First Preference Quotes & Sayings

The intelligent person will go inward first. Before going anywhere else, you will go into your own being. That is the first thing, and it should have the first preference. Only when you have known yourself can you go anywhere else. Then wherever you go you will carry a blissfulness around you, a peace, a silence, a celebration. — Osho

First ourselves, then the others: this is Nature's order of progression. Consequently, we must show no respect, no quarter for others as soon as they have shown that our misfortune or our ruin is the object of their desires. To act differently, my daughter, would be show preference for others above ourselves, and that would be absurd. — Marquis De Sade

Follows here the strict receipt
For that sauce to faint meat,
Named idleness, which many eat
By preference, and call it sweet:
First watch for morsels, like a hound
Mix well with buffets, stir them round
With good thick oil of flattered,
And froth with mean self-lauding lies.
Serve warm: the vessels you must choose
To keep it in are dead men's shoes. — George Eliot

Do you have a room preference?" I asked Ethan. "Whichever you prefer," he said, "since I'll be staying with you." There was no equivocation in his voice. No question, no request for permission. It was a statement, an announcement of something he meant to do. Something he would do. "Of course you will," I said. "It would be rude to muss two of her bedrooms. We might as well bunk up and save her the trouble." Ethan rolled his eyes. "That isn't exactly the reasoning I had in mind." "Oh, I know," I said, walking back to the first bedroom. "But if I don't keep a check on your ego, you'll become insufferable." He made a sarcastic, but pleased, grunt. — Chloe Neill

The past was a consumable, subject to the national preference for familiar products. And history, in America, is a dish best served plain. The first course could include a dollop of Italian in 1492, but not Spanish spice or French sauce or too much Indian corn. Nothing too filling or fancy ahead of the turkey and pumpkin pie, just the way Grandma used to cook it. — Tony Horwitz

My views of the missionary object are, indeed, different from what they were when I was first set on fire by Buchanan's 'Star in the East' six years ago. But it does not always happen that a closer acquaintance with an object diminishes our attachment and preference. — Adoniram Judson

It is possible to suggest that the first step towards inherited political power came when Motilal Nehru urged Mahatma Gandhi to name his son Jawaharlal as Congress president. Motilal did that on more than one occasion and Gandhiji obliged, to the dismay of both Subhas Chandra Bose and Vallabhbhai Patel. While Bose rejected Gandhiji's preference for Nehru, Patel was too much of a loyalist to question the Mahatma. The — Sanjaya Baru

[People] ask themselves, what is suitable for my position? What is usually done by persons of my station and percuniary circumstances? Or (worse still) what is usually done by persons of a station and circumstances superior to mine? I do not mean that they choose what is customary in preference to what suits their own inclinations. It does not occur to them to have any inclination, except for what is customary. Thus the mind itself is bowed to the yoke: even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they like in crowds; they exercise choice only among things that are commonly done: peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes: until by dint of not following their own nature they have no nature to follow: their human capacities are withered and starved: they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own. — John Stuart Mill

Listen to the criticisms and preferences of your trusted 'first readers.' — Rose Tremain

Mission starts with determining what you really care about and want to accomplish and committing yourself to it. You can always develop expertise. First, discover your preference. — Charles Garfield

But might not his [the president's] nomination be overruled? I grant it might, yet this could only be to make place for another nomination by himself. The person ultimately appointed must be object of his preference, though perhaps not in the first degree. It is also not very probable that his nomination would often be overruled. — Alexander Hamilton

The graphic emphasis placed on those first lines is rather hard to square with the proposition that the monument expresses no particular religious preference. — John Paul Stevens

He'd kept his figure despite being past his first youth. Pretty good for nearly forty.
Who was she fooling? She knew quite well that he was thirty-five and a half, exactly five years older than she. Their birthdays were two days apart. It was absurd the way trivial facts lingered in the memory, facts as unimportant as what she had for dinner on Tuesday. Except that she couldn't remember last week's menu and she was annoyingly aware of Max Quinton's preference for lamb over beef, for apple tart over syllabub. He preferred Shakespeare to the modern poets, the country to the town. — Miranda Neville

