Do The Hardest Thing First Quotes & Sayings

So I picked the book up and did my usual 123 test. I don't bother reading the blurb on the back, or the first page - the writer's obviously going to be trying their hardest there, aren't they? It's how they're getting on by page 123 that's the real test. If they're crap at writing or bored with their story then you can bet they won't be making any effort at all by that point. — Siobhan Curham

The hardest thing to do in talking to a woman was taking the first step, but the most important thing to do was not to think. — Viet Thanh Nguyen

I'll never forget my high school acting teacher, Anthony Abeson, who said, "It starts with the shoes." When I think about a character, it does start with the shoes: What kind would she wear? How would she walk in them? If I'm going to put on a dress for a role - I don't care if it's the hardest dress to put on - I have to put the shoes on first. The physicality leads me to the character. — Jennifer Aniston

The de-spiritualization of asceticisms is probably the event in the current intellectual history of mankind that is the most comprehensive and, because of its large scale, the hardest to perceive, yet at once the most palpable and atmospherically powerful. Its counterpart is the informalization of spirituality - accompanied by its commercialization in the corresponding subcultures. The threshold values for these two tendencies provide the intellectual landmarks for the twentieth century: the first tendency is represented by sport, which has become a metaphor for achievement as such, and the second by popular music, that devotio postmoderna which covers the lives of contemporary individuals with unpredictable flashes of inner emergency. — Peter Sloterdijk

The hardest thing to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write. Both take a lifetime to learn, and anybody is cheating who takes politics as a way out. All the outs are too easy, and the thing itself is too hard to do. — Ernest Hemingway,

To keep something, you must take care of it. More, you must understand just what sort of care it requires. You must know the rules and abide by them. She could do that. She had been doing it all the months, in the writing of her letters to him. There had been rules to be learned in that matter, and the first of them was the hardest: never say to him what you want him to say to you. Never tell him how sadly you miss him, how it grows no better, how each day without him is sharper than the day before. Set down for him the gay happenings about you, bright little anecdotes, not invented, necessarily, but attractively embellished. Do not bedevil him with the pinings of your faithful heart because he is your husband, your man, your love. For you are writing to none of these. You are writing to a soldier. — Dorothy Parker

I think the hardest thing to teach a student is that what he or she puts down on paper is changeable. It's not the final thing, it's the first thing, which may just be the suggestive, vague identification of something that you have to come back to and rewrite. — M.H. Abrams

To remain a credible leader, I must always work first, hardest, and longest on changing myself. This is neither easy nor natural, but it is essential. — John C. Maxwell

The first thing is to be patient, which is probably the hardest thing to do. Don't worry if blokes are whacking you out of the park because you still have the opportunity to get him out next ball, even if it's not the same ball. — Shane Warne

The hardest part of faith is often simply to wait. And the trouble is, if we don't, then we start to fix the problem ourselves - and that makes it worse. We complicate the situation to the point where it takes God much longer to fix it than if we had quietly waited for his working in the first place. — Jim Cymbala

Writing is the hardest thing I know, but it was the only thing I wanted to do. I wrote for 20 years and published nothing before my first book. — Kent Haruf

And like my dad always said, the first step is always the hardest. — Sarah Dessen

The first thousand are the hardest. — Herbert Gute

The commercial music video industry is very hard to break into, and until you break in, that first job is the hardest thing in the world to get. — Joseph Kosinski

The hardest step for a runner to take is the first one out the door. — Ron Clarke

When I was first introduced to CrossFit, I found it to be the hardest workout that I'd ever done. It wiped the floor with me, and I fell in love with it immediately. The results that I have seen in my strength and physicality have been unparalleled to any other things I have ever done in my more than 20 years in the fitness business. — Bob Harper

The hardest obstacle I've ever had to overcome is probably my first steps into adulthood: paying rent, groceries, cooking, taxes. I was so anxious to grow up, and now I'm wishing I was still a kid. — Dillon Lane

