Begun Quotes & Sayings

A road well begun is the battle half won. The important thing is to make a beginning and
get under way. — Soren Kierkegaard

I was a supporter and believer in the death penalty, but I've begun to see that this system doesn't work and it isn't functional. It costs an obscene amount of money. — Gil Garcetti

I have begun in old age to understand just how oddly we all are put together. We are so proud of our autonomy that we seldom if ever realize how generous we are to ourselves, and just how stingy with others. One of the booby traps of freedom
which is bordered on all sides by isolation
is that we think so well of ourselves. I now see that I have helped myself to the best cuts at life's banquet. — Saul Bellow

Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh? (Gal. 3:3). — A.W. Tozer

But there remained a reflective solitude behind that laughter, that nagging sense of completion that didn't sit well on the shoulders of a woman who had just begun to open her eyes to the wide world. — R.A. Salvatore

Deputy Grayson?"
He turned to stare down into those soft green eyes, his pulse ratcheting up. "Yes, Miss Smith?"
"Thank you." She touched his arm. "And no matter what happens, I promise I'm not a bad person."
She flung her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek....
Warmth rushed through Nash and tingling spread from where Phoebe's lips had touched his cheek. He raised a hand to the spot and stared at the woman, a frown pulling his brows downward.
He hadn't begun the day with the intent of finding a runaway bride stranded on the side of the road. Scenarios like that were only found in those unrealistic romance novels women liked reading.No. He hadn't asked for a kiss. But now that she'd done it, she couldn't undo it, and he couldn't unfeel it. — Elle James

Professor Ramachandran believes this synesthetic connection between our hearing and seeing senses was an important first step towards the creation of words in early humans. According to this theory, our ancestors would have begun to talk by using sounds that evoked the object they wanted to describe. For example, words referring to something small often involve making a synesthetic small i sound with the lips and a narrowing of the vocal tracts: Little, teeny, petite, whereas the opposite is true of words denoting something large or enormous. If the theory is right, then language emerged from the vast array of synesthetic connections in the human brain. — Daniel Tammet

One definition occurred to both of them - that he had come out into the light of that lucid and radiant ignorance in which all beliefs had begun. The sky above them was full of mythology. Heaven seemed deep enough to hold all the gods. — G.K. Chesterton

My training in Science of Mind had begun with my mother. She took me to a different church every Sunday, and she encouraged me to question the minister afterward. — Esther Williams

By the time I had got to college, I had begun to read and had decided that most of what Christians believed could not be credible. So I became a philosophy major at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. — Stanley Hauerwas

The nightmare of living was begun. — Ray Bradbury

She had begun to wonder why she had never seemed to belong to anyone — Frances Hodgson Burnett

I had begun to grasp, in the past few weeks, one of the great and uncovenanted delights of Greece; a pre-coming of age present in my case: a direct and immediate link, friendly and equal on either side, between human beings, something which melts barriers of hierarchy and background and money and, except for a few tribal and historic feuds, politics and nationality as well... Existence, these glances say, is a torment, an enemy, an adventure and a joke which we are in league to undergo, outwit, exploit and enjoy on equal terms as accomplices, fellow-hedonists and fellow-victims. — Patrick Leigh Fermor

She didn't look like any motel manager I had ever seen. More likely an actress who hadn't quite made the grade down south, or a very successful amateur tart on the verge of turning pro. Whatever her business was, there had to be sex in it. She was as full of sex as a grape is full of juice, and so young that it hadn't begun to sour. — Ross Macdonald

I became aware that our love was doomed; love had turned into a love affair with a beginning and an end. I could name the very moment when it had begun, and one day I knew I should be able to name the final hour. When she left the house I couldn't settle to work. I would reconstruct what we had said to each other; I would fan myself into anger or remorse. And all the time I knew I was forcing the pace. I was pushing, pushing the only thing I loved out of my life. As long as I could make believe that love lasted I was happy; I think I was even good to live with, and so love did last. But if love had to die, I wanted it to die quickly. It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death; I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck. — Graham Greene

PLEASE BELIEVE that I am falling apart. I am not speaking metaphorically; nor is this the opening gambit of some melodramatic, riddling, grubby appeal for pity. I mean quite simply that I have begun to crack all over like an old jug - that my poor body, singular, unlovely, buffeted by too much history, subjected to drainage above and drainage below, mutilated by doors, brained by spittoons, has started coming apart at the seams. In short, I am literally disintegrating, slowly for the moment, although there are signs of acceleration. I ask you only to accept (as I have accepted) that I shall eventually crumble into (approximately) six hundred and thirty million particles of anonymous, and necessarily oblivious, dust. — Salman Rushdie

She longs for tonight, she longs to skip the day that's just begun and plunge headlong into the night as if into a pool; a pool with the moon reflected in it. She longs to swim in liquid moonlight. — Margaret Atwood

In the woods lay a bleeding angel in all her glory. Her arms posed gracefully above her head and her hair soaked in the mud, the blood and feces in which she lay. Dying, fading into the other realm, her form christened by the rain as though the trees had begun to weep upon her in sadness for the brutality she had endured. (The Children of Ankh series) — Kim Cormack

An argument would have begun to steam and boil and sputter - and you know how arguments end. Even if I had convinced him that he was wrong, his pride would have made it difficult for him to back down and give in. — Dale Carnegie

To have begun is half the job; be bold and be sensible. — Horace

The Darkness has begun. There will be no dawn. — J.R.R. Tolkien

As always, the blessed relief of starting, a feeling that was like falling into a hole filled with bright light.
As always, the glum knowledge that he would not write as well as he wanted to write.
As always the terror of not being able to finish, of accelerating into a brick wall.
As always, the marvelous joyful nervy feeling of journey begun. — Stephen King

Life is short and we have scarcely begun to live when we are called to die. — Charles Spurgeon

Consistent participation in the act and spirit of Early Morning Prayer will eradicate from your life the things that create the majority of all spiritual inconsistencies. Almost all of the works of the flesh that continually disrupt the flow of God can be eliminated totally by a commitment to diligently seeking God at the break of each new day. When every day is begun with a fresh pursuit of the presence of God, none of the inconsistencies of human endeavor will be able to dominate. — Tony Bailey

And it was suddenly so very wrong that he had begun to cry, not at death but at the thought of not crying at death, a silly empty man near a silly empty woman, while the hungry snake made her still more empty. How — Ray Bradbury

That long-ago day, sitting in this very spot on the dock, she had already begun to feel it: how hard it would be to inherit their parents' dreams. How suffocating to be so loved. — Celeste Ng

The living environment is the biosphere, the thin layer around the world of living organisms. We're part of that. Our existence is dependent on it in ways that people haven't even begun to appreciate. Our existence depends not just on its existence, but its stability and its richness. — E. O. Wilson

She read books of poetry, though they had lately begun to stoke her fury. It was all very well for these poets, who wandered off to have adventures and then could string them to words, to music. Anything she might write would be formless, a creature of rage and stormcloud. No music there. — Ilana C. Myer

The meaning of our lives is revealed through experiences that at first seem at odds with each other
moments we wish would never end and moments we wish had never begun. — John Eldredge

It's a bore - B-O-R-E - when you find you've begun to rot. — Katharine Hepburn

I looked at my reflection in the mirror. My cycle had begun. I was now a woman. I was ready to do God's work. — Michele Dominguez Greene

Giving a party is like having a baby: its conception is more fun than its completion; and once you have begun it, it is almost impossible to stop. — Jan Struther

The schoolhouse, on this sunlit morning, has begun to take on the scent of girls with wind-blown hair, with seeds in their pockets, with road-hardened feet. — Karen Hesse

This can't happen again, Wyatt. We're done. It's over."

A palm slapped against the door, right next to her head, so hard she jumped.

"I don't think so."

"If you think I can spend the next thirteen days seeing you, hearing you, smelling you"--he inhaled deeply and growled a little--"without touching you, you're very, very mistaken."

"It's not over, Faith. It's just begun."

