Quotes about first
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“Every moment must be first known and then savored.”

Anne Rice book Interview with the Vampire

Source: Interview with the Vampire

“I want to help you to grow as beautiful as God meant you to be when He thought of you first.”

George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist

God, Beauty, Help

“The first step towards knowledge is to accept your own ignorance.”

Joseph Delaney (1945) British writer

Source: Curse of the Bane

Knowledge

“If at first you don't succeed, kill your opponent.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Firstlife

“Gods suppressed become devils, and often it is these devils whom we first encounter when we turn inward.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

God

“Back when I was on my first assignment as a seeker, I was way out in Arizona. Brought in this kid named Clarisse.”

“Clarisse?”

“Sibling of yours,” Hedge said. “Ares kid. Violent. Rude. Lots of potential.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Way, Siblings

“Now, leave."
All three boys slumped forward. Percy fell face-first into his pizza.
"Percy!" Annabeth grabbed him.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Boy

“Of course they didn't give us this much, Sage. But I had to make sure I nailed my first assignment. Takes a lot of tries before you hit perfection." He paused to reconsider that. "Well, except for my parents. They got it on the first try.”

Richelle Mead Bloodlines

Source: Bloodlines

Parent, Perfection

“It is particularly incumbent on those who never change their opinion, to be secure of judging properly at first.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Change

“In America there are two classes of travel — first class, and with children.”

Robert Benchley (1889–1945) American comedian

Source: "Kiddie-Kar Travel", Pluck and Luck (1925) http://books.google.com/books?id=ODtLAAAAIAAJ&q=%22In+America+there+are+two+classes+of+travel+first+class+and+with+children%22&pg=PA6#v=onepage; also in D.A.C. News http://www.dacnews.com/, September 1923 http://books.google.com/books?id=uLl9ULzkvikC&q=%22Kiddie+kar+travel%22&pg=PA27#v=onepage

Children, Travel

“The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 25
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Context: I think that if we are going to reform the world, and make it a better place to live in, the way to do it is not with talk about relationships of a political nature, which are inevitably dualistic, full of subjects and objects and their relationship to one another; or with programs full of things for other people to do. I think that kind of approach starts it at the end and presumes the end is the beginning. Programs of a political nature are important end products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there. Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. <!-- p. 304

World, Heart

“There's so much nonsense about human inconstancy and the transience of all emotions. I've always thought that a feeling which changes never existed in the first place.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Feeling, Change

“And for the first time in my life, I saw something new reflected in the eyes that saw me. Respect. It taught me a very valuable lesson. That dreams have power only over your own mind. But with money you can have power over the minds of others”

Vikas Swarup (1961) Indian novelist and diplomat

Source: Q A: Slumdog Millionaire

Life, Money, Dreams, Time

“He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away.”

Zadie Smith On Beauty

Source: On Beauty

Love

“One cat just leads to another."

[Letter from Finca Vigia, Cuba, to his first wife, Elizabeth Hadley Richardson (1943). ]”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Source: Selected Letters 1917-1961

Cats

“Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)

Friendship, For Friend, For Bestfriend

“I know and understand you are much more than what I think you are but first I must deal with you the way I think you even if that's only my own thinking and not you.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

Way, Understanding, Thinking

“The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of the things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place.”

Michael Chabon book The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Source: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

World

“I liked you, cop. From the moment I met you. No… not the first moment. I wanted to kill you when I first met you. But then I liked you. A lot.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Revealed

Source: Lover Revealed

“I don’t think my sister is old enough to have sex.”

“V, she’s the same age you are.”

He frowned for a moment. Was she? Or had he been born first?”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Unleashed

Age, Sex, Thinking, Sister

“He rolled his eyes. "First, my Dad's Korean and my mom was Swedish. Second, I totally suck at math. I don't like cuckoo clocks or skiing or fancy chocolate either."
I sputtered a laugh. "I think that's Swiss.”

Kelley Armstrong book The Summoning

Source: The Summoning

Moms, Thinking

“The job of the first eight pages is not to have the reader want to throw the book at theduring the first eight pages.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

Books

“In order to understand, observe, deduce, man must first be conscious of himself as alive.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

Understanding

“At first opposites attract. Then opposites attack.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

“I don't know. But Iknow that I'm at the stage of my life where I want, not.

I know that the first person I kissed won't be nearly as important as the last person I kiss.

And I also know better than to dream about things that can't happen.”

Jodi Picoult book Sing You Home

Source: Sing You Home

Life, Dreams, Kiss, Personality

“The wretched and the miserable should turn to their Savior first, yet they do not hope in Him until all other hope is exhausted.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Hope

“The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The new order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.”

Bob Dylan book Chronicles: Volume One

Source: Chronicles, Vol. 1

Time, Past

“but back then, in those first days, I was so alone that every day was like eating my own heart.”

Junot Díaz book This Is How You Lose Her

Source: This Is How You Lose Her

Heart, Sad, Heartbreaking

“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

To the Republican Citizens of Washington County, Maryland (31 March 1809)
1800s, Post-Presidency (1809)

Life, Happiness

“A southern moon is a sodden moon, and sultry. When it swamps the fields and the rustling sandy roads and the sticky honeysuckle hedges in its sweet stagnation, your fight to hold on to reality is like a protestation against a first waft of ether.”

