Being First Place Quotes & Sayings

Being 15 and like a punk in the DIY community, basically being with a group of people like no one else, it was the first place to exclude or call out if people were racist, sexist, homophobic or in any way prejudiced. — Babatunde Adebimpe

There are two possible responses to a world suddenly gripped by terror and contention. There is the Moseley way: get mad and get even. But as the course of King Philip's War proved, unbridled arrogance and fear only feed the flames of violence. Then there is the (Benjamin) Church way. Instead of killing him, try to bring him around to your way of thinking. First and foremost, treat him like a human being. For Church, success in war was about coercion rather than slaughter, and in this he anticipated the welcoming, transformative beast that eventually became, once the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were in place, the United States. — Nathaniel Philbrick

He thought for a moment. About puppets.
About being controlled.
Everyone was controlled by something, the Impressionist knew. By a spouse. A parent. A boss. A friend. By one's own impulses, be they dark or light.
Everyone was a puppet to something.
Most people just couldn't see the strings, is all. And so they didn't believe they were puppets in the first place. — Barry Lyga

I once tried hawking my own book around the pubs in the hope that, like the Salvation Army, I too could sell to the cerebrally relaxed. It was a disaster. I had beer thrown over me for being a) a nuisance, b) not as good as Wordsworth and c) a nancy for writing poetry in the first place. — Peter Finch

As I stood in front of the mirror in the beautiful little black dress, I knew that I was looking at a woman whom I would never see again. I wished I had never seen her in the first place, but the truth is she had always been there. I was being dishonest to myself by pretending that she hadn't. — Jane L Rosen

Of the thousands of patients I have seen, only two or three have ever claimed to be unhappy: all the rest have said that they were depressed. This semantic shift is deeply significant, for it implies that dissatisfaction with life is itself pathological, a medical condition, which it is the responsibility of the doctor to alleviate by medical means. Everyone has a right to health; depression is unhealthy; therefore everyone has a right to be happy (the opposite of being depressed). This idea in turn implies that one's state of mind, or one's mood, is or should be independent of the way that one lives one's life, a belief that must deprive human existence of all meaning, radically disconnecting reward from conduct. A ridiculous pas de deux between doctor and patient ensues: the patient pretends to be ill, and the doctor pretends to cure him. In the process, the patient is wilfully blinded to the conduct that inevitably causes his misery in the first place. — Theodore Dalrymple

Goethe's Faust risks all if he should cry to the moment, the 'augenblick', "Verweile doch!" "Last forever!" Who hasn't prayed that prayer? But the 'augenblick' isn't going to 'verweile'. You were lucky to get it in the first place. The present is a freely given canvas. That it is constantly being ripped apart and washed downstream goes without saying; it is a canvas, nevertheless. — Annie Dillard

The Internet is light at the end of the tunnel. I don't care if it's being used to peddle pornography, I don't care if it's being trivialized in a thousand ways. Anything can be trivialized. The important point is that it is leveling the playing field of global society. It is creating de-facto an entirely new set of political realities. None of the constipated, oligarchic structures that are resisting this were ever asked. Their greed betrayed them into investing in this in the first place without ever fully grasping what the implications of it were for their larger agenda. — Terence McKenna

Contrary to pre-conceived notions and first impressions, the club was an oddly relaxed place, with friendly, polite people, all having a good time. Drugs and even cigarettes were not allowed. No one came near being drunk, or disorderly. Must be a natural high, she thought with wry amusement. Kelly said that for her, coming to the club had been a lifesaver. It was — Nikki Sex

The trouble is that once America goes off to war, it can't very well return without having fought one. If it doesn't find its enemy, for the sake of the enraged folks back home, it will have to manufacture one. Once war begins, it will develop a momentum, a logic and a justification of its own, and we'll lose sight of why it's being fought in the first place. — Arundhati Roy

Mrs Kerslake:" but if there is no chance of being offered a place at Oxford, surely-?"
Simon Kerslake: "Thats not what i said Mother, I shall be an undergraduate at Oxford by the first day of term — Mark Twain

In first place we must observe that the universe is spherical. This is either because that figure is the most perfect, as not being articulated, but whole and complete in itself; or because it is the most capacious and therefore best suited for that which is to contain and preserve all things. — Nicolaus Copernicus