~Wyatt — Sydney Croft

[To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you. — C.S. Lewis

suggest that the millennial generation, deeply affected by the Great Recession and a stagnant global economy, has begun to shift its psychic priorities from material success to living a meaningful existence. — Jeremy Rifkin

We too often forget that faith is a matter of questioning and struggle before it becomes one of certitude and peace. You have to doubt and reject everything else in order to believe firmly in Christ, and after you have begun to believe, your faith itself must be tested and purified. Christianity is not merely a set of forgone conclusions. Faith tends to be defeated by the burning presence of God in mystery, and seeks refuge from him, flying to comfortable social forms and safe convictions in which purification is no longer an inner battle but a matter of outward gesture. — Thomas Merton

Strive for excellence in your calling, but as a subsidiary to this: Do not fail to enrich your whole capital as man. To be a giant, and not a dwarf in your profession, you must always be growing. The man that has ceased to go up intellectually has begun to go down. — William Matthews

After a semester or so, my infatuation with computers burnt out as quickly as it had begun. — Eric Allin Cornell

The Democratic Party had failed (in 1983)
'to remember waht got us this far and how we got here
moral indignation, decent instincts, a sense of shared sacrifice and mutual responsibility, and a set of national priorities that emphasized what we had in common.. The Party that was the engine of the national interest
molding our pluralistic interest into a compelling new social contract that served the nation well for fifty years
became perceived as little more than the broker of narrow special interests. Instead of thinking of ourselves as Americans first, Democrats second, and members of interest groups third, we have begun to think in terms of special interests first and the greater interest second.. We have let our opponents set the agenda and define what is at stake.
p. 140 — Joe Biden

If we got into a situation where people start burning our records, then bring it on. That's the whole point. The gloaming has begun. We're in the darkness. This has happened before. Go read some history. — Thom Yorke

But the grind has begun. The windows don't open, and even the availability of near-constant jokes about Jews and Mormons fails to stem the tide of frustration, decay. We've reached the end of pure inspiration, and are now somewhere else, something implying routine, or doing something because people expect us to do it, going somewhere each day because we went there the day before, saying things because we have said them before, and this seems like the work of a different sort of animal, contrary to our plan, and this is very very bad. — Dave Eggers

I expect to see the coming decades transform the planet into an art form; the new man, linked in a cosmic harmony that transcends time and space, will sensuously caress and mold and pattern every facet of the terrestrial artifact as if it were a work of art, and man himself will become an organic art form. There is a long road ahead, and the stars are only way stations, but we have begun the journey. To be born in this age is a precious gift, and I regret the prospect of my own death only because I will leave so many pages of man's destiny - if you will excuse the Gutenbergian image - tantalizingly unread. But perhaps, as I've tried to demonstrate in my examination of the postliterate culture, the story begins only when the book closes. — Marshall McLuhan

If we do not accomplish it in time, what has begun with a monkey may not end with a monkey. Next even a swarm of mosquitoes may decide to challenge your authority. — R.K. Narayan

But say That Death be not one stroak, as I suppos'd, Bereaving sense, but endless miserie From this day onward, which I feel begun Both in me, and without me, and so last To perpetuitie; Ay me, that fear Comes thundring back with dreadful revolution On my defensless head; both Death and I Am found Eternal, and incorporate both, Nor I on my part single, in mee all Posteritie stands curst: Fair Patrimonie That I must leave ye, Sons; O were I able To waste it all my self, and leave ye none! So disinherited how would ye bless Me now your Curse! Ah, why should all mankind For one mans fault thus guiltless be condemn'd, If guiltless? But — John Milton

From being used so much, kneaded with sweat and sighs, the air in the room had begun to turn to mud. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The question of surrender is political, it is not a question of love. And relationship is not love at all; it means love has ended and relationship has begun. It begins very soon after the honeymoon - mostly in the middle of the honeymoon. It is not easy to live with another person whose life-style is different, whose likings are different, whose education and culture is different, and above all the other happens to be a woman - even their biology is different. — Rajneesh

