Quotes about first

page 5

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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?”

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

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

“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”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“O, let me kiss that hand!

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

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

“There's no love like the first.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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!”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“Illusion is the first of all pleasures.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“I’m thinking only of my illness and my health, though both, the first as well as the second, are you.”

“People mistakenly assume that their thinking is done by their head; it is actually done by the heart which first dictates the conclusion, then commands the head to provide the reasoning that will defend it.”

“You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.”

“The erosion of our confidence in the future is threating to destroy the Social and the Political fabric of America. The confidence that we have always had as a people, is not simply some romantic dream, or a proverb in a dusty book, that we read, just on the Fourth of July. It is the idea of which founded our nation and has guided us in our development as a people. Confidence in the future has supported everything else. We've always believed in a thing called, progress. We've always had a faith, that the days of our children, would be better than our own. Our people are losing that faith. Fopr the first time in the history of our country, a majority of our people believe, that the next five years, will be worse than the past five years. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the presidency as a place of honor, unitl the shock of Watergate. We've got to stop crying and start sweating. Stop talking and start walking. Working together, with our common faith, we cannot fail.”

“One must speak in such a way that although someone else, or many others, or an infinite number of people have said it before, it seems as though you said it first.”

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

“Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide.”

“In his early twenties, a man started collecting paintings, many of which later became famous: Picasso, Van Gogh, and others. Over the decades he amassed a wonderful collection. Eventually, the man’s beloved son was drafted into the military and sent to Vietnam, where he died while trying to save his friend. About a month after the war ended, a young man knocked on the devastated father’s door. “Sir,” he said, “I know that you like great art, and I have brought you something not very great.” Inside the package, the father found a portrait of his son. With tears running down his cheeks, the father said, “I want to pay you for this.ℍ “No,” the young man replied, “he saved my life. You don’t owe me anything.ℍ The father cherished the painting and put it in the center of his collection. Whenever people came to visit, he made them look at it. When the man died, his art collection went up for sale. A large crowd of enthusiastic collectors gathered. First up for sale was the amateur portrait. A wave of displeasure rippled through the crowd. “Let’s forget about that painting!” one said. “We want to bid on the valuable ones,” said another. Despite many loud complaints, the auctioneer insisted on starting with the portrait. Finally, the deceased man’s gardener said, “I’ll bid ten dollars.ℍ Hearing no further bids, the auctioneer called out, “Sold for ten dollars!” Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. But then the auctioneer said, “And that concludes the auction.” Furious gasps shook the room. The auctioneer explained, “Let me read the stipulation in the will: “Sell the portrait of my son first, and whoever buys it gets the entire art collection. Whoever takes my son gets everything.ℍ It’s the same way with God Almighty. Whoever takes his Son gets everything.”

“Sentence first; verdict afterwards." -Queen of Hearts”

“So live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!”

“If you really want to possess a woman, you must think like her, and the first thing to do is win over her soul. The rest, that sweet, soft wrapping that steals away your senses and your virtue, is a bonus.”

“Shoes, men, coffins; never accept the first one you see.”

“To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.”

“I'll bet you anything you like that half an hour after they have met, they will be calling each other sister.
Women only do that when they have called each other a lot of other things first.”

“The first boy I fell in love with didn't know I loved him, but he managed to break my heart anyway.”

“I'll pour you the first one and after that, if you don't have one, it's your own f****** fault. You know where it is.”

“This was after stew. But then, so is everything. When the first man crawled out of the slime and went to make his home on land, what he had for dinner that night was stew.”

“If at first you don't succeed then skydiving definitely isn't for you.”

“All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity.”

“Every woman wants to be first to someone sometime in her life and that desire is the explanation for many strange things women do.”

“For the first time, we recognized a medium that takes our ordinary, everyday objects like bowls, baskets, and quilts and elevates them to art forms that rival painting and sculpture in their impact.
(From the forward to "Crafts in America: Celebrating Two Centuries of Artists and Objects.”

“The sky is already purple; the first few stars have appeared, suddenly, as if someone had thrown a handful of silver across the edge of the world.”

“In order to control myself I must first accept myself by going with and not against my nature.”

“Every step is a first step if it's a step in the right direction.”

“Twoflower was a tourist, the first ever seen on the discworld. Tourist, Rincewind had decided, meant 'idiot'.”

“The first lesson to learn is to resign oneself to the little difficulties in life, not to hit out at everything one comes up against. If one were able to manage this one would not need to cultivate great power; even one's presence would be healing.”

“Remember where you came from, where you're going, and why you created the mess you got yourself into in the first place.”

“When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.”

“Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don't have to say anything - that is how, it is between people who are each other's first memories”

“Peace is only possible when one of the warring sides takes the first step, the hazardous initiative, the risk of opening up dialogue, and decides to make the gesture that will lead not only to an armistice but to peace.”

“Whoever it is you fall in love with for the first time, not just love but be in love with, is the one who will always make you angry, the one you can't be logical about.”