Quotes about first
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Source: The Queen of the Damned
Source: The Year of Secret Assignments
Source: The Island of the Day Before
“When you know what you're against you have taken the first step to discovering what you're for.”
Source: The Ground Beneath Her Feet
Source: The Portable Dorothy Parker
“Firsts were important. But I was pretty sure lasts were even more important.”
Source: We'll Always Have Summer
Source: Kiss of a Demon King
Source: Floating Worlds: The Letters of Edward Gorey & Peter F. Neumeyer
“I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I'll die like a poet.”
Interview http://www.expectingrain.com/dok/int/shelton1978.07.29.html with Robert Shelton, Melody Maker (29 July 1978)
The Conundrum of the Workshops, Stanza 1 (1890).
Other works
Source: The Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses
Context: When the flush of a new-born sun fell first on Eden's green and gold,
Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the mould;
And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart,
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, “It's pretty, but is it Art?”
Source: The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes
Source: Journal 1970-1986
“Never make the first move." - Loor (The Rivers of Zadaa)”
“Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”
“In order for one to learn the important lessons of life, one must first overcome a fear each day.”
“Reading is like breathing. If you take it away, first I become antsy, then violent.”
Source: Experiencing the Heart of Jesus: Knowing His Heart, Feeling His Love
“Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.”
Anonymous ancient proverb, wrongly attributed to Euripides. The version here is quoted as a "heathen proverb" in Daniel, a Model for Young Men (1854) by William Anderson Scott. The origin of the misattribution to Euripides is unknown. Several variants are quoted in ancient texts, as follows.
Variants and derived paraphrases:
For cunningly of old
was the celebrated saying revealed:
evil sometimes seems good
to a man whose mind
a god leads to destruction.
Sophocles, Antigone 620-3, a play pre-dating any of Euripides' surviving plays. An ancient commentary explains the passage as a paraphrase of the following, from another, earlier poet.
When a god plans harm against a man,
he first damages the mind of the man he is plotting against.
Quoted in the scholia vetera to Sophocles' Antigone 620ff., without attribution. The meter (iambic trimeter) suggests that the source of the quotation is a tragic play.
For whenever the anger of divine spirits harms someone,
it first does this: it steals away his mind
and good sense, and turns his thought to foolishness,
so that he should know nothing of his mistakes.
Attributed to "some of the old poets" by Lycurgus of Athens in his Oratio In Leocratem [Oration Against Leocrates], section 92. Again, the meter suggests that the source is a tragic play. These lines are misattributed to the much earlier semi-mythical statesman Lycurgus of Sparta in a footnote of recent editions of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations and other works.
The gods do nothing until they have blinded the minds of the wicked.
Variant in 'Dictionary of Quotations (Classical) (1906), compiled by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 433.
Whom Fortune wishes to destroy she first makes mad.
Publilius Syrus, Maxim 911
The devil when he purports any evil against man, first perverts his mind.
As quoted by Athenagoras of Athens [citation needed]
quem Iuppiter vult perdere, dementat prius.
"Whom Jupiter wishes to destroy, he first sends mad"; neo-Latin version. Similar wording is found in James Duport's Homeri Gnomologia (1660), p. 234. "A maxim of obscure origin which may have been invented in Cambridge about 1640" -- Taylor, The Proverb (1931). Probably a variant of the line "He whom the gods love dies young", derived from Menander's play The Double Deceiver via Plautus (Bacchides 816-7).
quem (or quos) Deus perdere vult, dementat prius.
Whom God wishes to destroy, he first sends mad.
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.
This variant is spoken by Prometheus, in The Masque of Pandora (1875) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.
As quoted in George Fox Interpreted: The Religion, Revelations, Motives and Mission of George Fox (1881) by Thomas Ellwood Longshore, p. 154
Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad.
As quoted in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations 16th edition (1992)
Nor do the gods appear in warrior's armour clad
To strike them down with sword and spear
Those whom they would destroy
They first make mad.
Bhartṛhari, 7th c. AD; as quoted in John Brough,Poems from the Sanskrit, (1968), p, 67
vināśakāle viparītabuddhiḥ
Sanskrit Saying (also in Jatak katha): "When a man is to be destroyed, his intelligence becomes self-destructive."
Modern derivatives:
The proverb's meaning is changed in many English versions from the 20th and 21st centuries that start with the proverb's first half (through "they") and then end with a phrase that replaces "first make mad" or "make mad." Such versions can be found at Internet search engines by using either of the two keyword phrases that are on Page 2 and Page 4 of the webpage " Pick any Wrong Card http://www.bu.edu/av/celop2/not_ESL/pick_any_wrong_card.pdf." The rest of that webpage is frameworks that induce a reader to compose new variations on this proverb.
Misattributed
Source: Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller - Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century
“He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.”
Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 2
“Settle for what you can get, but first ask for the World.”
Source: The Tough Guide to Fantasyland
Source: Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
“Wikipedia is the first place I go when I'm looking for knowledge… or when I want to create some.”
Source: Bright Star: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne
Richard Ames; chapter 3, p. 27
Source: The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985)
“Whiskey, like a beautiful woman, demands appreciation. You gaze first, then it's time to drink.”
Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“You have to salvage what you can, even if you're the one who buried it in the first place.”
Source: Pretty Monsters: Stories
Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Source: The Count of Monte Cristo
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“I thought yesterday was the first day of the rest of my life but it turns out today is.”
Source: Across the River and into the Trees
Source: The Storyteller's Daughter: A Retelling of the Arabian Nights
“Sokka: "My first girlfriend turned into the moon."
Zuko: "That's tough buddy.”
Source: Why Men Marry Bitches: A Woman's Guide to Winning Her Man's Heart
“The first duty of a revolutionist is to get away with it.”
Spoken to police immediately prior to his arrest at the Lincoln Hotel Restaurant in Chicago (August 1968), quoting himself in "Creating the Perfect Mess" (1 September 1968) in Revolution for the Hell of It (1968); also quoted in Abbie Hoffman : American Rebel (1992) by Marty Jezer.
Source: Steal This Book
Context: The first duty of a revolutionist is to get away with it. The second duty is to eat breakfast. I ain't going.
Source: This is Where I Leave You
Source: Moab Is My Washpot
1961, Inaugural Address
Context: If a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavor, not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.
All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.
Source: Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1970s, Government in the Future, 1970, p. 140.
“Before facing you enemy, you must first face yourself.”
Source: Bleach―ブリーチ― 33 [Burīchi 33]
“We first make our habits, then our habits make us.”
