1876)
Source: The Great Learning
Source: All About Love: New Visions
Source: The Princess Bride
"Sisterhood" in New York Magazine (20 December 1971), p. 49
Misattributed
Source: thought to be Gibson's words as a result of Twitter attribution decay, despite repeated disavowals. https://twitter.com/#!/GreatDismal/status/144940064990961664 https://twitter.com/#!/GreatDismal/status/144941061578559488 https://twitter.com/#!/GreatDismal/status/144941447936884736 https://twitter.com/#!/GreatDismal/status/171091202161131520. The source, according to Gibson, is Steven Winterburn https://twitter.com/greatdismal/status/119133581598666752 https://twitter.com/5tevenw/status/73091190475595776. However, Steven Winterburn is NOT the original creator of that quote. The original quote is the creation of Twitter account holder "@debihope" https://twitter.com/debihope?lang=en. See research by quoteinvestigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/10/25/diagnose/.
Variant: First you will smile, and then you will cry -- don't say you haven't been warned.
Source: A Walk to Remember
“I have never learned to hate. Don't let my first lesson come from you.”
“First thought: It was a dream
Second thought: No it wasn't
Third thought: Crap”
Source: Twisted
“If you want to keep your memories, you first have to live them.”
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
Source: Cosmos (1980), p. 218
Source: Collins explaining what he calls the literary principal guiding him, in the preface of the second edition of The Woman in White. Also in Reality's Dark Light: The Sensational Wilkie Collins by Maria K. Bachman & Don Richard Cox [University of Tennessee Press, 2003, ISBN 1-572-33274-3] ( p. xiv https://books.google.com/books?id=_X8AlmIp0dwC&pg=PR14)
Source: The Boyfriend List: 15 Guys, 11 Shrink Appointments, 4 Ceramic Frogs and Me, Ruby Oliver
“O, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!”
Canto VI, st. 17.
Variant: Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive
Source: Marmion (1808)
“Are you ever going to kiss me without swearing first?”
Source: A Christine Feehan Holiday Treasury
Source: The Great Hunt
“To conquer a nation, first disarm its citizens.”
“Family is everything. Family comes first. It's not what I expected it to be, but nothing ever is.”
http://www.familyquotes4u.com/2009/03/family-quotes-page-8.html
(In Brilla Mare Ariake ads).
“Settle down, Princess. It’s not my first time.”
Source: Magic Strikes
On being gay
Stephen Fry actually admitted this was a quote from a friend, not himself. (Moab Is My Washpot)
1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)
“The first duty of wine is to be red. Don't talk to me of your white wines.”
“As a matter of principle, I never attend the first annual anything.”
Source: The Birth of Venus
Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?
Source: Intertwined
When the Leaves Blow Away (2006), I Still Have a Pony (2007)