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In ancient times, those who wished to illuminate the world with virtue first brought order to their nations. Wishing to order well their nations, they first harmonized their families. Wishing to harmonize their families, they first cultivated themselves. Wishing to cultivate themselves, they first rectified their minds. Those who wished to rectify their minds first made their intentions sincere.
ConfuciusWhen I started graduate school we did this publishing class where we learned about submitting and read interviews with editors from different magazines. A lot of them said they got so many submissions that unless the first page stuck out or the first paragraph or even the first sentence they'll probably send it back. So part of my idea was that if I have a really good first sentence maybe they'll read on a bit further. At least half, maybe more of the stories in Knockemstiff started with the first sentence; I got it down then went from there.
Donald Ray PollockTrue celebration should come from your life, in your life. And true celebration cannot be according to the calendar, that on the first of November you will celebrate. Strange, the whole year you are miserable and on the first of November suddenly you come out of misery, dancing. Either, the misery is false, or the first of November is false; both cannot be true. And once the first of November has gone, you are back in your dark hole, everybody in his misery, everybody in his anxiety.
RajneeshHealth is the first benefit. Content is the first fortune. Friendliness is the first kindness. Nirvana is the first happiness.
Gautama BuddhaReligion is part of the human make-up. It's also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.
Christopher HitchensIf journalism is the first draft of history, then digital literacy is the first blush of the first page of history.
Michael Eric DysonFor we love not God first, to compel him to love again; but he loved us first, and gave his Son for us, that we might see love and love again, saith St John in his first epistle.
William Tyndale[Barack Obama] had already signed Lilly Ledbetter, signed SCHIP, the children's health insurance program. By the time he had his first address to the joint session, that is as it is called, the first speech, he could say, this is what I asked for, this is what we have done in the first four weeks.
Nancy PelosiI wrote my first short story for a competition and won second prize. Another competition came up and I won first prize. The first story was published in a newspaper. The second went out on radio.
Ian RankinThere has certainly been a great deal of work addressing the relationship between naturalism and the first-person perspective. Quite a number of philosophers have suggested that there are features of the first-person perspective that naturalism just cannot accommodate, whether it be qualitative character, or consciousness, or simply the ability we have to think of ourselves in a distinctively first-person manner.
Hilary KornblithI think when I was doing my very first interviews, I probably brought a notepad and did ask people my first fifteen questions while sitting in a Starbucks or something horrible like that. And I found that, oftentimes, the most important thing at the very first interview is just establishing a personal connection and developing some sort of rapport so that I can go back to them again, and then maybe again, and maybe again after that.
Sarah StillmanThe loved object is simply one that has shared an experience at the same moment of time, narcissistically; and the desire to be near the beloved object is at first not due to the idea of possessing it, but simply to let the two experiences compare themselves, like reflections in different mirrors. All this may precede the first look, kiss, or touch; precede ambition, pride, or envy; precede the first declarations which mark the turning pointโfor from here love degenerates into habit, possession, and back to loneliness.
Lawrence DurrellI believe it is customary to get one's washing over first in baths and bask afterwards; personally, I bask first. I have discovered that the first few minutes are the best and not to be wasted-- my brain always seethes with ideas and life suddenly looks much better than did.
Dodie SmithThe formation of character in young people is educationally a different task from, and a prior task to, the discussion of the great, difficult, ethical controversies of the day. First things first. And planting the ideas of virtue, of good traits in the young, comes first. In the moral life, as in life itself, we take one step at a time. Every field has its complexities and controversies. And so does ethics. And every field has its basics. So too with values.
William BennettI looked at the pilgrims coming to America. In their first year, they decided to try a communist experiment. And the first year of the pilgrims, they established this socialistic concept: 'Well, we have all this land before us - let us all work it together.' Oh, how wonderful it sounded. 'Let us all work it together, and we will share in the produce of the land.' They almost starved to death! Almost half of them died, that very first year.
Ted CruzI wrote the first draft of my first novel at Michigan, and then I wrote the first draft of 'Salvage the Bones' at Stanford. So I workshopped the entire thing.