Zelda Fitzgerald book Save Me the Waltz

Source: Save Me the Waltz

Reality, Fight

“For the first time, he looked at her, and she wasn’t a stranger, she was Clary—his friend. His family. The girl he’d sworn always to protect. The girl he loved as fiercely as he loved himself.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Lost Herondale

Love, Family, Girl, Time

“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book (Lady Chatterley, for instance), or you take a trip, or you talk with Richard, and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death.”

Anaïs Nin book The Diary of Anaïs Nin

The Diary of Anaïs Nin , Volume One 1931-1934
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

Death, Children, Pleasure, Books

“… Time does not heal,
It makes a half-stitched scar
That can be broken and again you feel
Grief as total as in its first hour.
-Elizabeth Jennings”

Kay Redfield Jamison (1946) American bipolar disorder researcher

Source: Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide

Feeling, Time

“… My friend, there are some things that I cannot tell you. Some I will tell you in time; some, others will tell you; some you may never know, or you may be the first to find the answers.”

Robin McKinley book The Blue Sword

Source: The Blue Sword

Time

“Fairy tales had been her first experience of the magical universe, and more than once she had wondered why people ended up distancing themselves from that world, knowing the immense joy that childhood had brought to their lives.”

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Source: Brida

People, World, Universe, Joy

“Control puberty?" snorted the bodyguard."If you manage that, you'll be the first.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Lost Colony

“However many years she lived, Mary always felt that 'she should never forget that first morning when her garden began to grow'.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden

Source: The Secret Garden

Forgetting

“Not for the first time, I wished both of us could just say what we meant. But that, like so much else, was impossible”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

Time

“For the first forty days a child
is given dreams of previous lives. Journeys, winding paths,
a hundred small lessons
and then the past is erased.”

Michael Ondaatje (1943) Canadian writer

Source: Handwriting

Dreams, Past

“I blame my dad for my sweet tooth. His motto was 'Life is short; eat dessert first.' How can I argue with that?”

Wendy Mass Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life

Source: Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life

Life

“The leaves had fallen from the trees and lay crisp and crackling beneath his feet. Picking one up he marveled, not for the first time, at the perfection of nature where leaves were most beautiful at the very end of their lives.”

Louise Penny book The Brutal Telling

Source: The Brutal Telling

Beauty, Nature, Tree, Time

“So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.”

Christopher Reeve (1952–2004) actor, director, producer, screenwriter

Speech at the Democratic National Convention (26 August 1996) http://www.chrisreevehomepage.com/sp-dnc1996.html

Dreams, Courageous, Graduation

“You've faced horrors in these past weeks… I don't know which is worse. The terror you feel the first time you witness such things, or the numbness that comes after it starts to become ordinary.”

Tasha Alexander (1969) American writer

Source: A Fatal Waltz

Feeling, Time, Past

“Really? That would be a first. I'm the son of, Jason. I might as well be covered in blood or sewage, the way people treat me. I don't belong anywhere. I'm not even from this. But that's not enough to set me apart.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

People, Way

“Maybe that was how it was with all first loves. They own a little piece of your heart, always. Conrad at twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, even seventeen years old.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Love, Heart

“I've always been happy with you," he said. "But I never thought I deserved it."
"And now you do?"
"And now the feeling's gone," he said. "All I know is that I love you and for the first time, that's good enough.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Love, Happiness, Feeling, Time

“You know, I think this is the first time we've ever done anything normal together.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Thinking, Time

“The first of the
line is tied to a tree and the last is being eaten by the ants.”

Gabriel García Márquez book One Hundred Years of Solitude

Source: One Hundred Years of Solitude

Tree

“First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys.”

Ray Bradbury book Something Wicked This Way Comes

Source: Something Wicked This Way Comes

Boy

“I don't know who the good guys are anymore. But I do know what the enemy is. It's the compromise of principles. You lose the war when you lose your principles. And the first principle is to look out for your comrades.”

Karen Traviss British science fiction author

War, Guy

“To me, there is no greater act of courage than being the one who kisses first.”

Janeane Garofalo (1964) comedian, actress, political activist, writer

standup performance, date unknown[citation needed]
Standup routines

Courage, Kiss

“Through travel I first became aware of the outside world; it was through travel that I found my own introspective way into becoming a part of it.”

Eudora Welty book One Writer's Beginnings

Source: One Writer's Beginnings

World, Way, Travel, Parting

“Should I eat first or accuse the Master of the City of murder? Choices, choices. -Anita”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

Source: Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, Danse Macabre (2006), Chapter 1, pp. 4-5
Context: [Talking to friend Veronica, Anita Blake worries she may be pregnant. ]
Ronnie: I could ask, who's the father, but that's just creepy. If you are, then it's this little tiny, microscopic lump of cells. It's not a baby. It's not a person, not yet.
Anita: We'll have to disagree on that one.
Ronnie: You're pro-choice.
Anita: Yep, I am, but I also believe that abortion is taking a life. I agree women have the right to choose, but I also think that it's still taking a life.
Ronnie: That's like saying you're pro-choice and pro-life. You can't be both.
Anita: I'm pro-choice because I've never been a fourteen-year-old incest victim pregnant by her father, or a woman who's going to die if the pregnancy continues, or a rape victim, or even a teenager who made a mistake. I want women to have choices, but I also believe that it's a life, especially once it's big enough to live outside the womb.

“Psychotics, say what you want about them, tend to make the first move.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

“Drive down any road,

take a train or an airplane
across the world, leave
your old life behind,

die and be born again~
wherever you arrive
they'll be there first,

glossy and rowdy
and indistinguishable.
The deep muscle of the world.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1

Life, World, Training