quotations about beginning
The hardest thing is where to begin--or, perhaps, why?
ETHEL BARRYMORE
Memories
Ends and beginnings--there are no such things.
There are only middles.
ROBERT FROST
"In the Home Stretch"
It is no easy task to do away with a thing that is established. We, therefore, say that the non-beginning of a thing is supreme wisdom.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Hind Swaraj
In my beginning is my end.
T.S. ELIOT
"East Coker," Four Quartets
That which has a beginning will surely have an end.
JOSEPH SMITH
An Intimate Chronicle; The Journals of William Clayton
The first beginnings of things cannot be distinguished by the eye.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
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
If you don't start, it's certain you won't arrive.
ROBERT ANTHONY
Think Big
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"
A bad beginning makes a bad ending.
EURIPIDES
Aeolus [fragment]
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"
Each day is a new beginning.
MICHAEL DUFF NEWTON
Destiny of Souls
Well begun is not only half done, but often fully cooked.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
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
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
The beginning is the end
Keeps coming round again
HOW TO DESTROY ANGELS
"The Loop Closes"
The beginning is the most important part of the work.
PLATO
The Republic
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
You are full of unshaped dreams
You are laden with beginnings
LOLA RIDGE
"Wind in the Alleys"
A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics