Top 100 First But Quotes

#1. The first thing which will be judged among a man's deeds on the Day of Resurrection is the Prayer. If this is in good order then he will succeed and prosper but if it is defective then he will fail and will be a loser.

Muhammad

#2. Andy [Warhol] was on the scene, but he wasn't an artist at first; he was more an illustrator. He was always surrounded by about ten people who worshipped him. He'd go to a party and they would all come along. But he was drawing shoes and that sort of thing.

Claes Oldenburg

#3. For me, movies and television are interesting because they are the dominant storytelling form of our time. My first love will always be fiction, and especially novels, but I'm a writer ... I write poetry and essays and criticism and I'd love to write a whole play, and sometimes I even write scripts.

Jess Walter

#4. I only worked theater jobs, but they were all really silly when I first graduated. I was a line monitor at 'Spamalot,' which means I got there at 8 A.M. and told people how much the tickets were for standing room. I was an NYU Medical School fake patient, to teach doctors how to talk to patients.

Lauren Worsham

#5. Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism
which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place.

Hunter S. Thompson

#6. Maybe love is a risk, but it's a risk I'm willing to take and as you said, it's not a choice. I never thought I would, never thought I could love someone like that but I fell in love with you. I fought it. It's the first battle I didn't mind losing.

Cora Reilly

#7. It was the desire to do the complete thing. I only took taking acting lessons because my whole thing, really, was to direct. But my first jobs were acting jobs.

James Coburn

#8. When I first read 'The River,' I had theories on what it was about, but once we got into rehearsal, I realized it's much simpler: It's about how human beings try to connect. The play holds a mirror up to the audience, and they take from it what's relevant to their lives.

Laura Donnelly

#9. A lot of progressives really believe that if we can turn out one more white paper with bullet points about how to fix Problem X, we can fix it. But that's not primarily the way you reach people or move them. You reach the heart first.

Robert Greenwald

#10. In the knockout tournaments, it's futile to prepare for a grand finale. You may have worked out many strategies for the final. But you may lose in the first round itself.

Viswanathan Anand

#11. I used to build my own PCs ... and actually had one of the first water-cooled, overclocked PCs around. I ran it at over 4Ghz, and this was back in 2001 ... but alas, I do not have the time for that fun anymore.

Brian Krzanich

#12. If at first you don't succeed, sure, try again ... but if you keep not succeeding, you should probably concentrate on something (or someone) else worthwhile & quit wasting your time.

Ingrid Weir

#13. At first everyone predicted that it would be impossible to hold these divergent people together, but aside from the skilled men, some of whom belonged to craft unions, comparatively few went back to the mills. And as a whole, the strike was conducted with little violence.

Ray Stannard Baker

#14. But the first lesson reading teaches is how to be alone.

Jonathan Franzen

#15. The truth is, Ari, I miss El Paso. When we first moved there, I hated it. But now I think about El Paso all the time. And I think of you. Always, Dante P.S.

Benjamin Alire Saenz

#16. The Washington Times wrote a story questioning the authenticity of some of the suggestions made about me in Silent Coup. But as a believer in the First Amendment, I believe they have more than a right to air their views.

Bob Woodward

#17. From the moment I start a new novel, life's just one endless torture. The first few chapters may go fairly well and I may feel there's still a chance to prove my worth, but that feeling soon disappears and every day I feel less and less satisfied.

Emile Zola

#18. We struck up a conversation, but took pains to keep to small talk at first. We touched on the most trivial of topics: I asked if he thought the fate of man was unalterable. He thought it was.

Gunter Grass

#19. I had my first kiss when I was 11, but I think I've blocked it out of my mind because it was so bad. I'm not even sure it counts as a kiss.

Niall Horan

#20. The only thing money really buys? ... Space. A bigger house, a bigger car, a larger hotel room. First-class plane tickets. But it doesn't even buy comfort. No one complains more than the rich and entitled. Comfort, security, ease. None of them come with money.

Louise Penny

#21. I am quite an admirer of Fidel [Castro]. For me, Fidel is the first and the best man in solidarity with the peoples of the world. Fidel shares not just what he does not need, but every little thing he has. That is called solidarity.

Evo Morales

#22. I don't mean to take the bow off the end of your rain, but you gotta be smart about your first boyfriend.

C. Kennedy

#23. The way, and the only way, to stop this evil is for all the red men to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land, as it was at first, and should be yet; for it was never divided, but belongs to all for the use of each.

Tecumseh

#24. Just going along with this, what I did, or what I do is I imagine not being myself seeing it, but imagine somebody else who's seeing it for the first time.

Dennis Muren

#25. At first Ifemelu thought Kimberly's apologizing sweet, even if unnecessary, but she had begun to feel a flash of impatience, because Kimberly's repeated apologies were tinged with self-indulgence, as though she believed that she could, with apologies, smooth all the scalloped surfaces of the world.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#26. when I ran mortgages, I religiously took people from the back office. At first I did it for moral reasons. But it worked. They appreciated it. They didn't feel like the world owed them a living. They were more loyal.

Michael Lewis

#27. I've learned several lessons over the years. First, never take yourself too seriously, or work is boring. Next, people make the difference. You can have great technology, but if it's not complemented by great people, it won't go anywhere. Finally, customers buy from people they like.

John W. Thompson

#28. Sylvie wishes the anti-depressants had been around when she was in her early twenties, not only to rescue her from the dark tunnels that came when her brother first got sick, but also to keep her from fucking all those assholes.

Francesca Lia Block

#29. The fruit does not make the tree good or bad but the tree itself is what determines the nature of the fruit. In the same way, a person first must be good or bad before doing a good or bad work.

Martin Luther

#30. When we truly are putting others first, we cannot but feel at peace with ourselves.

Eknath Easwaran

#31. Being a parent is not for the faint of heart. I may joke about knowing fear, but the fact is, the first time I ever knew real fear was the day Charlotte, my first child, was born. Suddenly there is someone in the world you care about more than anything.

Harlan Coben

#32. Then my first film was something called Cannibal Girls, which sounds like a horror movie but was actually kind of a goofy comedy with horror elements. Like a horror spoof.

Ivan Reitman

#33. I bring quadruple diversity to the Senate: I'm a woman; I'll be the first Asian woman ever to be elected to the U.S. Senate; I am an immigrant; I am a Buddhist. When I said this at one of my gatherings, they said, 'Yes, but are you gay?' and I said, 'Nobody's perfect.'

Mazie Hirono

#34. As far back as I can remember, I have worshipped the sun. My skin is fair, but as the years have gone by, it has toughened and darkened. I now turn a rich golden brown every summer, but only after the first day of burning.

Jane Green

#35. Once a man would spend a week patiently waiting if he missed a stage coach, but now he rages if he misses the first section of a revolving door.

Simeon Strunsky

#36. I first came on the scene during the Johnson years and that crowd was out all the time enjoying themselves. Nixon wasn't particularly social but a lot of the people in his administration were.

Sally Quinn

#37. It is the second job of literature to create myth. But its first job is to destroy it.

Kenzaburo Oe

#38. You are more thoughtful because you don't act as quickly anymore. When I turned 70 it was the first time I felt young for my age. Fifty dropped on me like a ton of bricks - there is something about that number - but when 70 came along I felt good about it.

Jack Nicholson

#39. You should know, I tried for many years not to be in love with you, but I failed. And I really did try very hard. But it was not possible, and it never has been, because I have actually loved you from very early in our relationship. Possibly as early as our first meeting.

Augusten Burroughs

#40. In 1856, shortly before his death, Lord Ellesmere gave the painting to the new National Portrait Gallery in London as its founding work. As the gallery's first acquisition, it has a certain sentimental prestige, but almost at once its authenticity was doubted.

Bill Bryson

#41. But in any case, I did poorly on the tests and so, in the first three years of school, I had teachers who thought I was stupid and when people think you're stupid, they have low expectations for you.

Robert Sternberg

#42. My name's Todd but I changed it in the first grade because there was another kid named Todd and I didn't understand that that was possible.

T. J. Miller

#43. It is not the principled partisan, however obnoxious he may seem to his opponents, who degrades our public debate, but the preening, self-styled statesman who elevates compromise to a first principle.

Tom DeLay

#44. Sally was on the first floor reading a book, one that she normally wouldn't read, and she felt quite guilty. Twilight. She knew the series was ridiculous but everyone was going crazy over the books and the movies. She'd finally given in and decided that it wouldn't hurt to just read a little bit.

Anjela Renee

#45. Not that I've noticed." She looked down at my gun. "What a nice Glock. My sister carries a Glock, and she just loves it. I was thinking about trading in my .45, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. My dead husband gave it to me for our first anniversary. Rest his soul.

Janet Evanovich

#46. You've got to save your own soul first, and then the souls of your neighbors if they will let you; and for that reason you must cultivate, not a spirit of criticism, but the talents that attract people to the hearing of the Word.

George MacDonald

#47. Really? That would be a first. I'm the son of Hades, Jason. I might as well be covered in blood or sewage, the way people treat me. I don't belong anywhere. I'm not even from this century. But that's not enough to set me apart.

Rick Riordan

#48. First, I had time, but no money; then I had money, but no time. Finally, I had time and money, but no health to make use of my wealth.-RVM

R.v.m.

#49. Exactness is first obtained, and afterwards elegance. But diction, merely vocal, is always in its childhood. As no man leaves his eloquence behind him, the new generations have all to learn. There may possibly be books without a polished language, but there can be no polished language without books.

Samuel Johnson

#50. How can one liberate the many? By first liberating his own being. He does this not by elevating himself, but by lowering himself. He lowers himself to that which is simple, modest, true; integrating it into himself, he becomes a master of simplicity, modesty, truth.

Laozi

#51. The last word should be the last word. It is like a finishing touch given to color; there is nothing more to add. But what precaution is needed in order not to put the last word first.

Joseph Joubert

#52. I want to be Prime Minister, but I will stand for Mayor of London first.

Mohamed Al-Fayed

#53. I'd be the first to admit that I have no shortage of faults.
But if I had to pick one, the one that's gotten me into the most trouble over the years...
...it would be that I sometimes get angry.

Mike Mignola

#54. When George first told me about the title, I wasn't so sure he was serious," Burtt says. "It seemed like such an extreme-sounding pulp title. But that's what we were making: a big version of those old serials, with names like 'Fate Takes the Wheel' or 'The Crimson Ghost Strikes Out.'

J.W. Rinzler

#55. You cannot prevent a major catastrophe, but you can build an organization that is battle-ready, where people trust one another. In military training, the first rule is to instill soldiers with trust in their officers - because without trust, they won't fight.

Peter Drucker

#56. Some of us die long before our last breath. We perish in the fire of love, reduced to ashes in the consuming blaze. No, we do not die when our hearts cease to beat, but when they start beating the first time
for somebody else.

Shakieb Orgunwall

#57. When I first started as an editorial cartoonist, I was terrified on a daily basis. Filling that hole the next day, knowing that tens of thousands of people were going to expect something funny. There is still that pressure, but you kind of learn how to cope with it a little better.

Steve Breen

#58. The first time you do anything, people always take a minute to try to figure it out, but once you witness it in person, the word starts to spread and it gains momentum year after year.

Darren Criss

#59. Because America, being a democracy, could not strike first, but had to wait - wait in instant readiness - until she was actually attacked.

E.E. "Doc" Smith

#60. It's just really important that we start celebrating our differences. Let's start tolerating first, but then we need to celebrate our differences.

Billie Jean King

#61. Up a set and 2-0 it's definitely a situation where a little match practice would've helped, so I'm disappointed but think I can take some positives from the first set and the start of the second.

Mark Philippoussis

#62. Today we take New England clam chowder as something traditional that makes our roots as American cooking very solid, with a lot of foundation. But the first person who decided to mix potatoes and clams and bacon and cream, in his own way 100 to 200 years ago, was a modernist.

Jose Andres

#63. I want to go slow, baby, I really do," he whispered at the side of her neck. "But I'm not going to be able to this first time."
"Thank heavens.

Robin Bielman

#64. He made a careful rehearsal of some of their bits of talk
why had she said this? what had she meant by that? why had she done the other? He dwelt on these matters with an absorbed speculation, and with a young man of Ogden's temperament speculation was but the first step on the way to love.

Henry Blake Fuller

#65. One woman violated is already too many but when I learned that it was one in three, the first thought in my head was "Why aren't more people talking about this?"

Sufe Bradshaw

#66. Maybe there's no second time without a third, but there is a first time without a second.

Elena Ferrante

#67. If a rhinoceros were to enter this restaurant now, there is no denying he would have great power here. But I should be the first to rise and assure him that he had no authority whatever.

G.K. Chesterton

#68. But, Eminem ... No, I've loved rap for a long time, especially when it got out of its first period and became this gangsta rap, ya know this heavy rap thing? That's when I started to fall in love with it. I loved the lyrics. I loved the beat.

Alan Vega

#69. Consider a world in which cause and effect are erratic. Sometimes the first precedes the second, and sometimes the second the first. Or perhaps cause lies forever in the past effect in the future, but future and past are intertwined.

Alan Lightman

#70. All the joy and color was washed from her face, and at first the sadness only made her more beautiful. But

Peter V. Brett

#71. My first time doing music was on acoustic guitar. I had a friend from Texas who taught me so much country, I entered a few country competitions. But eventually, I got tired of it.

Shamir

#72. The prize money for first place was $2,800, but I didn't take it because I was still an amateur.

Tracy Austin

#73. I have from the first felt sure that the writer, when he sits down to commence his novel, should do so, not because he has to tell a story, but because he has a story to tell. The novelist's first novel will generally have sprung from the right cause.

Anthony Trollope

#74. I was always falling in and out of love. I was engaged when I was 16 to the first guy I ever dated, but my father told him I was too young.

Dorothy Hamill

#75. I believe strongly in an author's moral responsibility. But his first obligation is to write good books.

