Only Just Begun Quotes & Sayings

It wasn't like a first kiss because we knew each other too intimately for that. And it wasn't like a last kiss because we'd only just begun. It was the kiss you spend your whole life waiting for. The kiss you wish would swallow you whole so you'd always be living it. This was the kiss of a lifetime, shared with a woman I'd spent a few lifetimes waiting for. — Nicole Williams

It seemed like a long time and also it seemed like my trip had just begun, like I was only now digging into whatever it was I was out here to do. Like I was still the woman with the hole in her heart, but the hole had gotten ever so infinitesimally smaller. — Cheryl Strayed

Leo smiled and stroked her hair. 'We'll both be fine, Marks. We've just begun our journey ... and there's so much we have yet to do.' He spoke more softly as he heard her breathing turn even and steady. 'Rest against my heart. Let me watch over your dreams. And know that tomorrow morning, and every morning after that, you'll awaken next to someone who loves you.'
'Dodger?' she mumbled against his chest, and he grinned.
'No, your confounded ferret will have to stay in his basket. I was referring to myself.'
'Yes, I know.' Catherine slid her hand up to his cheek. 'Only you,' she said. 'Always you. — Lisa Kleypas

It is time we admitted, from kings and presidents on down, that there is no evidence that any of our books was authored by the Creator of the universe. The Bible, it seems certain, was the work of sand-strewn men and women who thought the earth was flat and for whom a wheelbarrow would have been a breathtaking example of emerging technology. To rely on such a document as the basis for our worldview-however heroic the efforts of redactors- is to repudiate two thousand years of civilizing insights that the human mind has only just begun to inscribe upon itself through secular politics and scientific culture. We will see that the greatest problem confronting civilization is not merely religious extremism: rather, it is the larger set of cultural and intellectual accommodations we have made to faith itself. — Sam Harris

All you ask from me is a little music, but I am much more that I ever thought I was, and I would like to share other things with you that I have only just begun to understand. — Paulo Coelho

In which I prevail for a moment over the feelings which have bound me and come to realise that no matter how precariously close to the end it may feel, my life has really only just begun. — Phoebe Gloeckner

If we apply our minds directly and competently to the needs of the earth, then we will have begun to make fundamental and necessary changes in our minds. We will begin to understand and to mistrust and to change our wasteful economy, which markets not just the produce of the earth, but also the earth's ability to produce. We will see that beauty and utility are alike dependent upon the health of the world. But we will also see through the fads and the fashions of protest. We will see that war and oppression and pollution are not separate issues, but are aspects of the same issue. Amid the outcries for the liberation of this group or that, we will know that no person is free except in the freedom of other persons, and that man's only real freedom is to know and faithfully occupy his place - a much humbler place than we have been taught to think - in the order of creation.
(pg.89, "Think Little") — Wendell Berry

At Pixar, Toy Story 2 taught us this lesson - that we must always be alert to shifting dynamics, because our future depends on it - once and for all. Begun as a direct-to-video sequel, the project proved not only that it was important to everyone that we weren't tolerating second-class films but also that everything we did - everything associated with our name - needed to be good. Thinking this way was not just about morale; it was a signal to everyone at Pixar that they were part owners of the company's greatest asset - its quality. — Ed Catmull

On reflection, I was pleased that I would get the opportunity to keep my pledge to the Skinner brothers, but I slept uneasily that night. I realised that my career as an intelligencer was not over. On the contrary. It had only just begun. — D.W. Bradbridge

What mattered it to her just then that the rushes had begun to fade and to lose all their scent and beauty, from the very moment that she picked them? Even real scented rushes, you know, last only a very little while
and these, being dream-rushes, melted away almost like snow, as they lay in heaps at her feet
but Alice hardly noticed this, there were so many other curious things to think about. — Lewis Carroll

By ten o'clock she thought he might soon be ready to talk. He'd threatened, blustered, even tried to sweet-talk her. Then the bribery had begun. He'd let her live if she let him out immediately. He'd give her three horses, two sheep, and a cow. He'd give her a pouch of coin, three horses, two sheep, not just a cow but a milking cow, and set her up anywhere in England, if she would just leave his castle and not bother him again for the rest of his life. The only offer/threat that had perked her momentary interest was when he'd shouted that he was going to "toop her 'til her bonny legs fell off."
She should be so lucky. — Karen Marie Moning

Persevere on, my brave lads, We have only just begun. Never despond! Never say enough! — Swami Vivekananda