He was becoming something the world had never seen before - a dream animal - living at least partially within a secret universe of his own creation and sharing that secret universe in his head with other, similar heads. Symbolic communication had begun. Man had escaped out of the eternal present of the animal world into a knowledge of past and future. The unseen gods, the powers behind the world of phenomenal appearance, began to stalk through his dreams. — Loren Eiseley

He wandered aimlessly. The sun was setting. A special form of misery had begun to oppress him of late. There was nothing poignant, nothing acute about it; but there was a feeling of permanence, of eternity about it; it brought a foretaste of hopeless years of this cold leaden misery, a foretaste of an eternity "on a square yard of space." Towards evening this sensation usually began to weigh on him more heavily. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

And once begun, change cannot be reversed. — Michael Scott

The cadence of suffering has begun. Every evening at dusk, my heart constricts until night has come. — Cesare Pavese

High house shadow, and a knife in the dark. A new game's begun, or the old one's just turned. — Steven Erikson

They say well begun half done; but Perseverance on the way down takes you up to a great end. — Vikrmn

The old exhortations to nationalist fervor and jingoist pride have begun to lose their appeal. Perhaps because of rising standards of living, children are being treated better worldwide. In only a few decades, sweeping global changes have begun to move in precisely the directions needed for human survival. A new consciousness is developing which recognizes that we are one species. — Carl Sagan

When the mind has once begun to yield to the weakness of superstition, trifles impress it with the force of conviction. — Ann Radcliffe

Yet after withdrawing from three wars in two generations - each begun with idealistic aspirations and widespread public support but ending in national trauma - America struggles to define the relationship between its power (still vast) and its principles. — Henry Kissinger

Old Spice, the seventy-five-year-old brand of men's grooming products, had begun to lose market share in the body wash category as the market became more and more crowded. Under the direction of the digital agency Wieden+Kennedy, the brand's manufacturer, Procter & Gamble, aimed to change how women (who were buying more than half of the body wash products) felt about their men wearing "lady-scented body wash." The video campaign called "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like," starring Isaiah Mustafa, was launched online in July 2010 during Super Bowl weekend. On the first day, the campaign received almost 6 million views. After the first week, Old Spice had 40 million views. Traffic to their website was up 300% and Facebook fan interaction was up 800%. Within six months, the campaign generated 1.4 billion impressions. — Bernadette Jiwa

Our world; and long before this earth ceased to be molten, life upon its surface must have begun its course. The fact that it is scarcely one seventh of the volume of the earth must have accelerated its cooling to the temperature at which life could begin. It has air and water and all that is necessary — H.G.Wells

As maize became important for human food worldwide, modern agricultural research on maize breeding continued the corn breeding begun thousands of years ago in the Central American highlands. — Elizabeth Blackburn

But love was not about practice or preparation, it was pure chance; if you took your time with it you ran the risk of having it evaporate before it had even begun — Alice Hoffman

To cast in my lot with Jekyll, was to die to those appetites which I had long secretly indulged and had of late begun to pamper. To cast it in with Hyde, was to die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to become, at a blow and forever, despised and friendless. The bargain might appear unequal; but there was still another consideration in the scales; for while Jekyll would suffer smartingly in the fires of abstinence, Hyde would be not even conscious of all that he had lost. Strange as my circumstances were, the terms of this debate are as old and commonplace as man; much the same inducements and alarms cast the die for any tempted and trembling sinner; and it fell out with me, as it falls with so vast a majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part and was found wanting in the strength to keep to it. — Robert Louis Stevenson

An awe so quiet I don't know when it began.
A gratitude had begun to sing in me.
Was there some moment dividing song from no song?
When does dewfall begin?
When does night fold its arms over our hearts to cherish them?
When is daybreak? — Denise Levertov

He couldn't escape it. She'd begun re-calibrating his senses the moment she came through that library door. His peripheral vision was now trained for flashes of golden hair: his ears, trained for her melodic laugh. He found himself following the drifting scent of her soap and dusting powder, like a dog panting after the butcher's wife. — Tessa Dare

Oh, Mia. You haven't even begun to find out who you really are, and, believe me, other boys are going to fall in love with you. If a guy can't see how special you are, he isn't good enough for you. — Kristin Hannah

