We've 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

I've begun worshipping the sun for a number of reasons. First of all, unlike some other gods I could mention, I can see the sun. It's there for me every day. And the things it brings me are quite apparent all the time: heat, light, food, and a lovely day. There's no mystery, no one asks for money, I don't have to dress up, and there's no boring pageantry. And interestingly enough, I have found that the prayers I offer to the sun and the prayers I formerly offered to 'God' are all answered at about the same 50% rate. — George Carlin

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

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

Today you're in a hospital. Or at least this morning. This hour. This minute. Where you'll be three minutes from now is anyone's guess. You've begun to notice, though, that, bit by bit the sense of being outside yourself has diminished with each passing day. A critical mass is reached, and now your soul collapses in upon itself.
You're back inside the vessel of your body.
Just one. Just you. Just an individual.
Me. — Neal Shusterman

We've begun to long for the pitter-patter of little feet - so we bought a dog. Well, it's cheaper, and you get more feet. — Rita Rudner

Sometimes she makes you very sad....she touches something in you, and you've begun to touch back. - Bob Ballard — Charles Pellegrino

The federal government said today they've begun training sessions for airport security workers to provide what they call more customer satisfaction to the travels, they want to make it easier for us. They're instructing security guards to glance at your luggage tags so that they can call you by your first name. Isn't that creepy? The guy touching your wife, calling her by her first name. — Jay Leno

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

Recently, I've begun to think of scoliosis as a metaphor for my life. I've struggled to please teachers, employers, parents, boyfriends, husbands, twisting myself into someone I can't be. I hurt when I do this, because it's not natural. And it never works. But when I stretch my Self, instead, the results are different. When I'm reaching for my personal goals - to be a good mother, wife, friend and writer - I feel my balance return. And the sense of relief, as I become more the woman I truly am, is simply grand. — Linda C. Wisniewski

One thing I've found ... the road rarely rises up to meet you until you've begun walking. — Michele Jennae

There is the devil at the door. I'm nearly going under, can't help but wonder who am I working for? No one's more enslaved now then the ones who falsely feel they are free. I've come to terms with the fact that nothing is what it seems. This life is an illusion. And everything you thought you knew isn't what it seems. Only truth will set you free. This new world has begun. — Tinashe

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

I'm not embarrassed about having, you know, no experience," Luce said quietly-these walls were thin. "It's just, do you ever feel like nothing has happened to you? Like you know you have destiny, but all you've seen of life so far is unexceptional? I want my life to be different. I want to feel that it's begun. I'm waiting for kiss. But sometimes I feel like I could wait forever and nothing would ever change. — Lauren Kate

When the voice and the vision on the inside is more profound, and more clear and loud than all opinions on the outside, you've begun to master your life. — Dr. John

It's quite a library, anyway," she said, trying to sound upbeat. "I've begun to think of it as more graveyard than library. End of the line, you know. Where book-of-the-month club comes to die." As — Matthew J. Sullivan

The future looks extremely bright indeed, with lots of possibilities ahead
big possibilities. Like the song says, We've just begun. — Bruce Lee

I suppose it was a dream that lasted really about fifty years. By the time universal education had begun to work properly, say 1925, and the time the first teachers started to hold back information, say 1975. So a fifty-year dream."
"I think what's happened is that because they themselves know less than their predecessors, innovators and leaders today have remade the world in their own image. Spellchecks. Search engines. They've remodeled the world so that ignorance is not really a disadvantage. And I should think that increasingly they'll carry on reshaping the world to accommodate a net loss of knowledge. — Sebastian Faulks

Because of you, in Afghanistan we've broken the momentum of the Taliban. Because of you, we've begun a transition to the Afghans that will allow us to bring our troops home from there. And around the globe, as we draw down in Iraq, we have gone after al Qaeda so that terrorists who threaten America will have no safe haven, and Osama bin Laden will never again walk the face of this Earth. — Barack Obama

Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun, Which was my sin, though it were done before? Wilt Thou forgive that sin through which I run, And do run still, though still I do deplore? When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done, For I have more. "Wilt Thou forgive that sin, which I have won Others to sin, and made my sin their door? Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun A year or two: - but wallow'd in a score? When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done, For I have more. "I have a sin of fear, that when I've spun My last thread, I shall perish on the shore; But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son Shall shine as He shines now, and heretofore; And having done that, Thou hast done, I fear no more. — John Donne

The last two - distractions and fears - are the dangerous ones. They're the habitual demons that invade the launch of any project. No one starts a creative endeavor without a certain amount of fear; the key is to learn how to keep free-floating fears from paralyzing you before you've begun. When I feel that sense of dread, I try to make it as specific as possible. — Twyla Tharp

I've begun so late, really only in recent years, to truly love the world ... Out of gratitude, I want to call my book on political theories Amor Mundi . — Hannah Arendt

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

I am not going to apologize for the idyllic childhood and the wonderful siblings and the Christian home I grew up in. I know how blessed I am and I am thankful, but I also know it's not that way for everyone. I was talking to a young woman recently who was going through her something and she said, "I don't have sisters to watch my back like you do. I didn't have the kind of mother you did." And I said to her what I've begun saying to people across the country, "Then why not let the legacy of love and support start with you? — Robin Roberts

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

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

To restore you and myself, I return to my state of garden and shade, cool reality, I hardly exist and if I do exist it's with delicate care. Surrounding the shade is a teeming, sweaty heat. I'm alive. But I feel I've not yet reached my limits, bordering on what? Without limits, the adventure of a dangerous freedom. But I take the risk, I live taking it. I'm full of acacias swaying yellow, and I, who have barely begun my journey, begin it with a sense of tragedy, guessed what lost ocean my life steps will take me to. And crazily I latch onto the corners of myself, my hallucinations suffocate me with their beauty. I am before, I am almost, I am never. And all this I gained when I stopped loving you. — Clarice Lispector

Hatred is like murder. It eats away at your soul until you wish you had never begun it in the first place, but by then it is too late. You've become corrupted by it. In the end, you've only murdered yourself. Trust me, I know. — H.G. Warrender

We've pitched and even begun development on a number of fantasy worlds that have never seen the light of day. All of those worlds ... It's soul-crushing to see them sputter out, one by one. Lost. Like tears. In rain. — Chris Avellone

I've only begun the work that needs to be done here. Not yet, the voice says. Not yet. See this through. Unbecome, Glennon. Unbecome until you uncover who you really are. — Glennon Doyle Melton

When you are converted, you want to do what you didn't want to do before, and you don't want to do what you wanted to do before. There's a change in the heart; there's a cleaning up, a change in orientation, and holiness becomes attractive, instead of something you have to put up with to figure out what you can get away with. As long as young people are asking, 'Can I get away with this?' or 'Can I get away with that?' I wonder if they're regenerate. If they're asking, instead, 'How can I grow in holiness?' then I suspect they've begun to understand. — D. A. Carson

We've dug our holes and hallowed caves Put goblin foes in shallow graves This day our work is just begun In the mines where silver rivers run
Beneath the stone the metal gleams Torches shine on silver streams Beyond the eyes of he spying sun In the mines where silver rivers run
The hammers chime on Mithral pure As dwarven mines in days of yore A craftsman's work is never done In the mines where silver rivers run
To dwarven gods we sing or praise Put another orc in a shallow grave We know our work has just began In the mines where silver rivers run — R.A. Salvatore

Well, as I said, you know the issue of Greek debt, they've grasped the principle of debt reduction. I think most people would argue that probably more needs to be done on that front, and they've just begun to take the first steps to accepting that there's going to have to be much closer economic integration in Europe. — Vince Cable

I want to go back to the Flock, of course. I've barely begun with the new group! — Richard Bach

With spectacular events taking up so much of the available anxiety quotient, we need to be constantly reminded of the more workaday threats to our mortality - threats that, while they may also be functions of human error, have become so ubiquitous that we've begun to apprehend them as natural phenomena. — Will Self