The problem with romance is the occlusion. The tunnel vision, drawing your every gaze downstream, into those other eyes, the flotsam of your better self, your clearer self, along for the ride. It doesn't matter what secrets swirl and bob in the waters beneath you, as you float toward that lady at Delphi, who, you imagined, reading Mythology, must have been beautiful. It doesn't matter that Charybdis, with no body, with no form, with only a mouth-as-being, couldn't have been evil, because she lacked the brain for it. It doesn't matter that following the logical course of events, the natural course, always disadvantages someone else, because love, after all, is simply a competition for resources, made infinitely complex and unknowable when squared and cubed and raised to every other emotional exponent - and then layered with sex and society and a bad memory for what those resources were in the first place. — Darin Bradley

The shadow of someone's greatness is not a good place to dwell. Being the next someone else pales into insignificance against being the first you. — John Paul Bernett

The cosmic humor is that if you desire to move mountains and you continue to purify yourself, ultimately you will arrive at the place where you are able to move mountains. But in order to arrive at this position of power you will have had to give up being he-who-wanted-to-move-mountains so that you can be he-who-put-the-mountain-there-in-the-first-place. The humor is that finally when you have the power to move the mountain, you are the person who placed it there
so there the mountain stays. — Ram Dass

I spent my childhood being cut down to fit a space where I never belonged in the first place. I spent the rest of my life searching for someone to tell me what to do with the scars. — Marta Maranda

Unfortunately, oppression does not automatically produce only meaningful struggle. It has the ability to call into being a wide range of responses between partial acceptance and violent rebellion. In between you can have, for instance, a vague, unfocused dissatisfaction; or, worst of all, savage infighting among the oppressed, a fierce love-hate entanglement with one another like crabs inside the fisherman's bucket, which ensures that no crab gets away. This is a serious issue for African-American deliberation.
To answer oppression with appropriate resistance requires knowledge of two kinds: in the first place, self-knowledge by the victim, which means awareness that oppression exists, an awareness that the victim has fallen from a great height of glory or promise into the present depths; secondly, the victim must know who the enemy is. He must know his oppressor's real name, not an alias, a pseudonym, or a nom de plume! — Chinua Achebe

From the time I can remember my mother kept me in church. I think my first recollection of any place, being anywhere was in a church. — Teddy Pendergrass

No one has done a study on this, as far as I can tell, but I think Facebook might be the first place where a large number of people have come out. We didn't create that - society was generally ready for that. I think this is just part of the general trend that we talked about, about society being more open, and I think that's good. — Mark Zuckerberg

The point being that when there are lots of possible answers, most of the evidence you need goes into just locating the true hypothesis out of millions of possibilities - bringing it to your attention in the first place. The amount of evidence you need to judge between two or three plausible candidates is much smaller by comparison. So if you just jump ahead without evidence and promote one particular possibility to the focus of your attention, you're skipping over most of the work. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

There is a tremendous amount of pressure when you are a world No. 1 with everyone behind you trying to knock you down. But I always believe you should be enjoying the pressure at the top. It is a case of being able to relax and keep playing the game that got you there in the first place. — Jahangir Khan

Hell is wanting to be somewhere different from where you are. Being one place and wanting to be somewhere else ... Wanting life to be different from what it is. That's also called leaving without leaving. Dying before you die. It's as if there is a part of you that so rails against being shattered by love that you shatter yourself first. (p. 44) — Geneen Roth

I never knew what an extraordinary thing it could be to write a book. In the first place, the characters take the bit between their jaws and canter off with you into places you don't want and never catered for. I had smugly intended my book to be about a family rather like ours, but, lud love you! it's already turned into an account of a barmaid's career in an Edgware Road pub, and I can't squeeze us in anywhere!

Odd things happen, too. I had called my pub, 'The Three Feathers,' and counted on there being heaps of pubs in Edgware Road, not called that, but looking a bit like my description. Before we left home, I went down Edgware Road to investigate, and found my pub, even down to the old-fashioned phonograph on the table in the upstairs sitting-room. And I thought, 'I built that place. — Rachel Ferguson

For she was really too lovely
too formidably lovely. I was used by now to mere unadjectived loveliness, the kind that youth and spirits hang like a rosy veil over commonplace features, an average outline and a pointless merriment. But this was something calculated, accomplished, finished
and just a little worn. It frightened me with my first glimpse of the infinity of beauty and the multiplicity of her pit-falls. What! There were women who need not fear crow's-feet, were more beautiful for being pale, could let a silver hair or two show among the dark, and their eyes brood inwardly while they smiled and chatted? but then no young man was safe for a moment! But then the world I had hitherto known had been only a warm pink nursery, while this new one was a place of darkness, perils and enchantments ... — Edith Wharton

Our longing for community seems to be a part of the image of the One Who made us, a part of the divine image whispered into us when we were whispered into being in the first place. — Robert Benson