The world of "magick" is, nine times out of ten, a world where people can hide their deep-set insecurity and personal damage behind illusion, constructed identities and claims to privileged knowledge, power or spiritual status. A gaudy carnival magic show, conducted with props that have long since begun to disintegrate with age, that seems to function only to distract people from the real magic that is occurring all around them, in every facet of their lives, every day of their lives. While the rituals and magical techniques of the Temple seem overly simplistic in comparison with the loftier Qabalahs, tables of correspondences and secret formulae of "high" magick, they have one thing which high magick quite often forgets: a concrete function. — Jason Louv

The truth a fairly important thing to hold on to when you've been pulled out of the sea after wanting to drown in it. I could've let the sea take me. I could easily be dead now, which is funny when you think of it. When I say funny, what I actually mean is weird and kind of disturbing.
When there's the loud sound of a siren screaming in your head it doesn't take too long before a feeling of not caring what happens washed over you and you become recklessly self- destructive. I used to be full of energy and happiness but I could barely remember those kinds of feelings. The cheerful, childish things I used to think had been replaced. A whole load of new realisations had begun to grow inside me like tangled weeds, and they were starting to kill me. That's why I'd make the decision that involved heading ogg to the pier on my pike in the middle of the night and cycling off it. — Sarah Moore Fitzgerald

Garret went across the street to the library. There was a hole in the sidewalk the size of a bathtub. Construction was being done, was always being done. It was the journey that mattered, Garret thought woozily, the getting-there part. The mayor, and then the president, had begun saying that. "And where are we going?" the mayor had asked. "When will we get there? What will happen to us once we get there?" He really wanted to know. — Tao Lin

Some believe that we will eventually sink back to the more simple-minded creatures which we evolved out of and the planet will bring another mind forward." "Isn't that the opposite of evolution?" "Only from a single-species perspective. A planet's life is paramount. It is such a fragile rare event, it should be treasured and nurtured for the potential it brings forth. If that means abdicating our physical dominance for our successors, then that is what we will accept. Such a time is a long way in our future. In terms of evolution, we have only just begun such a journey. — Peter F. Hamilton

We Catholics have not only to do our best to keep down our own warring passions and live decent lives, which will often be hard enough in this odd world we have been born into. We have to bear witness to moral principles which the world owned yesterday and has begun to turn its back on today. We have to disapprove of some of the things our neighbors do, without being stuffy about it; we have to be charitable towards our neighbors and make great allowances for them, without falling into the mistake of condoning their low standards and so encouraging them to sin. Two of the most difficult and delicate tasks a man can undertake; and it happens, nowadays, not only to priests, to whom it comes as part of their professional duty, but to ordinary lay people...So we must know what are the unalterable principles we hold, and why we hold them; we must see straight in a world that is full of moral fog. — Ronald Knox

You fight them, his father had said.
You don't trust them. His father had been right. And his father had been ready. Rabatians were cowards and deceivers, they should have scattered when their duplicitous attack met the full force of the Akielon army. But for some reason they hadn't fallen at the first sign of a real fight, they had stood firm, and shown metal, and, for hour upon hour, they had fought, until the Akielon lines had begun to slip and falter.
And their general wasn't the king, it was the twenty-five year old prince, holding the field.
Father, I can take him, he'd said.
Then go, his father had said, and bring
us back victory. — C.S. Pacat

The world had ended and begun anew, and yet nothing had changed, either. The sun would still rise and fall, the seasons would still change, heedless of whether he was free or enslaved, prince or king, heedless of who was alive and who was gone. The world would keep moving on. In didn't seem right, somehow. — Sarah J. Maas

History gets thicker as it approaches recent times: more people, more events, and more books written about them. More evidence is preserved, often, one is tempted to say, too much. Decay and destruction have hardly begun their beneficent work. — A.J.P. Taylor

