May First Sayings

#1. The company of fools may first make us smile, but in the end we always feel melancholy.

Oliver Goldsmith

#2. The biggest issue of the twenty-first century is not necessarily the "decline" of neighborhood. It may be that we have all moved to a new neighborhood and have not learned how to get along with the new neighbors.

Diana Butler Bass

#3. 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

#4. 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

#5. 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

#6. 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

#7. One may discover a new side to his most intimate friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public. He will be stranger to him as he is more familiar to the audience. The longest intimacy could not foretell how he would behave then

Henry David Thoreau

#8. 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

#9. Mind your business. Take care of what you came here for. Find the 'I' first and you may afterwards speak of other matters.

Ramana Maharshi

#10. A mystical path requires courage as you must take a first step of faith so that the second may be of science.

Luis Marques

#11. A centre of excellence is, by definition, a place where second class people may perform first class work.

Michael Faraday

#12. No matter what God's power may be, the first aspect of God is never that of the absolute Master, the Almighty. It is that of the God who puts himself on our human level and limits himself.

Jacques Ellul

#13. 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

#14. We need to explore the relationship between means and ends. Purposes grow out of situations. One may find the pursuit first and then this brings the purpose.

David Hawkins

#15. He may not enter anywhere at the first, unless there be some one of the household who bid him to come, though afterwards he can come as he please.

Bram Stoker

#16. It will be quite satisfactory if you open them gradually, as the circumstances may require; but the President assures you that this will not be the case if you make a treaty with England first.

Townsend Harris

#17. We demand that the government of Canada force Stockwell Day to change his first name to Doris. Why do this, you may ask? Because it'll be fun.

Rick Mercer

#18. To use a computer analogy, we are running twenty-first-century software on hardware last upgraded 50,000 years ago or more. This may explain quite a lot of what we see in the news.

Ronald Wright

#19. Beware, lion's lady, for your predator is hungry tonight. He may not wait long before devouring you." "Devouring me?" she asked, challenge gleaming in her eyes. "What if I devour him first?

Shelly Thacker

#20. It's not every day one has a first kiss,' I said.
'May I remind you that it wasn't your first kiss?'
'It felt like it was. It was the first one that mattered.

Mary E. Pearson

#21. No one can know sincere happiness, Sophie, without first having known sorrow. One can never appreciate the enormity and rareness of such a fiery bliss without seeing misery, however unfair that may be.

Fisher Amelie

#22. There are two kinds of genius. The first and highest may be said to speak out of the eternal to the present, and must compel its age to understand it; the second understands its age, and tells it what it wishes to be told.

James Russell Lowell

#23. Concordantly, while your first question may be the most pertinent, you may or may not realize it is also the most irrelevant.

Oscar Wilde

#24. O Son of Spirit! My first counsel is this: Possess a pure, kindly and radiant heart, that thine may be a sovereignty ancient, imperishable and everlasting.

Baha'u'llah

#25. Always set small, realistic goals that you know you can achieve first. But don't give up on the bigger ones that may seem too far from your reach.

W.D. Lady

#26. The rector of a parish has much to do. - In the first place, he must make such an agreement for tythes as may be beneficial to himself and not offensive to his patron.

Jane Austen

#27. One who returns to a place sees it with new eyes. Although the place may not have changed, the viewer inevitably has. For the first time things invisible before become suddenly visible.

Louis L'Amour

#28. In order that knowledge may not run riot, the author of the Gita has insisted on devotion accompanying it and has given it the first place.

Mahatma Gandhi

#29. There are twelve good reasons for failure. The first one is the avowed intention of doing no more than one is paid to do, and the person who makes this avowal may see the other eleven by stepping before a looking glass.

Napoleon Hill

#30. I couldn't live on the singing at first, so I worked as a cleaner, in a launderette, in a garage, face painting and doing the windows of shops at Christmas, 'cause I had been to art college.

Imelda May

#31. Since love first made the breast an instrument
Of fierce lamenting, by its flame my heart
Was molten to a mirror, like a rose
I pluck my breast apart, that I may hang
This mirror in your sight
Gaze you therein

Muhammad Iqbal

#32. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us [...], because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate; that which in the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation, and its excellence may arise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning.

Edmund Burke

#33. Science may explain how humans came into being, but it has no answer to the slippery question of how humans should live. Only literature makes it possible to pose such questions in the first place. And if there is no answer, only literature can point to the impossibility of ever finding one.

Minae Mizumura

#34. From time to time it may find it useful to send out missionaries, but its first missionary task is to be a witness in and to the worlds in which it finds itself. All missionary tasks are in that sense local.

