Quotes about first
page 5

“For peace to reign on Earth, humans must evolve into new beings who have learned to see the whole first.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

“In looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don't have the first, the other two will kill you.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

People, Intelligence

“In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. LXI
Following the Equator (1897)
Source: Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

God, School

“For which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?”

William Shakespeare book Much Ado About Nothing

Source: Much Ado About Nothing

Love, Parting

“You must read, you must persevere, you must sit up nights, you must inquire, and exert the utmost power of your mind. If one way does not lead to the desired meaning, take another; if obstacles arise, then still another; until, if your strength holds out, you will find that clear which at first looked dark.”

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) Italian author and poet

Way, Reading, Perseverance, Night

“It is not enough for the teacher to love the child. She must first love and understand the universe. She must prepare herself, and truly work at it.”

Maria Montessori (1870–1952) Italian pedagogue, philosopher and physician

Love, Understanding, Teachers, Universe

“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”

Henry David Thoreau A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

Source: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

Books, Chance, Reading

“As always after drinking too much, I felt like my own ghost trying to take it's first solo walk outside the body.”

Orhan Pamuk book The Museum of Innocence

Source: The Museum of Innocence

Drink

“If you want to learn how to be happy, you have to know what is sadness first.”

Etgar Keret book Missing Kissinger

Source: Missing Kissinger

Happiness, Sadness, Learning

“Don't ask the world to change — you change first.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

"The Death of Me", p. 151
Awareness (1992)
Source: Awareness: Conversations with the Masters
Context: Don't ask the world to change — you change first. Then you'll get a good enough look at the world so that you'll be able to change whatever you think ought to be changed. Take the obstruction out of your own eye. If you don't you have lost the right to change anyone or anything. Till you are aware of yourself, you have no right to interfere with anyone else or with the world.

World, Change

“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“Very few people do this any more. It's too risky. First of all, it's a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It's much easier to be somebody else or nobody at all.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

People, Hell

“First Sight means you can see what really is there, and Second Thoughts mean thinking about what you are thinking. And in Tiffany's case, there were sometimes Third Thoughts and Fourth Thoughts although these… sometimes led her to walk into doors.”

Terry Pratchett book I Shall Wear Midnight

Source: I Shall Wear Midnight

Thinking

“I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily.”

Cormac McCarthy book All the Pretty Horses

Variant: Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it is always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals come easily.
Source: All the Pretty Horses

Courage, Betrayal

“The acquisition of any knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good. For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

Love, Hate, Knowledge

“Every one who has ever built anywhere a "new heaven" first found the power thereto in his own hell.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book On the Genealogy of Morality

Essay 3, Aphorism 10
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
Variant: Whoever, at any time, has undertaken to build a new heaven has found the strength for it in his own hell...

Hell

“When they finally did dare it, at first with stolen glances and then candid ones, they had to smile. They were uncommonly proud. For the first time they had done something out of Love.”

Patrick Süskind (1949) German writer and screenwriter

Source: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Love, Smile, Time

“Love at first sight is easy to understand; it's when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle.”

Amy Bloom (1953) Fiction writer, screenwriter, social worker, psychotherapist

Love, People, Understanding, Wedding

“Few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later--no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover or how much we learn or forget--we will return.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: La sombra del viento (The Shadow of the Wind) (2001)

Books, World, Way, Thinking

“Then I said something. I said, Suppose, just suppose, nothing had ever happened. Suppose this was for the first time. Just suppose. It doesn't hurt to suppose. Say none of the other had ever happened. You know what I mean? Then what? I said.”

Raymond Carver (1938–1988) American short story author and poet

Source: Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories

Time, Hurt

“From the very beginning— from the first moment, I may almost say— of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

World, Feeling, Selfishness

“Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.”

Molière (1622–1673) French playwright and actor

Love, Money

“Faith is taking the first step even when you can't see the whole staircase.”