I think you just complimented me," said Jane. "You should take better care next time."
The music had started, the couples had begun a promenade, but Mr. Nobley paused to hold Jane's arm and whisper, "Jane Erstwhile, if I never had to speak with another human being but you, I would die a happy man. I would that these people, the music, the food and foolishness all disappeared and left us alone. I would never tire of looking at you or listening to you." He took a breath. "There. That compliment was on purpose. I swear I will never idly compliment you again."
Jane's mouth was dry. All she could think to say was, "But ... but surely you wouldn't banish all the food."
He considered, then nodded once. "Right. We will keep the food. We will have a picnic."
And he spun her into the middle of the dance. — Shannon Hale

My heart had stopped as my world spun around me. I felt all the walls that had begun to crack and crumble slam right back into place as I looked into the eyes of the monster I knew was there all along. — Alicia Deters

We have not begun to understand the relationship between combinatorics and conceptual mathematics. — Jean Dieudonne

Whoever wishes to make progress in perfection should use particular diligence in not allowing himself to be led away by his passions, which destroy with one hand the spiritual edifice which is rising by the labors of the other. But to succeed well in this, resistance should be begun while the passions are yet weak; for after they are thoroughly rooted and grown up, there is scarcely any remedy. — St. Vincent

All roads, whether long or short, are hard," said Frog. "Come, you have begun your journey, and all else necessarily follows from that act. Be of good cheer. The sun is bright. The sky is blue. The world lies before you. — Russell Hoban

...the whole of American life was organized around the cult of the powerful individual, that phantom ideal which Europe herself had only begun to outgrow in her last phase. Those Americans who wholly failed to realize this ideal, who remained at the bottom of the social ladder, either consoled themselves with hopes for the future, or stole symbolical satisfaction by identifying themselves with some popular star, or gloated upon their American citizenship, and applauded the arrogant foreign policy of their government. — Olaf Stapledon

In a controversy, the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves. — Thomas Carlyle

And So This Is Christmas; And What Have We Done? Another Year Over; A New One Just Begun; And So Happy Christmas; I Hope You Have Fun; The Near And The Dear Ones; The Old And The Young. — John Lennon

When I was about twenty-one, I published a few poems. Maybe I wrote a couple of stories before, but I really began to write stories in my mid-thirties. My kids were still little, and they were in school and day care, and I had begun to think a lot about wanting to tell some stories and not being able to do it in poetry. — Grace Paley

I am sorry for your disappointment,' he continued, glancing into her face. Their eyes having met, became, as it were, mutually locked together, and the single instant only which good breeding allows as the length of such a look, became trebled: a clear penetrating ray of intelligence had shot from each into each, giving birth to one of those unaccountable sensations which carry home to the heart before the hand has been touched or the merest compliment passed, by something stronger than mathematical proof, the conviction, 'A tie has begun to unite us.' Both faces also unconsciously stated that their owners had been much in each other's thoughts of late. Owen had talked to the young architect of his sister as freely as to Cytherea of the young architect. — Thomas Hardy

I was in the middle before I knew I had begun. — Jane Austen

As the physicist Paul Davies puts it, 'If everything needs everything else, how did the communities of molecules ever arise in the first place?' It is rather as if all the ingredients in your kitchen somehow got together and baked themselves into a cake - but a cake that could moreover divide when necessary to produce more cakes. It is little wonder that we call it the miracle of life. It is also little wonder that we have barely begun to understand it. — Bill Bryson

It's only their fight club, Liss," I said, having no need for her side of the conversation, "Nothing's going on. They're going to talk punches and kicking and other boring stuff."
Well, actually that stuff was pretty sweet, but I wasn't about to glorify Christian and Mia hanging out.
"Maybe now nothing's going on," she growled, staring stonily ahead. "But who knows what could happen? They spend time together, practice some physical moves, one thing leads to another - "
"That's ridiculous," I said. "That kind of stuff isn't romantic at all."
Another lie, seeing as that was exactly how my relationship with Dimitri had begun. Again, best not to mention that. — Richelle Mead

We're still going to be learning in Heaven. We will still be developing and are not yet absolutely perfect. That's what the future is all about - to continue the learning process that we have begun here. We've all still got a lot to learn! — David Berg