Sometimes I wish I had a girl just to talk to & for her to truly understand how I feel about her being there for me in the first place — Oscar Moreno

When we plant a rose seed in the earth, we notice that it is small, but we do not criticize it as "rootless and stemless." We treat it as a seed, giving it the water and nourishment required of a seed. When it first shoots up out of the earth, we don't condemn it as immature and underdeveloped; nor do we criticize the buds for not being open when they appear. We stand in wonder at the process taking place and give the plant the care it needs at each stage of its development. The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies. Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential. It seems to be constantly in the process of change; yet at each state, at each moment, it is perfectly all right as it is. — W. Timothy Gallwey

A little background: Annabeth used to adventure with Hermes's son Luke. Over time, Annabeth developed a crush on Luke. As Annabeth got older, Luke developed feelings for her, too. Luke turned evil. Hermes blamed Annabeth for not preventing Luke from turning evil. Annabeth blamed Hermes for being a rotten dad and giving Luke the capacity to become evil in the first place. Luke died in war. Hermes and Annabeth blamed each other.
Confused? Welcome to my world. — Rick Riordan

After all, I wasn't even sure if the ancient causes belonged to me in the first place because being born into a belief tended to make me feel more like I belonged to it instead. — J.D. Brewer

It would be dreadfully
ironic, I mused, if once I earned a soul, I forgot everything about being fey, including all my memories of her. That sort of ending seemed
appropriately tragic; the smitten fey creature becomes human but forgets why he wanted to in the first place. Old fairy tales loved that sort of irony. — Julie Kagawa

I did the whole struggling actor thing and lucked into being in the right place at the right time and getting involved in the first 'High School Musical.' — Drew Seeley

Amitai shook his head, almost smiling, because here he was, feeling for the first time that the tragedy of European Jewry did belong to him. Before today, his lack of personal connection to the Holocaust had made it a distant history, no more relevant to him than any other. But Natalie, the locket, the painting, the Hall of Names, taking responsibility for Komlos in the Pages of Testimony, these had brought him to he realization that, merely by virtue of being a Jew, even a Jew from another place and time, it was his history, too. Not personally, but collectively. It belonged to him, as he belonged to all those Jews rising up into the infinite ceiling in the Hall of Names. He and Natalie were in the same place, but they had come from different directions. — Ayelet Waldman

Being an actor is just like being any other sort of self-employed person - we're all just happy to have a job in the first place, but we also thrive off the uncertainty of it. — Martin Freeman

The first priority will consist in restoring a sense of the acceptance of life as a gift from God. According to both Sacred Scripture and the wisest traditions of your continent, the arrival of a child is always a gift, a blessing from God. Today it is high time to place greater emphasis on this: every human being, every tiny human person, however weak, is created 'in the image and likeness of God' (Gen 1:27) — Pope Benedict XVI

Beyond work and love, I would add two other ingredients that give meaning to life. First, to fulfill whatever talents we are born with. However blessed we are by fate with different abilities and strengths, we should try to develop them to the fullest, rather than allow them to atrophy and decay. We all know individuals who did not fulfill the promise they showed in childhood. Many of them became haunted by the image of what they might have become. Instead of blaming fate, I think we should accept ourselves as we are and try to fulfill whatever dreams are within our capability.
Second, we should try to leave the world a better place than when we entered it. As individuals, we can make a difference, whether it is to probe the secrets of Nature, to clean up the environment and work for peace and social justice, or to nurture the inquisitive, vibrant spirit of the young by being a mentor and a guide. — Michio Kaku

Derek stopped short. I smacked into his back - not for the first time, since he insisted on walking in front of me. I'd been tripping on his heels and mumbling apologies the whole way. When I'd slow down to let him get farther ahead, he'd snap at me to keep up.
"We're almost there," Simon said.
He was behind me - sticking to the curbside, walking as close as Derek. While normally I wouldn't complain about Simon being so close, I had the weird sensation of being blocked in.
As we started forward again, I tried dropping back with Tori, who lagged behind, but Simon put his finger on my elbow and steered me back into place.
"Okay," I said. "Something's up. What's with the walking blockade?"
"They're protecting you," Tori said. "Shielding you from the big bad world." — Kelley Armstrong

One can never be too rich or too thin' is an aphorism attributed to the Duchess of Windsor. Being both rich and thin is a difficult enterprise, indeed almost unprecedented as an ideal. Into the paradoxical gap between the capacity to spend money and the need to eat less steps a brilliant solution: 'light' food. In buying 'light' food we can pay more for what costs less to produce in the first place ... — Margaret Visser

Unhappy: People look around and think, why are there so many people that are unhappy? We have progressed so far, yet people are still unhappy. Why isn't this world the wonderful place it could be? Changing the world doesn't change us.

