quotations about beginning
There is first of all the problem of the opening, namely, how to get us from where we are, which is, as yet, nowhere, to the far bank. It is a simple bridging problem, a problem of knocking together a bridge. People solve such problems every day. They solve them, and having solved them push on.
J. M. COETZEE
Elizabeth Costello
Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
speech at Lord Mayor's Luncheon, Nov. 10, 1942
The beginning is the most important part of the work.
PLATO
The Republic
Wouldn't it be nice if life took a cue from horse racing and a gun went off when it was time for us to get moving? Life rarely sends us a signal as clear as a starter's pistol. It's up to us to recognize when it's time to just start.
STUART R. LEVINE
Cut to the Chase: and 99 Other Rules to Liberate Yourself and Gain Back the Gift of Time
Things are achieved when they are well begun.
The perfect archer calls the deer his own
While yet the shaft is whistling.
GEORGE ELIOT
The Spanish Gypsy
And so we turn the page over
To think of starting. This is all there is.
JOHN ASHBERY
"Frontispiece"
Songbird, rebirth, unearth creature / Submerge from hurt, pain, broken pieces / Emergency, heartbeat increases / Rise up lotus, rise, this is the beginning.
CHRISTINA AGUILERA
"Lotus Intro"
We cannot escape our origins, however hard we try, those origins which contain the key--could we but find it--to all we later become.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
Well begun is not only half done, but often fully cooked.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
The first beginnings of things cannot be distinguished by the eye.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is or has been is but the twilight of the dawn.
H.G. WELLS
The Discovery of the Future
Great is the art of beginning, but greater the art is of ending.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"Elegiac Verse"
In my beginning is my end.
T.S. ELIOT
"East Coker," Four Quartets
The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth.
EZRA POUND
"How I Began"
There is an old saying "well begun is half done"--'tis a bad one. I would use instead--Not begun at all 'til half done.
JOHN KEATS
letter to Benjamin Robert Haydon, May 10-11, 1817
Like a blinking cursor on an empty page, it was just the first thing. The beginning of the beginning. But at least it was done.
SARAH DESSEN
What Happened to Goodbye
He who chooses the beginning of the road chooses the place it leads to.
KAMI GARCIA
Beautiful Darkness
Every moment is a fresh beginning.
T. S. ELIOT
The Cocktail Party
I saw, though too late, the folly of beginning a work before we count the cost, and before we judge rightly of our own strength to go through with it.
DANIEL DEFOE
Robinson Crusoe
A bad beginning makes a bad ending.
EURIPIDES
Aeolus [fragment]