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

Variant: Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
Source: Let Nobody Turn Us Around: Voices on Resistance, Reform, and Renewal an African American Anthology

Faith

“As I nodded and smiled and'd and'd my way down the drive, I wondered if boys had any sort of magazine that told them how to attract women and, if so, did it ever tell them to put the girls' interests first?”

Jennifer Donnelly A Northern Light

Source: A Northern Light

Women, Smile, Way, Girl

“Discovery, they believe, is inevitable. So they just try to do it first. That's the game in science.”

Michael Crichton book Jurassic Park

Source: Jurassic Park

Game, Science

“Religion was invented when the first con man met the first fool.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Religion, Fools

“Kennedy was not impressed by military objections. The Bay of Pigs had taught the President to distrust the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “The first advice I’m going to give my successor,” he once said to his journalist friend Ben Bradlee, “is to watch the generals and to avoid feeling that because they were military men their opinions on military matters were worth a damn.”4 During the missile crisis Kennedy courteously and consistently rejected the Joint Chiefs’ bellicose recommendations. “These brass hats have one great advantage in their favor,” he said. “If we…do what they want us to do, none of us will be alive later to tell them that they were wrong.”5”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

Source: Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis

Men, Feeling

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Commonly attributed to Twain in computer contexts and post-2000 inspirational books — the first sentence has also been attributed to Agatha Christie and Sally Berger.
Misattributed

Secret

“Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless…”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: Lady Windermere's Fan / A Woman of No Importance / An Ideal Husband / The Importance of Being Earnest / Salomé

Life

“Eyes watching always
Shadows in shadows they wait
A black feather falls

First accepted, loved
Then betrayed-spit in the face
Vengeance sweet like dots.”

Kristin Cast book Hunted

Source: Hunted

Love, Waiting

“Who am I then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person, I'll come up; if not, I'll stay down here till I'm someone else.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

Personality

“Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.”

Stephen R. Covey (1932–2012) American educator, author, businessman and motivational speaker

As quoted in Teaching Sport and Physical Activity : Insights on the Road to Excellence (2003) Paul G. Schempp, p. 79

Leadership

“If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“Who knows, he may grow up to be President someday, unless they hang him first!"
Aunt Polly about Tom Sawyer”

Mark Twain book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Source: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Source: 1860s, First State of the Union address (1861)
Context: Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital producing mutual benefits. The error is in assuming that the whole labor of community exists within that relation.

“Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Remarks at the National Conference of the Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO (30 March 1981)) (source: http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1981/33081b.htm) 1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)

People

“O, let me kiss that hand!

KING LEAR: Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality.”

William Shakespeare King Lear

Source: King Lear

Kiss

“If at first an idea does not sound absurd, then there is no hope for it. —ALBERT EINSTEIN”

Michio Kaku (1947) American theoretical physicist, futurist and author

Source: Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration of the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel

Hope, Idea

“There's no love like the first.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Love

“I don't kick a man when he's down, unless I'm the one who put him down in the first place. I don't put him down unless he deserves it. And I don't break my word if I give it. So I'll give you my word.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Northern Lights

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

“Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Remarks at a business conference in Los Angeles (2 March 1977)
1970s

“You are still young, free.. Do yourself a favor. Before it's too late, without thinking too much about it first, pack a pillow and a blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it. One day it will be too late.”

Jhumpa Lahiri book The Namesake

Source: The Namesake

World, Thinking

“The human bird shall take his first flight, filling the words with amazement, all writings with his fame, and bringing eternal glory to those whose nest whence he sprang.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

Bird

“First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

Music

“Tonight’s December thirty-first,
Something is about to burst.
The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.
Hark, it's midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year!”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

Source: Collected verse from 1929 on

Children, Time, New Year

“Zoey~ 'Listen to me, whinning about money and a scarf. Ah, hell! I'm starting to sound like Aphrodite.'
Stark~ 'If you turn into Aprodite I'm going to stab myself.'
Zoey~ 'If I turn into Aprodite, stab me first.'
Stark~ 'Deal.'
Zoey~ 'Deal.”