It does not matter how much we progress materially; it will not change anything. Only learning and seeing the truth will change us, and thus change everything.

The truth transforms a mortal man into an immortal spiritual being.
It does this because the truth just shows you what you truly are, and that changes everything. The truth does the same thing for the way we see the world and for the same reason. It shows you life clearly; it shows you true life for the first time. — Michael Smith

At some point during my research, I came across the term "gender fluid." Reading those words was a revelation. It was like someone tore a layer of gauze off the mirror, and I could see myself clearly for the first time. There was a name for what I was. It was a thing. Gender fluid.

Sitting there in front of my computer--like I am right now--I knew I would never be the same. I could never go back to seeing it the old way; I could never go back to not knowing what I was.

But did that glorious moment of revelation really change anything? I don't know. Sometimes, I don't think so. I may have a name for what I am now--but I'm just as confused and out of place as I was before. And if today is any indication, I'm still playing out that scene in the toy store--trying to pick the thing that will cause the least amount of drama. And not having much success. — Jeff Garvin

We might all place ourselves in one of two ranks the women who do something, and the women who do nothing; the first being of course the only creditable place to occupy. — Lucy Larcom

The first contact between people and a being from another planet took place under unusual circumstances: with an armed and ready gun, in silence, in the presence of Christianity and Islam, and the inability to communicate. — Ivan Lutz

I have tried to be a leader. I have tried in my role of being one of the first women at Google, let alone the first woman to have a baby, to really try to set the tone that this is a great place to work for diversity reasons. — Susan Wojcicki

I think I could be a perfectly decent cat. I've been around cats long enough to know what the rules of being a cat are. When all else fails, wash. And I think I could master the thing that cats do, where they stalk away pretending they meant to do whatever it was in the first place; showing their wounded dignity. — Neil Gaiman

Manifesting the blessings is not really anything that is complicated or even difficult. Clear out what is not serving you or no longer actively being utilized. Give and share joyously. Receive graciously. Make amends. Adorn yourself first with inner beauty so the outer beauty may benefit from your best intentions. Contribute more than you take. Make each place you find yourself better than you found it. Be an abundant source of good tidings to and from God. In short, let go and let God. — John Morton

Our ancestors, when about to build a town or an army post, sacrificed some of the cattle that were wont to feed on the site proposed and examined their livers. If the livers of the first victims were dark-coloured or abnormal, they sacrificed others, to see whether the fault was due to disease or their food. They never began to build defensive works in a place until after they had made many such trials and satisfied themselves that good water and food had made the liver sound and firm ... healthfulness being their chief object. — Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

Being doped is a pleasure you pay for. There was always opium there for the people
in the end it tainted their whole faith. If the Church had not always stood so watchfully behind the ruling powers, there would not have been such attacks against everything it stood for
although of course it may have been competing with them for the first place among the rulers, as in the Middle Ages. Whenever it was a question of keeping the serfs, and then the paid slaves down, the dope-dealers came unfailingly to the help of the oppressors. — Ernst Bloch

It was the 'Are the boys doing it?' basis on which I finally decided I was against women wearing burkas. Yes, the idea is that it protects your modesty, and ensures that people regard you as a human being, rather than just a sexual object (...) But who are you being protected from? Men. And who - so long as you play by the rules, and wear the correct clothes - is protecting you from the men? Men. And who is it that is regarding you as a sexual object, instead of another human being, in the first place? Men.
Well. This all seems like quite a man-based problem, really. (...) I don't know why we're suddenly having to put things on our heads to make it better. — Caitlin Moran

It's Simon. He's missing."
"Ah," said Magnus, delicately, "missing what, exactly?"
"Missing," Jace repeated, "as in gone, absent, notable for his lack of presence, disappeared."
"Maybe he's gone and hidden under something," Magnus suggested. "It can't be easy getting used to being a rat, especially for someone so dim-witted in the first place."
"Simon's not dim-witted," Clary protested angrily.
"It's true," Jace agreed. "He just looks dim-witted. Really his intelligence is quite average. — Cassandra Clare

The two most important requirements for major success are: first, being in the right place at the right time, and second, doing something about it. — Ray Kroc

For in the first place the American people could not have been swept too fast and too far in this movement without enough alarms being sounded to be heard and heeded. — Robert W. Welch Jr.