Be brave, Tris," he whispers. "The first time is always the hardest." His eyes are the last thing I see. — Veronica Roth

It is always the first and last steps that are the hardest to take. We walk away and try not to turn back, or we stand just outside the gates, terrified to find what's waiting for us now that we've returned. In between, we stumble blindly from one place and life to the next. We try to do the best we can. There are moments like this, however, when we are neither coming nor going, and all we have to do is sit and look back on the life we have made. — Dinaw Mengestu

First steps are always the hardest but until they are taken the notion of progress remains only a notion and not an achievement. — Aberjhani

Being first lady is the hardest unpaid job in the world. — Pat Nixon

The hardest thing is to write about people. First and foremost, you have to encounter their humanity. That is the only way you can make them live as characters on the page. — Philip Kerr

To see something, you have to believe in it. Really believe it. That's the first elf rule. You can't see something you don't believe in. Now try your hardest and see if you can see what you have been looking for. — Matt Haig

The hardest studio music to play is Tom & Jerry - cartoons. The music makes absolutely no sense, as music. You can't get into hearing it. There's nothing to hear-'bleep!, blop! scratch!' and it comes fast; everything's first take. That'll change the way you look at life. — Howard Roberts

The hardest thing you can do is smile when you are ill, in pain, or depressed. But this no-cost remedy is a necessary first half-step if you are to start on the road to recovery. — Allen Klein

THERE ARE TIMES when just waking up can feel like the hardest thing anyone could ever ask you to do. The first morning after your child has died, perhaps. Or after the man you adore has walked out. You would give anything, certainly the rest of your life, to stay down in the darkness of not knowing.
It never happens, though, does it? You always come back to yourself. The world is still there. You are still there... — Sharon Bolton

When you pray, you know that you want something, that's always the first step. to let yourself know that you want something, that you yearn for it. sometimes that's the hardest thing to do. Because you have to have courage to know what you desire. You have to have courage to acknowledge that you are unhappy without it. — Philippa Gregory

I chose the specialty of surgery because of Matron, that steady presence during my boyhood and adolescence. 'What is the hardest thing you can possibly do?' she said when I went to her for advice on the darkest day of the first half of my life.
I squirmed. How easily Matron probed the gap between ambition and expediency. 'Why must I do what is hardest?'
'Because, Marion, you are an instrument of God. Don't leave the instrument sitting in its case my son. Play! Leave no part of your instrument unexplored. Why settle for 'Three Blind Mice' when you can play the 'Gloria'?
'But, Matron, I can't dream of playing Bach ... I couldn't read music.
'No, Marion,' she said her gaze soft ... 'No, not Bach's 'Gloria'. Yours! Your 'Gloria' lives within you. The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God made possible in you. — Abraham Verghese

What was most surprising, she was giving him the hardest thing to do first, but by failure at the great one he was learning the easier tasks with infallible power and skill. How different that is from our human way of training people, with the easiest always first. In nature animals cannot afford such long drawn-out step-by-step training. Animal children cannot be segregated in the schoolroom from the sharp experiences of life. They have to be educated in the heart of life itself. The easy and the difficult befall them without any sequence. It is a pity that in civilisation man has made the business of education so sequestered and slow. — Dhan Gopal Mukerji

The biggest change for me as a mom was realizing I needed to put someone else before me. Now the hardest part about the empty nest is learning to put myself first. — Kim Alexis

Two different sets of philosophers have attempted to teach us this hardest of all the lessons of morality. One set have laboured to increase our sensibility to the interests of others; another, to diminish that to our own. The first would have us feel for others as we naturally feel for ourselves. The second would have us feel for ourselves, as we naturally feel for others. — Adam Smith

I have complete confidence in - in Secret Service. These guys and gals are unbelievably professional. They know what they're doing. And I basically do what they tell me to do. Now, sometimes I - I'm the first one to admit that it chaffs a little bit being inside this bubble. It's the hardest adjustment of being president, not being able to just take a walk. — Barack Obama