Orhan Pamuk

#76. Moon-Watcher felt the first faint twinges of a new and potent emotion. It was a vague and diffuse sense of envy
of dissatisfaction with his life. He had no idea of its cause, still less of its cure; but discontent had come into his soul, and he had taken one small step toward humanity.

Arthur C. Clarke

#77. The very first concert I ever went to on my own was actually Rory Gallagher. In a one-month period in 1973 or '74, I saw him, Thin Lizzy and the Rolling Stones. I wasn't really a big Rory Gallagher fan, but I thought his guitar playing was fabulous. But Thin Lizzy, they were fabulous.

Robert Smith

#78. I think about how no one in the car would come out and say it. We all know about these laws, we live here, but we don't talk about them. This is the first time I've ever seen them written down.

Kathryn Stockett

#79. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

Charles Dickens

#80. When, in his first inaugural address, Ronald Reagan famously said government is the problem, not the solution, he established the Republican mantra that has not changed in all the years since. It was a clever bit of rhetoric, but it has turned too many Republicans into economic simpletons.

David Horsey

#81. Here comes goodbye, here comes the last time
Here comes the start of every sleepless night
The first of every tear Im gonna cry
Here comes the pain, Here comes me wishing things had never changed
And she was right here in my arms tonight, but here comes goodbye

Rascal Flatts

#82. Love at first sight'some say misnaming
Discovery of twinned helplessness
Against the huge tug of procreation.
But friendship at first sight? This also
Catches fiercely at the surprised heart
So that the cheek blanches then blushes.

Robert Graves

#83. I became the first ever Euro-continental champion in WWF history. Well, besides D-Lo Brown, but he doesn't count.

Kurt Angle

#84. I guess the first big name I worked with was Sissy Spacek, and that was really interesting just because she's so incredible and I learned so much from just watching her. But she's also so unassuming that I loved working with her. It wasn't like working with a star, it was Sissy. Not a big deal.

Alison Pill

#85. I know we just met today, but I gotta see you tomorrow. I know this is our first date, I don't expect you to swallow.

Ted Nugent

#86. We all deserve to be treated with nothing but respect. In order to command respect from others, we must first and foremost respect ourselves.

Julie-Anne

#87. Some people can go out in a tight, short dress and heels, and it works, but even if I'm going to a club, I've got to throw on a big hoodie or something. And that's if you can get me into something tight in the first place.

Suki Waterhouse

#88. that) but because God thought the whole thing up first. Fran illustrates this with the Sistine Chapel in Rome, where Michelangelo portrays the creation of

William Edgar

#89. She had kept well behind the safety barrier her entire life, but now she was standing there at the edge of the precipice for the very first time, fumbling blindly with the realization that there were other ways to live, at how intense and rich life could be.

Katarina Bivald

#90. The stories are there first, and they come from my experiences wandering around in the world. They will resonate into bigger things, forces sweeping the planet, themes and archetypes, but I'm not smart enough to have lucid integration of all that in my head as I'm writing.

Bob Shacochis

#91. I don't remember the first picture I took, but I actually found a picture of myself on a trip back to my old family home in Malaysia. I'm five years old, sitting on the floor with the family camera in my hand. It was a film camera - not a DSLR - with a fixed lens and a nice manual zoom.

Ren Ng

#92. I want you to want me because you want me, not because of grief, not because he is not here. I want you to love me for me. I want you to kiss me first and not because you need me to help you, but because you need to kiss me.

Carrie Jones

#93. I'm fairly certain I'm having my first truly religious experience, and it's probably a very bad thing that it's happening in a church, but it's over a sculpture. Mental note: Add idol worship to your list for confession.

Lisa Desrochers

#94. For the first time since her return, she felt pain, a violent pain, but it made her feel alive, because it was worth feeling.

Ayn Rand

#95. Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made. Our times are in his hand who saith, 'A whole I planned, youth shows but half; Trust God: See all, nor be afraid!

Robert Browning

#96. I first met Myra Henshawe when I was fifteen, but I had known her about ever since I could remember anything at all.

Willa Cather

#97. A statesman wants courage and a statesman wants vision; but believe me, after six months' experience, he wants first, second, third and all the time - patience.

Stanley Baldwin

#98. But it's not just "Do you want a hit?" More importantly, it has to be something we - the artist and I - like. If you go in just wanting a hit song, it's not going to happen that way. You have to first be committed to making music you like.

Lukasz Gottwald

#99. Earth natives didn't absorb everything from the forms they had chosen over the long years the sun had risen and set over Namid. They were first and always terra indigene. But they learned from the predators they became, and certain traits were passed down to the young of each form. Yes,

Anne Bishop

#100. My first horror film was - well, I don't know. 'Bless the Child' is sort of genre, but 'May' was such a cult hit that after that, I just started getting offers for horror. I think I got a little bit pigeonholed in it right off of 'May' because there was just such a large response to that film.

Angela Bettis

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