I have never been any place where I was not first invited. And upon invitation, if I feel that there is potential for making some contribution to humanity, I will comply in spite of being tired. — Dalai Lama

To search means, first, I need Being, Truth; second, I do not know where to find it; and third, an action takes place that is not based on fantasies of certainty - while at the same time a waiting takes place that is rooted not in wishful thinking but in a deep sense of urgency. — Jacob Needleman

Assuming that you already have the respect of your team members This is one of the most common mistakes made by rookie managers. They think that merely by the process of their being inducted into management, they have already garnered the respect o their team members. The truth is, the only way you will come to be admired and respected by your team member is by the way in which you 'act'. You have to 'earn' your team's respect by showing your character, integrity and your skills to do things. You have to show them that there is a reason that you are here in the first place; and only then will you get the respect and admiration you seek from them. — Richard Klop

Not until you finally try to put down the stuff do you realize, with stinging clarity, precisely why you picked it up in the first place. All life, in this freshly nerve-flayed state, boils down to a choice of hells. The hell of being fucked-up on drugs or the hell of being fucked-up without them. — Jerry Stahl

For the first time in my life, I actually wished that everyone was the same. And I despised myself for my "differentness" or "uniqueness" as an individual. In the world there are lots of social groups people can fit into, and I've spent time roaming in and out of a few and being kicked out of many. Now I stand on the outside and look in. Wondering where is my place. Coming to a conclusion, I have no place. — Laura Hanna

Sometimes you have to stop and ask yourself who's really stupid, the guys who stop and pick you up, or you, for being out here in the first place? - excerpt from: freefalling — Darlenne Susan Girard

Jowell fell back on the same justification for funding the arts that the first chairman of the Arts Council, John Maynard Keynes, had deployed in 1945. Art was something produced by people with special skills, who set their own standards of excellence; they needed to be supported to do this, and the audience needed to be encouraged to appreciate this excellence, by being given subsidised access to it. And for all of Jowell's attempts to transcend instrumentalism, the purpose of culture continued to be to help the government 'to transform our society into a place of justice, talent and ambition where individuals can fulfil their true potential'.22 — Robert Hewison

I would not recommend poetry as a career. In the first place, it's impossible in this time and place - in this culture - to make poetry a career. The writing of poetry is one thing. It's an obsession, the scratching of a divine itch, and has nothing to do with money. You can, however, make a career out of being a poet by teaching, traveling around, and giving lectures. It's a thin living at best. — Maxine Kumin

People say the media is feeding the public's hunger for celebrity news, but that's the drug pusher's mentality. I don't think anybody would be pining for news about Angelina Jolie's babies if it weren't being given to them in the first place. — Patti Smith

Being in a foreign place, preferably for the first time, having seen many things and collected new impressions, and returning to an empty hotel room with an hour or so to blow. That mix often yields fine results. — Stefan Sagmeister

For Lacan, psychoanalysis at its most fundamental is not a theory and technique of treating psychic disturbances, but a theory and practice that confronts individuals with the most radical dimension of human existence. It does not show an individual the way to accommodate him- or herself to the demands of social reality; instead it explains how something like 'reality' constitutes itself in the first place. It does not merely enable a human being to accept the repressed truth about him- or herself; it explains how the dimension of truth emerges in human reality. — Slavoj Zizek

Going public was a difficult decision, and I had misgivings. My subjective experience was now an objective fact in the wider world. It didn't belong to just me anymore - though I quickly learned that it hadn't belonged to just me in the first place. More than a million Americans and their families were going through the same thing; some openly, some in secret due to concerns of being misunderstood and marginalized. — Michael J. Fox

If we all could be a true friend to someone, praying and encouraging one person somehow, that's a first step in being part of making the world a better place, — Nick Vujicic

I am a composer first and foremost, and have always believed that being able to write memorable melodies is what sets musicians apart. My songs bring images to the listener's mind. The object is to transport my listeners to another place, some place sacred and spiritual that will make them glad they took the ride. — Bradley Joseph

The first thing an unpublished author should remember is that no one asked him to write in the first place. With this firmly in mind, he has no right to become discouraged just because other people are being published. — John Farrar

In the first book of the Bible it is written that: "The Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart."
In another translation it is written like this: "God was sorry that he had made the human race in the first place; it broke his heart."
"It grieved him to his heart."
"It broke his heart."
We grieved him to his heart.
We broke his heart.
God's heart can be ... broken?
You cannot love without being vulnerable - because love involves the risk of the person you're loving not loving you back, of rejecting you - and that hurts.
That grieves you to your heart.
God had created man, and He loved them - but they didn't love Him back, and it broke His heart. — Cole Ryan