Stanley Hauerwas

#35. Belief has no place as far as science reaches, and may be first permitted to take root where science stops.

Rudolf Virchow

#36. Bill Condon, I must say, may have been one of the best professional experiences of my life, collaborating with him. He, himself, is an Academy Award winning screenwriter. He is a storyteller first and foremost, so we speak the same language. We approach things always from the story.

Melissa Rosenberg

#37. - Come Inanna, enter, Neti said to her, and as Inanna entered the first gate, the sugurra, crown of the steppe, was taken from her head.
- What is this? asked Inanna
- Quiet, Inanna, she was told. The customs of the city of the dead are perfect. They may not be questioned.

Hal Duncan

#38. The first nine albums there was never a Synthesiser, never any Orchestra. There was never any other player except us on the albums.

Brian May

#39. Geometry has two great treasures; one is the Theorem of Pythagoras; the other, the division of a line into extreme and mean ratio. The first we may compare to a measure of gold; the second we may name a precious jewel.

Johannes Kepler

#40. I want a more difficult life, that's all. What I really want is a first-rate life. I may not get it, but the only chance I have lies in getting out of a second-rate life. I may fail completely, but I do want to try. It's to do with me, not you; so don't worry.

Julian Barnes

#41. In socialism, private property is anathema, and equal distribution of income the first consideration. In capitalism, private property is cardinal, and distribution left to ensue from the play of free contract and selfish interest on that basis, no matter what anomalies it may present.

George Bernard Shaw

#42. But easy victories pall after a while. If one always wins, perhaps one is attempting only what is well within one's capabilities - and there lies a kind of death, don't you think? That which does not grow may well be showing the first signs of atrophy.

Anne Perry

#43. A child ... who has learned from fairy stories to believe that what at first seemed a repulsive, threatening figure can magically change into a most helpful friend is ready to believe that a strange child whom he meets and fears may also be changed from a menace into a desirable companion.

Bruno Bettelheim

#44. As wretched as she was, she wanted Harry to be miserable, too. And yet, she was aware of an underlying sense of sadness. Theirs may have been the first war in which there were no winners, only losers.

Sharon Kay Penman

#45. The bigoted sectarian, whoever he may be, divides the world into two classes; those who, with zeal and blind faith, accept his dogmas and those who do not. The first he calls "brother, "and the second class he regards as enemies who must be persecuted.

Anonymous

#46. Who are you that men should rend their bosom and unveil their pride, that you may see their worth naked and their pride unabashed?
See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and an instrument of giving.

Kahlil Gibran

#47. Fans will try and make Jesus one of many. Some fans may even make Jesus the first of many. But when Jesus defines the relationship he makes it clear; he wants to be your one and only.

Kyle Idleman

#48. Law and justice are not always the same. When they aren't, destroying the law may be the first step toward changing it.

Gloria Steinem

#49. Authors may be divided into falling stars, planets, and fixed stars: the first have a momentary effect; the second have a much longer duration; but the third are unchangeable, possess their own light, and work for all time.

Arthur Schopenhauer

#50. We frequently look into the future of mankind and see dangers. We see if we carry on doing what we are doing in 20 years' time there will be no rainforests left, just to use one example. Looking into the future may be one of the reasons that brains evolved in the first place.

Richard Dawkins

#51. Even at the end of the road, read the first sentence, there is a road. Even at the end of the road, a new road stretches out, endless and open, a road that may lead anywhere. To him who will find it, there is always a road.

D.J. MacHale

#52. The common prejudice that love is as common as "romance" may be due to the fact that we all learned about it first through poetry. But the poets fool us; they are the only ones to whom love is not only a crucial, but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to mistake it for a universal one.

Hannah Arendt

#53. First Conjuration Addressed to Emperor Lucifer. Emperor Lucifer, Master and Prince of Rebellious Spirits, I adjure thee to leave thine abode, in what-ever quarter of the world it may be situated and come hither to communicate with me.

A. E. Waite

#54. Make a determination to take no one seriously except God. You may find that the first person you must be the most critical with, as being the greatest fraud you have ever known, is yourself.

Oswald Chambers

#55. A dirty and mean sense of humor first thing in the morning. I may learn to like you yet.

Lorelei James

#56. At first glance, the idea that some UFOs may be vehicles from outside the Earth seems utterly preposterous, the baseless result of wishful thinking by highly unscientific minds.

Don Berliner

#57. I know there are writers who like to say that every novel is hard, and it doesn't get easier. That may be the case, and I've only written two. But the first, to me, was characterized by an enduring oscillation between perseverance and a profound doubt.

Rachel Kushner

#58. I can get on with wild beasts first-rate; but men rile me awfully ...