Jesmyn WardWell do I remember the first night we met, how you questioned my opinion that first impressions are perfect. You were right to do so, of course, but even then I suspected what I've come to believe most passionately these past weeks: from that first moment, I knew you were a dangerous woman, and I was in great peril of falling in love." She thought she should say something witty here. She said, "Really?
Shannon HaleFirst the stalk โ then the roots. First the need โ then the means to satisfy that need . First the nucleus โ then the elements needed for its growth. The seed is a primary cause. The need, the nucleus, both are primary causes. Conditions โ they are secondary. Given enough life in the nucleus, it will draw to itself the necessary means for growth regardless of conditions.
Robert Collier...In Paris she found Magnus, who was living in a garret apartment and paiting, an occupation for which he had no aptitude whatsoever. He let her sleep on a mattress by the window, and in the night, when she woke up screaming for Will, he came and put his arms around her, smelling of turpentine. "The first one is always the hardest," he said. "The first?" "The first one you love who dies," he said. "It gets easier, after.
Cassandra ClareThis is the first kiss that we're both fully aware of. Neither of us hobbled by sickness or pain or simply unconscious. Our lips neither burning with fever or icy cold. This is the first kiss where I actually feel stirring inside my chest. Warm and curious. This is the first kiss that makes me want another.
Suzanne CollinsSubstantial progress was made in spreading our foreign trade to other areas. Our total trade with Northwest Europe in the first 8 months of last year was 42.3 per cent above the corresponding period the year previous, and our total trade with Asia was up 13.5 per cent. For the first time since 1919, the United States in the first 8 months of 1956 accounted for less than 60 percent of our total trade.
Ramon MagsaysayEverybody says the first cut if the deepest. It's so true. I don't know if it's because it's the best love, but it's the first that you remember. There is one boy that I will remember for the rest of my life, and I wouldn't go as far as to say, 'Oh I was in love with him and he broke my heart'. You hold on to that, just that first experience, it's good to have and you should appreciate it, even if it hurts.
Kristen StewartSometimes when you write something, you have that day when you start writing and you feel really good, and you start changing it. At the end, it lost the essence. It lost the first idea, the energy that it had, it's going down after every change. And at the end it's something soft and too much rewritten or too much rebuilt that doesn't have the same energy as the beginning. So, I like the first takes because of that, you know. It has that first energy that sometimes it's difficult to recreate.
John TalabotYou live and die two or three times making a movie. First, you write it, and the first pivotal moment comes when you can get it made. The second is in the process of making it, when the movie reveals itself to you, its flaws and its virtues. Then the most unnerving moment is when that movie is then launched into the world. Itโs like bringing your kid to the first day at school and somebody points out that it has bowlegs, it is cross-eyed, or itโs gorgeous. You feel very exposed.
Guillermo del ToroWhat I will do is put America first. People don't like to use that term of America first, but we're going to make America great again by putting America first.
Donald TrumpLooking at the Batman pages is like revisiting my youth. My first seven years in New York were the first seven years of Batman itself. While my time on Batman was important and exciting and notable considering the characters that came out of it, it was really just the start of my life.
Jerry RobinsonMan's first expression, like his first dream, was an aesthetic one. Speech was a poetic outcry rather than a demand for communication. Original man, shouting his consonants, did so in yells of awe and anger at his tragic state, at his own self-awareness and at his own helplessness before the void.
Barnett NewmanWhen I joined, I was one of the first artists to sign on to the Motown West label when they opened their first studio in California. At the studio, you'd run into Stevie Wonder, you'd run into Marvin Gayeโฆit was very special.
Thelma HoustonIf I had to choose between baseballโs Hall of Fame and first class citizenship for all of my people. I would say first-class citizenship.
Jackie Robinson[T]he first transactions of a nation, like those of an individual upon his first entrance into life make the deepest impression, and are to form the leading traits in its character.