From that original colony sprang seven names that still feature on the landscape: Roanoke (which has the distinction of being the first Indian word borrowed by English settlers), Cape Fear, Cape Hatteras, the Chowan and Neuse Rivers, Chesapeake, and Virginia. (Previously, Virginia had been called Windgancon, meaning "what gay clothes you wear" - apparently what the locals had replied when an early reconnoitering party had asked the place's name.) — Bill Bryson

The worst denial of all is being in denial that we're in denial in the first place. And I would wonder if that's not exactly where most of us live out most of our lives. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

He decided to go over a couple of blocks to Michael's Tavern for something cold, and as he walked beside the road he felt his anger burning up in the heat of noon, and saw himself, as he often did when he was outdoors on hot days, being forged in enormous fires for some purpose beyond his imagining. He was only walking down a street toward a barroom, and yet in his own mind he took his part in the eternity of this place. It seemed to him - it was not the first time - that he belonged in Hell, and would always find himself joyful in its midst. It seemed to him that to touch James Houston was to touch one iota of the vast grit that made the desert and hid the fires at the centre of the earth. — Denis Johnson

I think the roots of this antagonism to science run very deep. They're ancient. We see them in Genesis, this first story, this founding myth of ours, in which the first humans are doomed and cursed eternally for asking a question, for partaking of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. It's puzzling that Eden is synonymous with paradise when, if you think about it at all, it's more like a maximum-security prison with twenty-four hour surveillance. It's a horrible place. Adam and Eve have no childhood. They awaken full-grown. What is a human being without a childhood? Our long childhood is a critical feature of our species. It differentiates us, to a degree, from most other species. We take a longer time to mature. We depend upon these formative years and the social fabric to learn many of the things we need to know. — Ann Druyan

Sore loser? You bet your fuckin' ass! What on earth is wrong with being a sore loser? It shows you cared about whatever the contest was in the first place. Fuck losing graciously-that's for chumps. And losers, by the way. — George Carlin

Many governments employ torture but this was the first time that the element of Saturnalia and pornography in the process had been made so clear to me. If you care to imagine what any inadequate or cruel man might do, given unlimited power over a woman, then anything that you can bring yourself to suspect was what became routine in ESMA, the Navy Mechanics School that became the headquarters of the business. I talked to Dr. Emilio Mignone, a distinguished physician whose daughter Monica had disappeared into the precincts of that hellish place. What do you find to say to a doctor and a humanitarian who has been gutted by the image of a starving rat being introduced to his daughter's genitalia? Like hell itself the school was endorsed and blessed by priests, in case any stray consciences needed to be stilled. — Christopher Hitchens

People think I am being modest when I tell them I know absolutely nothing about art. But if they show me a piece of student work, I won't have the slightest idea whether it's art or even "good". What I do know is whether such things hang or stand in the houses of the rich - or in the museums where the rich allow their treasures to be seen. And when people understand this, they'll instantly agree with what I said in the first place, that I know absolutely nothing about art. - pg. 76 — Daniel Quinn

It's an adventure. I mean I spent a lot of time in the Himalayas and over the years have come to know them very well. I would say most important is the first sense you have in a place like that, and that is the sense of being on an adventure. — Joe Rohde

Ultimately, the question was about the nature of the dunya as a place of fleeting moments and temporary attachments. As a place where people are with you today and leave or die tomorrow. But this reality hurts our very being because it goes against our nature. We, as humans, are made to seek, love, and strive for what is perfect and what is permanent. We are made to seek what's eternal. We seek this because we were not made for this life. Our first and true home was Paradise: a land that is both perfect and eternal. So the yearning for that type of life is a part of our being. The problem is that we try to find that here. And so we create ageless creams and cosmetic surgery in a desperate attempt to hold on - in an attempt to mold this world into what it is not, and will never be. — Yasmin Mogahed

When writing is great, Mitchell told me of the books he loved as a reader, your mind is nowhere else but in this world that started off in the mind of another human being. There are two miracles at work here. One, that someone thought of that world and people in the first place. And the second, that there's this means of transmitting it. Just little ink marks on squashed wood fiber. Bloody amazing. — David Mitchell

We were thirsty for some form of beauty, even in an incomprehensible, overintellectual, abstract film with no subtitles and censored out of recognition. There was a sense of wonder at being in a public place for the first time in years without fear or anger, being in a place with a crowd of strangers that was not a demonstration, a protest rally, a breadline or a public execution...For a brief time we experienced collectively the kind of awful beauty that can only be grasped at through extreme anguish and expressed through art. — Azar Nafisi