I know change is possible, I know there is an alternative, because I live a completely different life to the one I was born with. I also know that the solution is not fame or money or any transient adornment of the individual. The only Revolution that can really change the world is the one in your own consciousness, and mine has already begun. — Russell Brand

People are vaccinated with dangerous chemicals during their childhood, indoctrinated with immorality through television while growing up, taught to reject God by their teachers, fed with genetically modified food, and led to suspect others by their relatives and friends, and then you wonder why it's so difficult to find a normal person in this modern world, why nobody assumes responsibility for their words and behavior, and why everyone is so selfishly abusive. The biblical apocalypse has begun and the zombies are everywhere. It's just that we call them stupid and selfish instead. But they do act like there's no life inside of them anymore. There are no more normal human beings around. The survivors of this apocalypse are extremely scarce and must be treasured. — Robin Sacredfire

Oh, if only it were possible to find understanding," Joseph exclaimed. "If only there were a dogma to believe in. Everything is contradictory, everything tangential; there are no certainties anywhere. Everything can be interpreted one way and then again interpreted in the opposite sense. The whole of world history can be explained as development and progress and can also be seen as nothing but decadence and meaninglessness. Isn't there any truth? Is there no real and valid doctrine?"
The master had never heard him speak so fervently. He walked on in silence for a little, then said: "There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught. Be prepared for conflicts, Joseph Knecht - I can see that they already have begun. — Hermann Hesse

The well-educated young woman of 1950 will blend art and sciences in a way we do not dream of; the science will steady the art andthe art will give charm to the science. This young woman will marry
yes, indeed, but she will take her pick of men, who will by that time have begun to realize what sort of men it behooves them to be. — Ellen Swallow Richards

There were moments of racial unity. Lawrence Goodwyn found in east Texas an unusual coalition of black and white public officials: it had begun during Reconstruction and continued into the Populist period. The state government was in the control of white Democrats, but in Grimes County, blacks won local offices and sent legislators to the state capital. The district clerk was a black man; there were black deputy sheriffs and a black school principal. A night-riding White Man's Union used intimidation and murder to split the coalition, but Goodwyn points to "the long years of interracial cooperation in Grimes County" and wonders about missed opportunities. — Howard Zinn

Many of my books have begun with the title, because naming a work already in progress makes no sense to me. — Guillermo Cabrera Infante

So while dueling may have begun as a response to high crimes - to treachery, treason, and adultery - by 1900 it had tiptoed down the stairs of reason, until they were being fought over the tilt of a hat, the duration of a glance, or the placement of a comma. In — Amor Towles

The fateful equating of power with violence, of the political with government, and of government with a necessary evil has begun. — Hannah Arendt

By 1948, the Italians had begun to pull themselves together, demonstrating once more their astonishing ability to cope with disaster which is so perfectly balanced by their absolute inability to deal with success — Gore Vidal

Therefore, when I considered this carefully, the contempt which I had to fear because of the novelty and apparent absurdity of my view, nearly induced me to abandon utterly the work I had begun. — Nicolaus Copernicus

A great Awakening has begun. People around the world are opening their eyes to their own spiritual natures. They are beginning to see who they truly are and what they have always been-beings with an eternal past and a glorious future. — Betty Eadie

It was a relationship that ended because it couldn't go anywhere, because it never should have begun. — Maria Duenas

For four years at Yale, he'd sat at the center of his circle with free rein to utter whatever was on his mind. He was well known for calling people out on their "bullshit." But he'd been able to exercise that tendency with the concrete awareness that his words had no consequences, not real ones. Maybe someone's feelings would get hurt; maybe there'd be an argument. Even so, nobody at Yale would ever come at him, no one carried lethal weapons, no one constructed the particular walls around his pride that, if penetrated, might impel him to want to inflict severe physical harm. The situation was different in Newark - more so now than ever, since the gang explosion had begun. — Jeff Hobbs

In fifteen years, Sachs traveled from one end of himself to the other, and by the time he came to that last place, I doubt he even knew who he was anymore. So much distance had been covered by then, it wouldn't have been possible for him to remember where he had begun. — Paul Auster