The arguments of M. Despine,' who is the principal representative of this conception, appear all questionable to us. The ' Despine, Psychologie naturelU, l868, i., p. 490 et seq. ; Ktude scUn-tijique sur U somnambulisme, 1880. unity, the co-ordination of these muscular contractions, their complication, their unquestionable relation with tactile, auditive, or visual impressions, the electivity, the intelligence, in a word, so constantly manifested in them, appear to us, first of all, psychological phenomena. If there is no sensation, no thought connected with it, we do not understand how an arm can keep the delicate position we give it; can distinguish the touch of our hand, obey it, and not obey the touch of other hands; can repeat outward movements which can be known only by hearing or sight, etc. All these acts are conscious, the consequences of a sensation, of a vision, of a hearing, of a preference. — Anonymous

Evolution, or God depending on your preference, has left us with brains that latch on to the first explanation that seems to fit the facts and our own mind-sets and biases when we face a puzzle. Even smart analysts develop shallow, comfortable mental ruts. To get them out, you have to make them uncomfortable, make them consider new ideas, including some that they might not like. — Mark E. Henshaw

Looking back on the long-stretched-out body of one's work, it is interesting to mark the endless duel fought within a man between the emotional and critical sides of his nature, first one, then the other, getting the upper hand, and too seldom fusing till the result has the mellowness of full achievement. One can even tell the nature of one's readers, by their preference for the work which reveals more of this side than of that. — John Galsworthy

France, freed from that monster, Bonaparte, must again become the most agreeable country on earth. It would be the second choice of all whose ties of family and fortune give a preference to some other one, and the first choice of all not under those ties. — Thomas Jefferson

Money is just one of the forces that blind us to information and issues which we could pay attention to - but don't. It exacerbates and often rewards all the other drivers of willful blindness; our preference for the familiar, our love for individuals and for big ideas, a love of busyness and our dislike of conflict and change, the human instinct to obey and conform and our skill at displacing and diffusing responsibility. All of these operate and collaborate with varying intensities at different moments in our lives. The common denominator is that they all make us protect our sense of self-worth, reducing dissonance and conferring a sense of security, however illusory. In some ways, they all act like money; making us feel good at first, with consequences we don't see. We wouldn't be so blind if our blindness didn't deliver rewards; the benefit of comfort and ease. — Margaret Heffernan

There are three things that robots cannot do," wrote Maxon. Then beneath that on the page he wrote three dots, indented. Beside the first dot he wrote "Show preference without reason (LOVE)" and then "Doubt rational decisions (REGRET)" and finally "Trust data from a previously unreliable source (FORGIVE). — Lydia Netzer

It is my first preference to do films with social significance. Art cinema has given me credibility and status as an actor, but commercial cinema has given me a comfortable living. — Om Puri

Think of a "discovery" as an act that moves the arrival of information from a later point in time to an earlier time. The discovery's value does not equal the value of the information discovered but rather the value of having the information available earlier than it otherwise would have been. A scientist or a mathematician may show great skill by being the first to find a solution that has eluded many others; yet if the problem would soon have been solved anyway, then the work probably has not much benefited the world [unless having a solution even slightly sooner is immensely valuable or enables further important and urgent work]. — Nick Bostrom

As a first-generation Ethiopian immigrant, Sheba had lived in Charleston since she turned five years of age. She was Ethiopian by birth, but American by preference. She had worked hard, studied and sacrificed plenty to get where she was today, no easy feat for someone who had just celebrated her twenty-sixth birthday. According to her friends, Sheba was a beauty, though when she looked in the mirror, she saw inevitable flaws; her cheekbones were too pronounced, her mouth a little too wide, her nose with that perturbing slant to it. Still, she accepted compliments gratefully, especially from her roommate, Janelle. Janelle was the true beauty, Sheba thought, with dark ebony skin so smooth that she could be a walking ad for Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate. — Joanna Hynes

I tell you, Mr. Okada, a cold beer at the end of the day is the best thing life has to offer. Some choosy people say that a too cold beer doesn't taste good, but I couldn't disagree more. The first beer should be so cold you can't even taste it. The second one should be a little less chilled, but I want that first one to be like ice. I want it to be so cold my temples throb with pain. This is my own personal preference of course. — Haruki Murakami

If it wasn't a chaotic scene, if it was an orderly evacuation, we would be able to give you specifics about what our preferences would be, such as evacuating first the disabled, then the elderly and infants. That would of course be our preference. But the reality on the scene does not permit that. We're going to do the best we can with the resources we have. — David Catania