F
off. It's not like that. Her and me. I'm just saying
"
"That you hadn't left her for good. I never said you had. You just wanted to withdraw long enough to get used to the idea that you'd lost your chance. Lick your wounds, suck it in, and bounce back to being her friend and mentor, and be happy with just that."
"I am happy with just that. It's all I want."
"Is it? Or is that what you're telling yourself because you think you never had a shot in the first place? You'd better wake up fast, Jack, or she's going to settle for Quinn, and let me tell you, it's settling, because it's not Quinn she
— Kelley Armstrong

But, as Andy pointed out, if being a smart-arse was an offence, the Laundry would not exist in the first place. — Charles Stross

The dogma of cultural relativism is challenged by the very people for whose moral benefit the anthropologists established it in the first place. The complaint the underdeveloped countries advance is not that they are being westernized, but that the westernization is proceeding too slowly. — Claude Levi-Strauss

As a black woman interested in feminist movement, I am often asked whether being black is more important than being a woman; whether feminist struggle to end sexist oppression is more important than the struggle to racism or vice versa. All such questions are rooted in competitive either/or thinking, the belief that the self is formed in opposition to an other ... Most people are socialized to think in terms of opposition rather than compatibility. Rather than seeing anti-racist work as totally compatible with working to end sexist oppression, they often see them as two movements competing for first place. — Bell Hooks

I was going to fight for what I wanted first, and that was being in L.A. and being a Laker. L.A. was the first place that came to my mind. That's where my heart was at. — Lamar Odom

Reduction is the least observed of the three R's of environmentalism ('reduce, reuse, recycle') but it's probably the most important. Reuse and recycling are sensible measures in an over-productive society, but why not neutralise the problem of overproduction at the source? Instead of choosing to act efficiently at the end of a product's life cycle by reusing or recycling it, we should stop said product from being made in the first place by eliminating consumer demand for it. If the rainforests must be burned and the oceans poisoned to cater for the essentials of human life, then so be it and we'll call it an inevitable pity; but for that to happen in the name of games consoles, cell phones and chocolate fountains is a wanton and avoidable shame. — Robert Wringham

Most birds were created to fly. Being grounded for them is a limitation within their ability to fly, not the other way around. You, on the other hand, were created to be loved. So for you to live as if you were unloved is a limitation, not the other way around. Living unloved is like clipping a bird's wings and removing its ability to fly. Not something I want for you. Pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from being able to fly. And if left unresolved for very long, you can almost forget that you were ever created to fly in the first place. — William P. Young

A more common explanation for the feeling of being Old in Soul is tied up in Buddhist and Hindu ideas of reincarnation, or metempsychosis. Interestingly, this is most likely where the origin of the phrase "Old Soul" came from in the first place. — Aletheia Luna

Oftentimes, the whole reason we became programmers in the first place is because we wanted to move beyond being a mere player and change the game, control it, modify its parameters, maybe even create our own games. — Jeff Atwood

We choose this. This place. This life. What it will be, and how we live it. We are not slaves to gods, or fate, or destinies woven in veils of smoke. We choose the people we want to be, and we choose the shape of the world in which we live. Nothing worthwhile comes without sacrifice. There is nothing so easy as swimming with the current, nothing so difficult as being the first to stand up. To say no. To point at a thing wrong and name it so. There are none so brave as those who choose to stand, when all others are content to kneel. None so worthy of the title 'hero' as those who fight when there are none to see it. Who choose a life bereft of accolade or fanfare, a life of struggle for the idea that we are all the same. Every one of us. And every one of us has the right to be happy. To know peace. To know love. — Jay Kristoff

Punishment? You don't have any right to punish me. And I can curse. I choose not to most of the time, but don't think it doesn't go through my head, asshole. I was trying to give you something. I was trying to give you my body."
"That's where you fucked up, little girl. I don't want your body. I want your soul. I want your everything. And I definitely want your orgasms. I want them all. I'll be a greedy bastard, savoring them and hoarding them all for myself. You wanted to give me your body? I can buy that on a street corner, sweetheart. You're the one who's being selfish now."
"How is it selfish to offer to have sex? I don't understand what you want."
"First off, I want you to stop hiding yourself from me. You're the one making this tawdry by pretending it's dirty and not worthy of the light of day."
"I didn't mean it that way."
"We're going to do this my way. We tried yours and it didn't work, so I'm taking control. I should have done it in the first place. — Lexi Blake

