Quotes About Beginnings

No story has a beginning, and no story has an end. Beginnings and endings may be conceived to serve a purpose, to serve a momentary and transient intent, but they are, in their fundamental nature, arbitrary and exist solely as a convenient construct in the minds of man. Lives are messy, and when we set out to relate them, or parts of them, we cannot ever discern precise and objective moments when any given event began. All beginnings are arbitrary.

In life, the number of beginnings is exactly equal to the number of endings ... In poetry, the number of beginnings so far exceeds the number of endings that we cannot even conceive of it.

Partings are the beginnings of new meetings. Beginnings happen because there are endings.

From the standpoint of observation, then, we must regard it as a highly probable hypothesis that the beginnings of the mental life date from as far back as the beginnings of life at large.

For centuries the most powerful argument for God's existence from the physical world was the so-called argument from design: Living things are so beautiful and elegant and so apparently purposeful, they could only have been made by an intelligent designer. But [Charles] Darwin provided a simpler explanation. His way is a gradual, incremental improvement starting from very simple beginnings and working up step by tiny incremental step to more complexity, more elegance, more adaptive perfection.

There will be no new arcadian age. There will always be new burdens, new problems, new failures, new beginnings. And the glory of man is to respond to his harsh fate with zest and ever-renewed effort.

Thus out of small beginnings greater things have been produced by His hand that made all things of nothing, and gives being to all things that are; and, as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many.

The library is a place where most of the things I came to value as an adult had their beginnings.

Slow are the beginnings of philosophy.

From such beginnings of governments, what could be expected, but a continual system of war and extortion?

When all the world appears to be in a tumult, and nature itself is feeling the assault of climate change, the seasons retain their essential rhythm. Yes, fall gives us a premonition of winter, but then, winter, will be forced to relent, once again, to the new beginnings of soft greens, longer light, and the sweet air of Spring.

Seems like I've been here before, can't remember when I get this funny feeling, we'll be together again; No straight lines make up my life, all my roads have bends; No clearcut beginnings; so far, no dead ends.

We are the rags to riches story okay the Robertson's are. Okay? We had very humble beginnings. Everybody's trying to figure out what, what's behind it, and all the Robertsons say, 'hey, it's divine intervention.' Me personally okay, God's gonna take "Duck Dynasty" where he wants it to go okay and to the people that he wants it to go to.

Let art, then, imitate nature, find what she desires, and follow as she directs. For in invention nature is never last, education never first; rather the beginnings of things arise from natural talent, and ends are reached by discipline.

Running has taught me, perhaps more than anything else, that there's no reason to fear starting lines... or other new beginnings.

Big things have small beginnings.

I try to structure albums in a pattern, like in a way where there's a motif that runs throughout or some kind of conceit that informs it in a general way. Maybe it's in a harmonic key. I like to go metastructural sometimes, like look at more than the three-minute passage and how that interacts with other pieces. And I've been increasingly interested in false starts and fraudulent beginnings, and things that don't reach their implied conclusions. I take an album and I kind of start moving things around like Jenga.

The rude beginnings of every art acquire a greater celebrity than the art in perfection; he who first played the fiddle was looked upon as a demigod.

I would play all the parts of the song, show them the way it went together. Then I'd basically break down an arrangement - I wouldn't plan endings or beginnings - so they knew everything that was going on. I had the lyrics on a prompter so that I could remember everything I'd written, and I was able to just get into the groove and play with them. I think "Peace Trail" is one of the exceptions, where it's a later take. It just happened really quickly.

Novels, like human beings, usually have their beginnings in the dark.

We advance in years somewhat in the manner of an invading army in a barren land; the age that we have reached, as the saying goes, we but hold with an outpost, and still keep open communications with the extreme rear and first beginnings of the march.

God always gives a great blessing to humble beginnings than to those that start with the chiming of bells.

In the last two years we've seen a sea change in the United States on media issues. Two years ago, people would have read this, then opened the window on the ledge of the 18th floor and jumped. They would have said, "Okay, it's over, there's nothing I can do, it's just getting worse." But in the last two years, what we've seen is that millions of Americans have gotten aware of the issue, they've organized on it, they've risen up, and we're seeing the beginnings of a burgeoning media reform movement across this country.

More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginnings of all wars. Yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between Governments. The once powerful malignant Nazi state is crumbling; the Japanese warlords are receiving in their homelands the retribution for which they asked when they attacked Pearl Harbor. But the mere conquest of our enemies is not enough; we must go on to do all in our power to conquer the doubts and the fears, the ignorance and the greed, which made this horror possible.

Mockery of religion is one of the most essential things... one of the beginnings of human emancipation is the ability to laugh at authority.

If we go back to the beginnings of things, we shall always find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that imagination, rapture and deception embellished them; that weakness worships them; that custom spares them; and that tyranny favors them in order to profit from the blindness of men.

Small beginnings are the launching pad to great endings.

What I tried to show is that this idea of this fundamental conflict between savagery and civilization goes back to the very beginnings of Western history. I go back to the Greeks, I go back to the Romans. You can read Homer. And of course Homer has his great heroes involved in this myth, this wonderful mythic contest with savage tribal peoples, half-human monsters on distant parts of the world.

Maybe nothingness is to be without your presence, without you moving, slicing the noon like a blue flower, without you walking later through the fog and the cobbles, without the light you carry in your hand, golden, which maybe others will not see, which maybe no one knew was growing like the red beginnings of a rose. In short, without your presence: without your coming suddenly, incitingly, to know my life, gust of a rosebush, wheat of wind: since then I am because you are, since then you are, I am, we are, and through love I will be, you will be, we will be.

If God made no response except to perfect faith, who could hope for help? But God has regard for beginnings, and His eye perceives greatness in the germ. The hand of the woman in the crowd trembled as it was stretched toward Jesus, and the faith back of it was superstitiously reverent, trusting in the virtue of the robe, rather than in the One who wore it; yet the genuineness of that faith; feeble though it was, triumphed in God's loving sight. Real trust is real power, though the heart and hand be feeble.

Conspiracy! Intrigue! A rapidly thickening plot! Add some bestiality and a lecherous priest and I'd say you have the beginnings of a beautiful novel.

A river is nearly the ultimate symbol for the very essence of change itself. It flows unceasingly from one point of being to another, yet continuously occupies the same bed or pathway, and accommodates life's endings with the same musical grace with which it accommodates life's beginnings, along with all the muted and explosive moments that surface between the two extremes.

It isn't given to us to see ends. We can only attend to the beginnings and make them right.

The bottom is a monotonous, dreary, unprofitable place for any person. That is why I have taken the time to describe how lowly beginnings may be circumvented by proper planning.

Imagine how terrifying it would be if we had to decide the beginnings of things for ourselves: as to what race we should belong, what sex, and all that, instead of placidly coming out of unconsciousness to find it all arranged!

Such a Big miracle in such a tiny baby. Big things often have small beginnings A baby is God's opinion that life should go on.

Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined. Society has but little connection with such beginnings. The worm is in man's heart. That is where it must be sought. One must follow and understand this fatal game that leads from lucidity in the face of existence to flight from light.

I am all about new beginnings. A new grandchild, another new hairstyle, a new email account. Why not a new relationship with the press?

Rome has grown since its humble beginnings that it is now overwhelmed by its own greatness.

BUILD UP YOUR CIRCLE.... A mind that perceives What can rationally be. A spirit that sees Innovative possibility. A heart that is open to Both beginnings and ends. A firm hand that fits readily To the reach of a friend.