P. C. Cast book Awakened

Source: Awakened

Money, Hell

“At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done--then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden

Source: The Secret Garden

People, World, Hope, Positive

“At first first nothing will happen to us
and later on
it will happen to us again.”

Leonard Cohen book Book of Longing

Variant: first of all nothing will happen
and a little later
nothing will happen again
Source: Book of Longing

“If a man is to shed the light of the sun upon other men, he must first of all have it within himself.”

Romain Rolland (1866–1944) French author

Men, Light, Sun

“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

This has been compared to Horace Walpole's statement: "This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel."
Variant translation: Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as a tragedy, the second time as farce.
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)

World, Appearance, Time

“At first I felt dizzy - not with the kind of dizziness that makes the body reel but the kind that's like a dead emptiness in the brain, an instinctive awareness of the void.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Education Of the Stoic

Ibid., p. 14-15
Source: The Education of the Stoic

Dead

“It was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily.”

Cormac McCarthy book All the Pretty Horses

Source: All the Pretty Horses

Betrayal

“The first rule that a geisha is taught, at the age of nine, is to be charming to other women… Every girl in the world should have geisha training.”

Diana Vreeland (1903–1989) American magazine editor

Women, Age, World, Girl

“How did a fool and his money get together in the first place?”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Money, Fools

“If you want to use television to teach somebody, you must first teach
them how to use television.”

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist

“In this instant, shaken to her very depths, this ecstatic human being has a first inkling that the soul is made of stuff so mysteriously elastic that a single event can make it big enough to contain the infinite.”

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) Austrian writer

Source: The Post-Office Girl

Soul

“In order to rise from its own ashes, a Phoenix first must burn.”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Talents

Variant: In order to rise
From its own ashes
A phoenix
First
Must
Burn.
Source: Parable of the Talents

“Love alone is not enough. Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, boredom. Relationships fail not because we have stopped loving but because we first stopped imagining.”

James Hillman (1926–2011) American psychologist

Love, Imagination

“Did not one spend the first half of one's days in dreams of happiness and the second half in regrets and terrors?”

Emile Zola book La Joie de vivre

Source: The Joy of Life

Happiness, Dreams

“Our lives are fashioned by our choices. First we make our choices. Then our choices make us.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Fashion

“Illusion is the first of all pleasures.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Voltaire, "L'illusion est le premier plaisir" from the satirical poem "La Pucelle d’Orléans" [The Maid of Orleans]. For a complete review see the misattributed quotation entry at Oscar Wilde in America http://oscarwildeinamerica.org/quotations/illusion-first-of-all-pleasures.html. Misattributed Variant: Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

Pleasure

“First draft: let it run. Turn all the knobs up to 11. Second draft: hell. Cut it down and cut it into shape. Third draft: comb its nose and blow its hair. I usually find that most of the book will have handed itself to me on that first draft.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Books, Hell

“Monkey bar," Annabeth said. "I'm great at these." She leaped onto to the first rung and start swinging her way across. She was scared of tiny spiders, but not of plummeting to her death from a set of monkey bars. Go figure.”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

Death, Way

“Being responsible is taking ownership of your life. It means you have taken the first radical step to becoming a complete human being—fully conscious and fully human. In taking responsibility and beginning the journey toward conscious living, you are putting an end to the age-old patterns of assigning blame outward or heavenward. You have begun the greatest adventure life has to offer: the voyage inward.”

Sadhguru book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Life, Age

“Man has three ways of acting wisely. First, on meditation; that is the noblest. Secondly, on imitation; that is the easiest. Thirdly, on experience; that is the bitterest.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

The Analects, as reported in Chambers Dictionary of Quotations (1997), p. 279.
Attributed

Way

“it always hurts more to have and lose than to not have in the first place.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Source: The Kite Runner

Hurt

“Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century. Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

From a speech entitled Come September http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/politics/comeSeptember.pdf, given at the Lensic Performing Arts Center, Santa Fe, NM, 29 Sep 2002. Speeches Source: War Talk

People, Color, Clothes, Dead

“Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Peace, History, Thinking, Peaceful