I never knew, until I came here, that my background could be something to apologize for. That these privileges were so randomly given to me, while other people were just as randomly denied...Privilege has begun to feel like and inescapable infection. I carry its implications with me, and my desire to understand how it works only seems to underscore it. — Jessica Posner

... the cylinder itself has only just begun its revolutions ... as it gathers speed the objects grouped around its fulcrum assume, collectively ... no ... as it gathers speed the whole intricate system of cords, weights, metal spikes and rods, brass plates engraved with labyrinthine patterns, bricks, scraps of fabric, paper, canvas, unmarked sheets ... the entire elaborate network of components begins to shudder into wild spasmodic motion, rattling almost farcically within the framework of the machine. — Martin Vaughn-James

In those early amorphous years when memory had only just begun, when life was full of Beginnings and no Ends, and Everything was Forever, Esthappen and Rahel thought of themselves together as Me, and separately, individually, as We or Us. As though they were a rare breed of Siamese twins, physically separate, but with joint identities. — Arundhati Roy

But Demeseus, I have only begun. Do you see what this pure feeling 'love' can do to people? Just now, I know you wanted to take my head off. But if love is so pure, why do so many die in the name of love? It's a poison. It enters your body and slowly makes you do impulsive things you wouldn't normally do. People kill themselves because they want to be with their love. People kill others because they want to be with their love. And people kill their love because they want to be with their love. All in the name of love, but in the end, someone dies. — Charles Lee

Only recently have people begun to recognise that working with suppliers is just as important as listening to customers. — Barry Nalebuff

What is the matter with you?" asked Shcherbatsky.
"Nothing much, but there is little to be happy about in this world."
"Little? You'd better come with me to Paris instead of going to some Mulhausen or other. You'll see how jolly it will be!"
"No, I have done with that; it is time for me to die."
"That is a fine thing!" said Shcherbatsky, laughing. "I am only just beginning to live."
"Yes, I thought so too till lately; but now I know that I shall soon die."
Levin was saying what of late he had really been thinking. He saw death and the apprroach of death in everything; but the work he had begun interested him all the more. After all, he had to live his life somehow, til death came. Everything for him was wrapped in darkness; but just because of the darkness, feeling his work to be the only thread to guide him through the darkness, he seized upon it and clung to it with all his might. — Leo Tolstoy

Why, I ... I still like you." Nerves fluttered in her chest, but she kept her tone light. "Do you like me?"
A few moments passed in silence. She would have counted them in heartbeats, but her foolish heart had become a most unreliable timepiece. It gave three pounding beats in a flurry, then none at all.
Just when she'd begun to despair, he turned his head, catching her in a passionate, openmouthed kiss. He put both arms around her, fisting his hands in the fabric of her dress, lifting her up and against his chest. So that her body recalled every inch of his, every second of their blissful lovemaking. The now-familiar ache returned - that sweet, hollow pang of desire that only deepened as his tongue flickered over hers. In a matter of seconds, he had her gasping. Needing. Damp.
Then he set her back on her toes. Pressed his brow to hers and released a deep, resonant sigh. And just before turning to leave, he spoke a single word.
He said, "No. — Tessa Dare

I've been actively engaged with mythic imagery ever since I picked up that Rackham book, but it really came into focus for me when I moved from London to the country. As I walked the extraordinary landscape of Dartmoor, I looked at the trees and the rocks and the hills and I could see the personality in those forms ... then they metamorphosed under my pencil into faeries, goblins and trolls. After Alan and I published "Faeries", he moved on from the subject of faery folklore to illustrate Tolkien and other literary works ... while I discovered that my own exploration of Faerieland had only just begun. In the countryside, the old stories seemed to come alive around me; the faeries were a tangible aspect of the landscape, pulses of spirit, emotion, and light. They "insisted" on taking form under my pencil, emerging on the page before me cloaked in archetypal shapes drawn from nature and myth. I'd attracted their attention, you see, and they hadn't finished with me yet. — Brian Froud

She didn't like to be talked about. Equally, she didn't like not to be talked about, when the high-minded chatter rushed on as though she was not there. There was no pleasing her, in fact. She had the grace, even at eleven, to know there was no pleasing her. She thought a lot, analytically, about other people's feelings, and had only just begun to realize that this was not usual, and not reciprocated. — A.S. Byatt

In any case, her fight was not over yet - not nearly over. It had only begun. And yes, Cleo would be strong. Just as her father and Emilia had asked her to be. She would be strong. She would reclaim her rightful throne. She would be queen. — Morgan Rhodes

So scared of getting older
I'm only good at being young
So I play the numbers game to find a way to say that life has just begun. — John Mayer

