Quotes by theme

first

Quotes including the word “first”.

81 results
Aeschylus

In war, truth is the first casualty

Balzac

A good husband is never the first to go to sleep at night or the last to awake in the morning.

Beckett

Just under the surface I shall be, all together at first, then separate and drift, through all the earth and perhaps in the end through a cliff into the sea, something of me. A ton of worms in an acre, that is a wonderful thought, a ton of worms, I believe it.

Brendan Behan

“I respect kindness in human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.

Henri Bergson

..Men do not sufficiently realize that their future is in their own hands. Theirs is the task of determining first of all whether they want to go on living or not. Theirs is the responsibility, then, for deciding if they want merely to live, or intend to make just the extra effort required for fulfilling, even on this refractory planet, the essential function of the universe, which is a machine for the making of gods.”

Boccaccio

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.”

Brecht

First comes a full stomach, then comes ethics.

Charles Bukowski

The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting.

W. Burroughs

There are no innocent bystanders ... what are they doing there in the first place?

Caesar

I had rather be first in a village than second at Rome.

Anton Chekhov

Everything should be first-rate in a person, his face, clothes, soul and thoughts.

Confucius

The expectations of life depend upon diligence; the mechanic that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools.

cummings

To destroy is always the first step in any creation.

Salvador Dali

The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.”

Diderot

Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.

Bob Dylan

If you want to keep your memories, you first have to live them.

Thomas Eliot

We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started... and know the place for the first time.

Thomas Eliot

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time

Epictetus

First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.

Fitzgerald

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

Benjamin Franklin

“It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.”

Galeano

We are all mortal until the first kiss and the second glass of wine.

Gandhi

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

Hobbes

The first and fundamental law of Nature is to seek peace and follow it.

Homer

Always be first and best and never embarrass your ancestors.

Homer

The first principle of all things is the ocean.

Max Horkheimer

The self, entirely encompassed by civilization, is dissolved in an element composed of the very inhumanity which civilization has sought from the first to escape.

Samuel Johnson

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

Samuel Johnson

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

Samuel Johnson

Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.”

Franz Kafka

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

Maria Kallas

First I lost my weight, then I lost my voice and then I lost Onassis.

Immanuel Kant

For peace to reign on Earth, humans must evolve into new beings who have learned to see the whole first.”

Kazantzakis

In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.

Kazantzakis

If you don't embrace yourself first, do not expect from others to do so. Love the person because it's you.

L. Martin King,

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

Kipling

The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.

John Lennon

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first - rock and roll or Christianity.

Doris Lessing

What's terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.

Levi-Strauss

The first thing we see as we travel round the world is our own filth, thrown into the face of mankind.

Jack London

Life is a strange thing. Why this longing for life? It is a game which no man wins. To live is to toil hard and to suffer sore, till old age creeps heavily upon us and we throw down our hands on the cold ashes of dead fires. It is hard to live. In pain the babe sucks his first breath, in pain the old man gasps his last, and all his days are full of trouble and sorrow; yet he goes down to the open arms of death, stumbling, falling, with head turned backward, fighting to the last. And death is kind. It is only life and the things of life that hurt. Yet we love life and we hate death. It is very strange.

Lorca

The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extra human architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish.

Antonio Machado

Don't try to rush things: for the cup to run over, it must first be filled.

Machiavelli

The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.

Norman Mailer

There are four stages in a marriage. First there's the affair, then the marriage, then children and finally the fourth stage, without which you cannot know a woman, the divorce.

Nelson Mandela

The first thing is to be honest with yourself. You can never have an impact on society if you have not changed yourself... Great peacemakers are all people of integrity, of honesty, but humility.”

Jose Martí

The first duty of a man is to think for himself”

Karl Marx

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

Herman Melville

Friendship at first sight, like love at first sight, is said to be the only truth.

A. Modigliani

Every great work of art should be considered like any work of nature. First of all from the point of view of its aesthetic reality and then not just from its development and the mastery of its creation but from the standpoint of what has moved and agitated its creator.

Nietzsche

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

George Orwell

We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.

Ovid

First thing every morning before you arise say out loud, 'I believe,' three times.

Thomas Paine

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.

Pablo Picasso

Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.

Plato

The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is the most shameful and vile of all things.

Sergei Prokofiev

In my view, the composer, just as the poet, the sculptor or the painter, is in duty bound to serve Man, the people. He must beautify life and defend it. He must be a citizen first and foremost, so that his art might consciously extol human life and lead man to a radiant future.

Sergei Prokofiev

Formalism is music that people don't understand at first hearing.

Marcel Proust

Habit is a second nature which prevents us from knowing the first, of which it has neither the cruelties nor the enchantments.

Maurice Ravel

You might lose your spontaneity and, instead of composing first-rate Gershwin, end up with second rate Ravel.

Maurice Ravel

Music, I feel, must be emotional first and intellectual second.

Richelieu

Secrecy is the first essential in affairs of the State.

Rolland

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

Jacqueline Romilly

Ancient Greece offers us a language which I will say is ecumenical. Everyone should learn Greek, because the Greek language helps us first and foremost to understand our own language.

de Sade,Marquis

In order to know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice.

Carl Sandburg

Nothing happens unless first we dream.

Schopenhauer

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Robert Scott

The attitude of the men is equally worthy of admiration...there is a rush to be first when work is to be done, and the same desire to sacrifice selfish consideration to the success of the expedition...Fortune would be in a hard mood indeed if it allowed such a combination of knowledge, experience, ability, and enthusiasm to achieve nothing.

Mary Shelley

Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.

Upton Sinclair

The first thing brought forth by the study of any religion, ancient or modern, is that it is based upon Fear, born of it, fed by it — and that it cultivates the source from which its nourishment is derived.

Socrates

If you want to shake the world, shake yourself first.

Talleyrand

Mistrust first impulses; they are nearly always good.

Tesla

In the twenty-first century, the robot will take the place which slave labor occupied in ancient civilization.

Tesla

The spread of civilization may be likened to a fire; first, a feeble spark, next a flickering flame, then a mighty blaze, ever increasing in speed and power.

Thucydides

Men who are capable of real action first make their plans and then go forward without hesitation while their enemies have still not made up their minds.

Mark Twain

Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

Voltaire

The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days.

Voltaire

We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies - it is the first law of nature.

Washington

My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth.

Virginia Woolf

Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.

Yourcenar

The true birthplace is that wherein for the first time one looks intelligently upon oneself; my first homelands have been books, and to a lesser degree schools.