The disobedience of the first Adam was the judicial ground of our condemnation; the obedience of the last Adam is the legal ground on which God alone can justify the sinner. The substitution of Christ in the place of His people, the imputation of their sins to Him and of His righteousness to them, is the cardinal fact of the Gospel. But the principle of being saved by what another has done is only possible on the ground that we are lost through what another did. The two stand or fall together. If there had been no covenant of works there could have been no death in Adam, there could have been no life in Christ.
Arthur Walkington Pink, The Divine Covenants (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1973), 33 — Arthur W. Pink

I realized that all those superheroes were doing was fighting themselves, and that getting to breathe underwater or shoot fire from your fingers didn't really make up for being screwed up in the first place. It was just the consolation prize
you got the great costume and the invisible jet for being a loser in everything else. — Michael Thomas Ford

How far could you trace back such a chain, he wondered, past the Harmon girl being chosen that night to bring his food, past the tree shattering a man's backbone due to a badly notched trunk, past that to an axe unsharpened because a man drank too much the night before, past that to why the man had gotten drunk in the first place? Was it something you never found the end to? Or was there no chain at all, just a moment when you did or didn't step close to a young woman and let you fingers brush a fall of blonde hair behind her ears, did or did not lean to that uncovered ear and tell her that you found her quite fetching." ~G. Pemberton (58) — Ron Rash

Anxiety, as neuropsychologists today tell us, is toxic; our brains are wired to avoid anxiety. Anxiety corrupts the chemistry of the brain and leads us to depart (emotionally or physically) from others to protect ourselves. Jesus's words to his disciples "to fear not" (Luke 8:50 NRSV) become of utmost significance. Anxiety is so acidic that it is nearly impossible to have relationship, to be a place-sharer, where the air is poisoned with it. Bonhoeffer's calm and composure, even on the first day, signaled to the boys that he had no anxiety, no worry about lessons being unfinished or others thinking he was a failure. His composure signaled to them that it might be that he is really just here for them, rather than to fulfill some goal that they could frustrate (like getting them through the material). Bonhoeffer's composure tacitly indicated to the boys that he was more loyal to their concrete persons than any end others sought for them. — Andrew Root

Arnold Schwarzenegger's gubernatorial campaign raises a series of fascinating questions, the most perplexing of all being why an international star of his stature would ever want to run in the first place. — Michael Medved

My mouth dries up. I know I am not apologizing for the picture. I am sorry for being there in the first place. — Lynda Mullaly Hunt

If we want to postulate a deity capable of engineering all the organized complexity in the world, either instantaneously or by guiding evolution, that deity must have been vastly complex in the first place. The creationist, whether a naive Bible-thumper or an educated bishop, simply postulates an already existing being of prodigious intelligence and complexity. If we are going to allow ourselves the luxury of postulating organized complexity without offering an explanation, we might as well make a job of it and simply postulate the existence of life as we know it! — Richard Dawkins

Part of being healthy is being able to hold and remember who people actually are instead of who we wish they were. It's a daily struggle against a brain that tends to want to cling to fairy-tale hope, but it's also the only way to guarantee a life surrounded by those who build rather than destroy. In the end, the loss is about letting go of what I never had in the first place. — Kerry Kletter

For me this was never a money issue, it was about being rich in your heart. To come home, and to be in the place where your dream first started, 15 minutes away from where my grandfather built my first basketball court, is a dream come true. — Baron Davis

For (strange as it may sound to many people, who tend to think of critics as being motivated by the lower emotions: envy, disdain, contempt even) critics are, above all, people who are in love with beautiful things, and who worry that those things will get broken. What motivates so many of us to write in the first place is, to begin with, a great passion for a subject (Tennessee Williams, Balanchine, jazz, the twentieth-century novel, whatever) that we find beautiful; and, then, a kind of corresponding anxiety about the fragility of that beauty. — Daniel Mendelsohn

Science may explain how humans came into being, but it has no answer to the slippery question of how humans should live. Only literature makes it possible to pose such questions in the first place. And if there is no answer, only literature can point to the impossibility of ever finding one. — Minae Mizumura

Bear in mind, people with eating disorders tend to be both competitive and intelligent. We are incredibly perfectionistic. We often excel in school,athletics,artistic pursuits. We also tend to quit without warning. Refuse to go to school,drop out,quit jobs,leave lovers,move,lose all our money. We get sick of being impressive. Rather,we tire of having to seem impressive. As a rule,most of us never really believed we were any good in the first place. — Marya Hornbacher