Beginnings

Beginnings are points of origin. They may include the commencement of an action, state, or space of time; entrance into being or upon a course; the first act, effort, or state of a succession of acts or states.

Quotes

• End, begin, all the same. Big change. Sometimes good, sometimes bad.
  • Aughra, voiced by Billie Whitelaw in The Dark Crystal (1982), directed by Jim Henson and Frank Oz

• What one needs to do at every moment of one's life is to put an end to the old world and to begin a new world.
  • Nikolai Berdyaev, The Beginning and the End (1947).

• The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. 'Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?' he asked.
  'Begin at the beginning,' the King said gravely, 'and go on till you come to the end: then stop.'
  • Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865).

• In omnibus autem negotiis priusquam adgrediare, adhibenda est praeparatio diligens.
  • In all matters, before beginning, a diligent preparation should be made.
  • Cicero, De Officiis (44 B.C.), I. 21.

• Like the legend of the Phoenix
  All ends with beginnings
  What keeps the planets spinning (uh)
  The force from the beginning.
  • Daft Punk Random Access Memories Get Lucky

• La distance n'y fait rien; il n'y a que le premier pas qui coûte.
  • The distance is nothing; it is only the first step that costs.
  • Marie Anne de Vichy-Chamrond, marquise du Deffand, letter to d'Alembert, July 7, 1763. See also Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter XXXIX. N. 100. Phrase "C'est le premier pas qui coûte" attributed to Cardinal Polignac.

• A bad beginning makes a bad ending.
  • Euripides Æolus, Frag. 32.

• Et redit in nihilum quod fuit ante nihil.
  • It began of nothing and in nothing it ends.
  • Cornelius Gallus, translated by Robert Burton in Anatomy of a Melancholie (1621).

• All beginnings are very troublesome things.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Traits and Trials of Early Life (1836), The History of Mabel Dacre's First Lessons.

• Nothing great has great beginnings.
  • Joseph de Maistre, Essay on the Generative Principle of Political Constitutions (1809), XXIII, p. 73

• The only joy in the world is to begin. It is good to be alive because living is beginning, always, every moment. When this sensation is lacking—as when one is in prison, or ill, or stupid, or when living has become a habit—one might as well be dead.
  • Cesare Pavese, This Business of Living, 1937-11-23

• Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.
  • William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act III, scene 2, line 56.

• The true beginning of our end.
  • William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1595-96), Act V, scene 1, line 111.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 65-66.

• Incipe; dimidium facti est cœpisse. Supersit
  Dimidium: rursum hoc incipe, et efficies.
  • Begin; to begin is half the work. Let half still remain; again begin this, and thou wilt have finished.
  • Ausonius, Epigrams, LXXXI. 1.

• Incipe quidquid agas: pro toto est prima operis pars.
  • Begin whatever you have to do: the beginning of a work stands for the whole.
  • Ausonius, Idyllia, XII. Inconnexa. 5.

• Il n'y a que le premier obstacle qui coûte à vaincre la pudeur.
  • It is only the first obstacle which counts to conquer modesty.
  • Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Pensées Chrétiennes et Morales. LX.

• Omnium rerum principia parva sunt.
  • The beginnings of all things are small.
  • Cicero, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, V. 21.

• Dimidium facti qui cœpit habet.
  • What's well begun, is half done.
  • Horace, Epistles, I. 2. 40. (Traced to Hesiod).

• Cœpisti melius quam desinis. Ultima primis cedunt.
  • Thou beginnest better than thou endest. The last is inferior to the first.
  • Ovid, Heroides, IX. 23.

• Principiis obsta: sero medicina paratur,
  Cum mala per longas convaluere moras.
  • Resist beginnings: it is too late to employ medicine when the evil has grown strong by inveterate habit.
  • Ovid, Remedia Amoris, XCI.

• Deficit omne quod nascitur.
  • Everything that has a beginning comes to an end.
  • Quintilian, De Institutione Oratoria, V. 10.

• Quidquid cœpit, et desinit.
  • Whatever begins, also ends.
  • Seneca the Younger, De Consolatione ad Polybium, I.

• C'est le commencement de la fin.
  • It is the beginning of the end.
  • Ascribed to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord in the Hundred Days. Also to Gen. Augereau (1814).

• Le premier pas, mon fils, que l'on fait dans le monde,
  Est celui dont dépend le reste de nos jours.
  • The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days.
  • Voltaire, L'Indiscret, I, 1.

See also

• Ending