I'm Suze Simon," I said. "And you thought being dead was bad? Buddy, your eternal nightmare's only just begun. — Meg Cabot

Chiku felt something very close to vertigo, a dizzy sort of perception that she had only just begun to grasp the vertical depth of a very long life, the sense of how far it plumbed the past. A life that went down like a lift-shaft, each floor containing an ordinary life's worth of love and loss, adventure and disappointment, dreams and ruins, joy and sorrow. — Alastair Reynolds

The great nonprosecutions of Wall Street in the years since 2008, I would learn, were just symbols of this dystopian sorting process to which we'd already begun committing ourselves. The cleaving of the country into two completely different states - one a small archipelago of hyperacquisitive untouchables, the other a vast ghetto of expendables with only theoretical rights - has been in the works a long time. The Divide is a terrible story, and a crazy one. And it goes back a long, long way. — Matt Taibbi

I just know that I wasn't happy where I was. I didn't feel complete. I didn't feel like I was contributing what I needed to contribute to not only to my, my, my fans that I had begun to gather but to myself most of all, most importantly for me. — Teddy Pendergrass

The industrial age had only just begun; the planet had reached its Best Before date. — Jasper Fforde

The Qur'an had begun to develop a primitive just war theory. In the steppes, aggressive warfare was praiseworthy; but in the Qur'an, self-defense was the only possible justification for hostilities and the preemptive strike was condemned.5 War was always a terrible evil, but it was sometimes necessary in order to preserve decent values, such as freedom of worship. Even here, the Qur'an did not abandon its pluralism: synagogues and churches as well as mosques should be protected. The Muslims felt that they had suffered a fearful assault; their expulsion from Mecca was an act that had no justification. Exile from the tribe violated the deepest sanction of Arabia; it had attacked the core of the Muslims' identity. — Karen Armstrong

This one man dynasty has only just begun. — Randy Orton

Yes, the universe had a beginning. Yes, the universe continues to evolve. And yes, every one of our body's atoms is traceable to the big bang and to the thermonuclear furnaces within high-mass stars. We are not simply in the universe, we are part of it. We are born from it. One might even say that the universe has empowered us, here in our small corner of the cosmos, to figure itself out. And we have only just begun. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The scariest thing in it may be the way the clock radio has a way of turning itself on, loudly, of its own accord. The song is always the Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun." Now that's horror. — Stephanie Zacharek

A people who have only just begun to emerge from a state of subjugation are in no position to be even-handed ... and it takes much patience and understanding and good will on the part of the strong ones both in the subjugated group and in the group holding the power to provide an atmosphere of stability in which the frightened bravado on both sides of the fence can dissipate itself without increasing the chaos that is already intrinsic in the situation. — Vivian Gornick

If you have a steel ball, solid steel, the size of this earth, 25,000 miles in circumference, and every one million years a little sparrow would be released to land on that ball to sharpen his beak and fly away only to come back another million years later and begin again, by the time he would have worn that ball down to the size of a BB, eternity would have just begun. — David Jeremiah

I firmly believe that digitalization has only just begun in China. In addition to the taxi, transport, shopping and hotel businesses, many other industries will follow: education, health care, administration, even the legal branch - everything, really. There is still a lot of opportunity in China for the inventive and ambitious ones. — Zhang Xin

Jaime Rivera gaped in disbelief as the cadreman took at least five direct hits and didn't go down. And then the trooper who should have been dead was coming straight at him, pistol in one hand and some sort of sword in the other.
The pistol came up, and Rivera recoiled as the first penetrator spalled his visor. It didn't punch through, but the incredible impact, less than ten centimeters in front of his eyes half-stunned him. It was only for an instant, no more than a single heartbeat, but that was long enough.
His vision had just begun to refocus when the force blade in Alicia DeVries' right hand decapitated him in a fountain of blood. — David Weber

I waited at least two hours. I'd begun to think that he'd given up on me in the weeks that had passed. Or that he no longer cared about me. Hated me even. And the idea of losing him for ever, my best friend, the only person I'd ever trusted with my secrets, was so painful I couldn't stand it. Not on top of everything else that had happened. I could feel my eyes tearing up and my throat starting to close the way it does when I get upset.
Then I look up and there he was, three metres away, just watching me. Without even thinking, I jumped up and threw my arms around him, making some weird sound that combined laughing, choking and crying. — Suzanne Collins

The funny thing is that although we place so much energy and importance on our wedding day, it isn't the biggest day of our life. The biggest day of your life is every day thereafter. Because it's not the pledge to love someone that matters, but the act of fulfilling that pledge that is most important. In other words, it's only just begun. — Laura Wolf