I remember the first Mortal Kombat, when that came out, that was the hardest game of all time. There would be lines at the arcade around the block, and I still love all of the Mortal Kombat games. — Diego Corrales

Things you can't understand are always the hardest to bear. To know why is the first step to consolation. — Patricia Wentworth

The first lesson a watcher learns is to separate truth from illusion. Because in the world of magicks, it's the hardest thing to do. — Joss Whedon

I must talk to Kennit first. He will tell me when he is ready for us to have a baby."
"Never," Bolt said flatly.
"What?"
"Never wait for a male on any such decision. You are the queen. You decide. Males are not made for such decisions. I have seen it time and time again. They would have you wait for days of sunshine and wealth and plenty. Yet to a male, enough is never sufficient, and plenty never reached. A queen knows that when times are hardest and game most scarce, that is when one must care most about the continuance of the race. Some things are not for males to decide. — Robin Hobb

The first thing I did on my diet was take the batteries out of the remote control and make myself get up and change the channel. That's probably the hardest exercise I did. — Stephen Furst

The hardest bit of information to extract is the first piece. — Robert Ferrigno

He found the first skipped meals were the hardest, the hunger a hollow ache. The longer he went without eating, though, the second day, the third, the pain would subside from an ache to the memory of an ache and finally to only the memory of a memory. Until you ate you didn't know how hungry you were, how empty you'd become. Wallace's visits had shown him that being lonesome was its own fast, that after going unnourished for so long, even the foulest bite could remind your body how much it needed to eat. That you could be starving and not even know it. — Tom Franklin

Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course ... it probably isn't. The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret ... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige". — Christopher Priest

For first-time vagabonders, this can be one of the hardest travel lessons to grasp, since it will seem that there are so many amazing sights and experiences to squeeze in. You must keep in mind, however, that the whole point of long-term travel is having the time to move deliberately through the world. Vagabonding is about not merely reallotting a portion of your life for travel but rediscovering the entire concept of time. At home, you're conditioned to get to the point and get things done, to favor goals and efficiency over moment-by-moment distinction. On the road, you learn to improvise your days, take a second look at everything you see, and not obsess over your schedule. — Rolf Potts

I actually believed if you work hard enough it was inevitable you'd succeed. Then I lived the 'Social Network' movie, but only the first half. The hardest part is the grueling work of constantly being wrong. — Eric Ries

After the first day of practice, there's not one guy who's playing at 100 percent or who feels great. Sometimes, getting up in the morning and brushing your teeth is the hardest part of the day - it just hurts. — Tom Brady

Besides, it's the first gift that's always the hardest to pay back. I wouldn't even have been here to do it if you hadn't helped me then. — Suzanne Collins

THE FIRST FEW WORDS of every story are always the hardest to write. It's almost as if pulling them out, putting them on paper, commits you to seeing it all through. As if once you start, you are required to finish. And how do you finish when some things never end? — Amy Harmon

That hour in the life of a man when first the help of humanity fails him, and he learns that in his obscurity and indigence humanity holds him a dog and no man: that hour is a hard one, but not the hardest. There is still another hour which follows, when he learns that in his infinite comparative minuteness and abjectness, the gods do likewise despise him, and own him not of their clan. — Herman Melville

There are two types of lazy bosses. One is so lazy that they make you do not only your own work but theirs too. Worse, they lie to you about it, unloading all responsibility for their actions. The other is so lazy that not only do they not do their own work but they can't even be bothered to provide you work to do. These bosses lie as well, but only to themselves, passively. The first is the hardest boss to work for, the second the easiest. — Mat Johnson

The first million words are the hardest. — Francis Hamit

I learned that the hardest party to pull off successfully is Saturday night dinner. This meal is expected to be elaborate: appetizers, first course, dinner, dessert, and coffee. People arrive at 7:30 or 8 p.m. and stay for hours - definitely past my bedtime - and they all go home exhausted. — Ina Garten

I've always said that the artist dies twice. And the first death is the hardest which is the career death, the creative death. The physical death is an inevitability. — Sylvester Stallone