George WashingtonI got interested in the idea of music that could make itself, in a sense, in the mid 1960s really, when I first heard composers like Terry Riley, and when I first started playing with tape recorders.
Brian EnoI write a very rough first draft of every chapter, then I rewrite every chapter. I try to get it down in the first rewrite, but some chapters I can't get quite right the third time. There are some I go over and over and over again.
Robert StoneWe need prayer to understand God's love for us. If we really mean to pray and want to pray we must be ready to do it now. These are only the first steps towards prayer but if we never make the first step with determination, we will not reach the last one: the presence of God
Mother TeresaIn the movies first impressions are everything. Or, to put it less drastically, in the movies there are no later impressions without a first impression, because you will have stopped watching. Sometimes a critic persuades you to give an unpromising-looking movie a chance, but the movie had better convey the impression pretty quickly that the critic might be right.
Clive JamesCarrying a knife has come from my fear of what ยญsomeone might do to me. So I'll do ยญsomething to them first. All you have to do is get a hint of danger and I'll all-out attack. There won't be waiting about to see if this person will attack me first.
Jermaine JenasSmoke Ring for My Halo was the first album I bought of Kurt's Vile, and when I first listened to "Peeping Tomboy" I was really depressed and unemployed. But the lyrics are, "I don't want to work. I don't want to sit around all day frowning." I was like, "Ah! Yes!"
Courtney BarnettI love Twitter! At first I made fun of it, because it is very narcissistic, and there's already so much narcissism flowing in this industry, I was like, 'Really, one more?' So I was against it at first. But I really love the idea of the direct connection - there's no middle man muddling it up.
Kelly ClarksonFemininity, yes, effectively there is more in The First Man, not only in terms of women but stylistically, in its elements, the notes he wrote. You can see a real love story in it, a childhood love story, [Albert] Camus' first. Meursault [protagonist of The Outsider] and Marie were never up to much really. There is Dora in The Just and others in his plays, but they aren't so well known.
Catherine CamusBut when I would see the surrogate, my first instinct, my first reaction would be jealousy, because she was doing what I wanted to do.
Cheryl TiegsAs the corporation's size and power grew, so did the need to assuage people's fears of it. The corporation suffered its first full-blown legitimacy crisis in the wake of the early-twentieth-century merger movement, when, for the first time, many Americans realized that corporations, now turned behemoths, threatened to overwhelm their social institutions and governments.
Joel BakanMany a man had taken the first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely the value of your first.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe idea was that we would decide the order when we looked at the proofs. I remember Brion Gysin saying "Well, why change it? It's perfect the way it is, the way it came from the printer." Made one major change, that is, the first chapter that came from the printers, which would be the beginning, we moved to the end. The first chapter became the last chapter. There's no actual cutups in Naked Lunch.
William S. BurroughsI have three treasures that I cherish. The first is compassion. The second is moderation. The third is not claiming to be first in the world.
LaoziI name (Honus) Wagner first on my list, not only because he was a great batting champion and base-runner, and also baseball's foremost shortstop, but because Honus (Wagner) could have been first at any other position, with the possible exception of pitcher. In all my career, I never saw such a versatile player.
John McGrawI hold 'Mi Tierra,' my first Spanish-language album, very close to me because that was all done in my native tongue and won me my first Grammy.
Gloria EstefanThe first thing, the very very first thing, "Find out what your greatest characteristic is, your greatest undoing, your central characteristic of unconsciousness." Each one's is different. Somebody is sex-obsessed. In a country like India, where for centuries sex has been repressed, that has become almost a universal characteristic; everybody is obsessed with sex. Somebody is obsessed with anger, and somebody else is obsessed with greed. You have to watch which is your basic obsession.
G. I. GurdjieffI kind of joke with myself that you shouldn't be able to be a creative producer if you weren't a first AD. Because it is such fantastic training for really understanding what everyone does, and how the movie actually gets made. You have to know if you're the first you're kind of the set general, you're at the director's right hand, you know everything about how a director puts a movie together, you know everything about how a movie gets made.
Bruce Cohen