Across our great nation, we've begun to see an acceleration of the power of data to deliver value. — Megan Smith

Our generation seems to be facing a crisis of critique. We want to know what's best, we want to know where to eat and what movie to see, but we've begun to forget that real opinion, real critique, must always come out of an absence of voices - from a singular subjective viewpoint. You — Michael Harris

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

I find myself praying more when things are harder. I also find myself drinking water more when I am thirsty, and eating more when I am hungry, and sleeping more when I am tired. And I've finally begun to accept that if I pray more when I am troubled, that's just as natural. — Eric Greitens

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION How much work did you do today that you will be proud of tomorrow? I don't mean just how you handled the big things, but also how you addressed the little, seemingly insignificant ones. Did you make progress on what matters most to you, or did you allow the buzz, busyness, and expectations of others to squelch your passion and focus? I've been asking these questions of others and myself each day for more than a decade, and they are the main reason I originally felt compelled to write Die Empty. Through my work I've encountered many teams of brilliant, sharp, amazing, talented people who have at some point "settled in" or begun coasting on past success. Unfortunately, — Todd Henry

You can listen to silence, Reuven. I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own. It talks to me sometimes. I feel myself alive in it. It talks. And I can hear it.
...
You have to want to listen to it, and then you can hear it. It has a strange, beautiful texture. It doesn't always talk. Sometimes - sometimes it cries, and you can hear the pain of the world in it. It hurts to listen to it then. But you have to. — Chaim Potok

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

I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own. — Chaim Potok

We've begun to get justice. — Charles Evers

I've begun my career working with older heroes. The people I had been fan of, I now work with them. It's a great opportunity for me. — Nayantara

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

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

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

And all the good you've done will soon be swept away, You've begun to matter more than the things you say. — Tim Rice

They've really begun the war," he said to himself. "And all over a word in a dictionary, the ninnies! — Natalie Babbitt

This is in the natural order of things
the time of life we've now entered. The afternoon, as Jung called it. Thoroughly unprepared we take the step into the afternoon of life. Are we unprepared simply because preparation is not possible? ... We learn
if we are lucky we learn
as we go.
... we are in the center of the stream. Much has already happened, and has formed the shape of our lives as surely as water shapes rock. Much lies ahead of us. We can't see what's coming. We can't know it. All we have is our hope that all will be well, and our knowledge that it won't always be so. We live in the space between this hope and this knowledge.
...
Life keeps coming at us. Fleeing it is pointless, as is fighting. What I have begun to learn is that there is value in simply standing there
this too
whether the sun is shining, or the wind whipping all around. [pp.239-240] — Dani Shapiro

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

Don't stop yourself from greatness before you've begun from fear or from self-doubt. You were put here on this planet to do great things, to pioneer change by way of your own personal uniqueness, and to express yourself and share your happiness with others. — Kaiden Blake

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

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

He listened some more; then he come tiptoeing down and stood right between us; we could a touched him, nearly. Well, likely it was minutes and minutes that there warn't a sound, and we all there so close together. There was a place on my ankle that got to itching, but I dasn't scratch it; and then my ear begun to itch; and next my back, right between my shoulders. Seemed like I'd die if I couldn't scratch. Well, I've noticed that thing plenty times since. If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy - if you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places. Pretty soon Jim says: — Mark Twain

He rose up and looked down at her. "If I'd known you were out there, I would've begun searching for you thousands of years ago."
Her smile was soft and glorious. "That was the perfect response."
"It's the truth. — Donna Grant

Until recently we've only been able to speculate about story's persuasive effects. But over the last several decades psychology has begun a serious study of how story affects the human mind. Results repeatedly show that our attitudes, fears, hopes, and values are strongly influenced by story. In fact, fiction seems to be more effective at changing beliefs than writing that is specifically designed to persuade through argument and evidence. — Jonathan Gottschall

Any film I've made, I've only really begun to understand in the cutting room. That's when the story shows itself to you, like a wreck coming out of the sea. — Roger Michell