For me, the highlight was meeting all the Motown acts, as I adore black soul music. I met Stevie Wonder who I love, and Diana Ross And The Supremes. I also met The Carpenters. I was actually there in the studio when they recorded We've Only Just Begun. — Tony Blackburn

They shouldn't call death passing on. They should call it leveling up. Because the game only got harder once I lost. And I was more than a little worried it had only just begun. — Kami Garcia

A storm began to brew within Faith. "Why no, Mr Waite. I have only just begun. — MaryLu Tyndall

But they don't deserve to be winning!"
"And who does in this world, Roland? Only the gifted and the beautiful and the brave? What about the rest of us, Champ? What about the wretched, for example? What about the weak and the lowly and the desperate and the fearful and the deprived, to name but a few who come to mind? What about losers? What about failures? What about the ordinary fucking outcasts of this world - who happen to comprise ninety percent of the human race! Don't they have dreams, Agni? Don't they have hopes? Just who told you clean-cut bastards own the world anyway? Who put you clean-cut bastards in charge, that's what I'd like to know! Oh, let me tell you something. All-American Adonis : you fair-haired sons of bitches have had your day. It's all over, Agni. We're not playing according to your clean-cut rules anymore - we're playing according to our own! The Revolution has begun! Henceforth the Mundys are the master race! Long live Glorious Mundy! — Philip Roth

I [do not know] when the end of science will come ... What I do know is that our species is dumber than we normally admit to ourselves. This limit of our mental faculties, and not necessarily of science itself, ensures to me that we have only just begun to figure out the universe. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

They live ill who are always beginning to live. 10. You are right in asking why; the saying certainly stands in need of a commentary. It is because the life of such persons is always incomplete. But a man cannot stand prepared for the approach of death if he has just begun to live. We must make it our aim already to have lived long enough. No one deems that he has done so, if he is just on the point of planning his life. 11. You need not think that there are few of this kind; practically everyone is of such a stamp. Some men, indeed, only begin to live when it is time for them to leave off living. And if this seems surprising to you, I shall add that which will surprise you still more: Some men have left off living before they have begun. Farewell. — Seneca.

This effort notwithstanding, however, certain British institutions were not be trifled with: "Sent hands to tea at 3:30 with Indefatigable to go to tea after us," Kennedy recorded in his action report. By 3:45 p.m., Goeben and Breslau were pulling away into a misty haze; at 4:00, Goeben was only just in sight against the horizon. Dublin held on, but at 7:37 p.m. the light cruiser signaled, "Goeben out of sight now, can only see smoke; still daylight." By nine o'clock, the smoke had disappeared, daylight was gone, and Goeben and Breslau had vanished. At 9:52 p.m., on Milne's instructions, Dublin gave up the chase. At 1:15 a.m., a signal from Malta informed the Mediterranean Fleet that war had begun. — Robert K. Massie

Ah yes, the facts. I've spent my whole life running after them, convinced that if I found demonstrable, incontrovertible facts I would also find some kind of truth. Now aged sixty-three, faced with this war which has only just begun and with an unsettling premonition of what is soon to follow, I'm beginning to think the facts are just a front and that the truth they mask is at best like a Russian doll: as soon as you open it up you find a smaller one inside, then another which is even smaller, then another and another, till finally all you are left with is something the size of a grain.
Letters against the war: Letter from Quetta, 2011. — Tiziano Terzani

I don't ever pray, but I'm praying now. If God could just give me you, I'll never ask for anything else. Please come back to me. We've only just begun. We can get through this. We're not broken ... this can be fixed. I'll fix it for us. — M. Clarke

I cannot blame them, in truth, for desiring ... But they were like children, who have only just begun to grasp the idea of a thing. And like children, they had no notion of laboring to create, but only of having ... and no thought given to the cost, to others, of taking it. — Jacqueline Carey

Forever in your arms
Is where I want to be
Holding you close
Within the space
That once held only me ...
Forever in your warmth
The place for me and you
I feel the sun
Our life's just begun
I know you feel it too — Walter Dean Myers

We doin it big. Look at what I done. Look at where I'm is. It's only just begun. — Drake

Ask people for help. You'll be all right. Don't worry. It's a great adventure, your life, and it has only just begun ... — Gregory David Roberts

We'd been little more than children when we fell in love. Now everything was ashes, ashes of ashes burned at temperatures where ash burns, but our full-fledged sex life had only just begun, and I would never stop loving her. It was the prospect of another two or three or five years of sex in the ashes that made me think of death. When she pulled away from me and dropped to her knees and unzipped my knapsack and took out my Swiss Army knife, I thought she might be thinking of it, too. But instead she was stabbing the five remaining condoms dead. — Jonathan Franzen

As a teenager I was both prurient and prudish. I was so full of self-loathing that in my mind it was unthinkable that any girl would ever want me. I hated everything about myself.
The way I looked.
How I spoke.
Even how I thought.
In my head I believed myself to be completely and utterly unworthy of love.
My life had only just begun but I felt that I had already ruined it. — David Walliams

I was increasingly both horrified and sceptical about these memories - I had no recall of these things at all, though I couldn't imagine why I'd want to make it all up either. It felt as though it had all happened to somebody else, I was not there - it wasn't me - when those people did nasty things.
But then, of course, it didn't feel like me, that's the whole point of dissociation - to create distance between the victim and her experience of the abuse. The alters were created for just that purpose: so that I'd not be aware that it happened to me, but rather to "others". The trouble is, in reality it was my body that took the abuse. It was only my mind that was divided, and sooner or later the amnesic barriers were bound to come down.
And that's exactly what had begun to happen as I heard their stories. They triggered a vague and growing sense in me that this really is my story. — Carolyn Bramhall

As if sensing his attention, Paola turned her head towards him and allowed her eyes to close and then open slowly, as though she'd been told that the Crucifixion had only just begun and there still remained a number of nails. The — Donna Leon

I've never planned ahead.I just sort of go through life checking the menu of three meals that day. I never worry about tomorrow. It's only since I've gotten older that I've begun to wonder about time running out. Is it sufficient unto itself that I don't plan? Because maybe next Thursday won't come one day. And then, I'm concerned about that. But that's not uniquely the writer's concern, that's the concern of every middle-aged man who looks in the mirror. — Rod Serling

The Poodle
The poodle -- nature's most perfect food -- was invented by Otto Van Plotsberg in 1872. According to Van Plotsberg he had only just begun experimenting with kinky hair and extra toes when he happened upon the formula for poodles. Van Plotsberg's first poodles sported only one leg -- a stumpy appendage protruding from the center of the body. These crude early versions (commonly inverted and used as hat stands) were soon abandoned in favor of the superior French model, which featured a winning smile and four limbs positioned strategically around the torso. Thus began the dizzying proliferation of the modern-day poodle -- hampered temporarily by a 1909 decree which stated that "Henceforth all poodles shall bear the name Svee," marking a slight decline in the population until the edict was overturned. Today, poodles inhabit every corner of the earth. Witness the African Killer Poodle, The Wild Poodles of Borneo, and the elusive Giant Swamp Poodle of Denchai. — Elyse Friedman

Abdul's deepest affection was for his two-year-old brother, Lallu, a fact that had begun
to concern him. Listening to Bollywood love songs, he could only conclude that his own
heart had been made too small. He'd never longed with extravagance for a girl, and
while he felt certain he loved his mother, the feeling didn't come in any big gush. But he
could get tearful just looking at Lallu, who was as fearless as Abdul was flinchy. All
those swollen rat bites on his cheeks, on the back of his head. — Katherine Boo

Back in 1982, when there were still only a manageable number of 'X-Men' titles on the racks (by which I mean just one), Marvel quite reasonably figured the world could stand another team of beleaguered mutant superheroes. And so were born 'The New Mutants,' junior X-Men whose powers had just begun to manifest at the onset of puberty. — Greg Van Eekhout

The justice hearing thereof (whose name is Mr Francis Wingate), forthwith issued out his warrant to take me, and bring me before him, and in the meantime to keep a very strong watch about the house where the meeting should be kept, as if we that were to meet together in that place did intend to do some fearful business, to the destruction of the country; when alas! the constable, when he came in, found us only with our Bibles in our hands, ready to speak and hear the word of God; for we were just about to begin our exercise. Nay, we had begun in prayer for the blessing of God upon our opportunity, intending to have preached the word of the Lord unto them there present: but the constable coming in prevented us. — John Bunyan

We just hold each other. Where I was once lost, he's found me. But I know now that I have only begun to truly discover Chris. He's still lost. — Lisa Renee Jones

ISIS is a formidable foe, but the counter forces to it have only just begun and if these forces, the Iraqi army, the Kurdish Peshmerga, American air power, the Syrian Free Army, work in a coordinated fashion, it will start losing ground. Also, please keep in mind that ISIS does not actually hold as much ground as the many maps flashed on television keep showing. Large parts of those territories that ISIS supposedly controls are vacant desert. — Fareed Zakaria

Well I thought my time was over, but it's only just begun. — Annie Lennox

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