Louisa May Alcott

#59. True revolutionary change begins by first challenging yourself -- not the world. Until you own your story and the complexities of your experience, no matter how much you may strain against it, you will still be enslaved -- if not by your oppressor, by your past.

Sil Lai Abrams

#60. It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm.

Florence Nightingale

#61. I may not have been the first to wish to marry her, but I am the one who succeeded.

Eloisa James

#62. If you have been sick for a long, long time, Prozac may make you high. It probably won't make you, never quite managed to be a part of, but a world, nevertheless, that you at first fit into with the precision of a key to a lock or a neurotransmitter to its receptor.

Lauren Slater

#63. There are two ways by which the spirit of a culture may be shriveled. In the first - the Orwellian - culture becomes a prison. In the second - the Huxleyan - culture becomes a burlesque. No

Neil Postman

#64. Tell me who first did kisses suggest? It was a mouth all glowing and blest; It kissed and it thought of nothing beside. The fair month of May was then in its pride, The flowers were all from the earth fast springing, The sun was laughing, the birds were singing.

Heinrich Heine

#65. Whatever one's religion in his private life may be, for the officeholder, nothing takes precedence over his oath to uphold the Constitution and all its parts - including the First Amendment and the strict separation of church and state.

John F. Kennedy

#66. Woe to the man who in the first moments of a love-affair does not believe that it will last forever! Woe to him who even in the arms of some mistress who has just yielded to him maintains an awareness of trouble to come and foresees that he may later tear himself away!

Benjamin Constant

#67. The common problem, yours and mine, everyone's/Is not to fancy what were fair in life/Provided it could be - but finding first/What may be and how to make it fair up to our means.

Robert A. Caro

#68. The length of exposure (one minute in sunlight) is still too long for the portrait. It was fifteen minutes when I first began my work. Progress may continue.

Gabriel Lippmann

#69. I am bound to add that the excess in too little has ever proved in me more dangerous than the excess in too much; the last may cause indigestion, but the first causes death.

Giacomo Casanova

#70. What seems terrible at first may turn out to be a great thing. You can't predict.

A. J. Jacobs

#71. Valentines Day is being marketed as a Date Movie. I think its more of a First-Date Movie. If your date likes it, do not date that person again. And if you like it, there may not be a second date.

Roger Ebert

#72. This bad habit of fault-finding, criticizing and complaining is a tool that grows keener by constant use, and there is grave danger that he who at first is only a moderate kicker may develop into a chronic knocker, and the knife he has sharpened will sever his head. Hooker

Elbert Hubbard

#73. Any act often repeated soon forms a habit; and habit allowed, steady gains in strength, At first it may be but as a spider's web, easily broken through, but if not resisted it soon binds us with chains of steel.

Tryon Edwards

#74. In general, it is the people who are left behind stationary, who give way to low spirits at any parting; the travellers, however bitterly they may feel the separation, find something in the change of scene to soften regret in the very first hour of separation.

Elizabeth Gaskell

#75. My 'must-have' was poetry. From the first, life meant that to me. And, fortunately, poetry is not purchasable material, but an atmosphere in which every life may expand. I found it everywhere about me ...

Lucy Larcom

#76. And let's remember that science isn't a game of chess, although chess may be played scientifically. The other thing to remember is that if we are to organize the masses we must first organize ourselves.

Ralph Ellison

#77. Sometimes, when we least expect it, we catch a glimpse of someone, a face, perhaps only a smile, and our heart latches on and will not let go. It may not be love at first, but soon and for always.

Regan Walker

#78. Of all the things that make for happiness, the love of books comes first. No matter how the world may have used us, sure solace lies there.

Myrtle Reed

#79. One day you may make wake up and think your all alone.
One day you may feel this house is not my home.
One day you may find that things around you have change.
But one thing for sure God still knows your first and last name.

E.R. Turner

#80. Antimicrobial resistance is on the rise in Europe and elsewhere in the world. We are losing our first-line antimicrobials. Replacement treatments are more costly, more toxic, need much longer durations of treatment, and may require treatment in intensive care units.

Margaret Chan

#81. For all the girls in all the worlds.
May you feel strength with your first breath,
realize your unlimited potential for greatness on your second, and follow your dreams on your third.

C.S. O'Kelly

#82. As a privileged survivor of the First World War, I hope I may be allowed to interject here a deeply felt tribute to those who were not fortunate enough to succeed, but who shared the signal honor of trying to the last to salvage peace.

Rene Cassin

#83. I've realized that no problem is as hopeless as it first may seem, I've learned how to live day to day and show others how to do the same, and most of all, I've learned how to just be.

Jessie Pavelka

#84. I had a few stories and longer pieces published, but my first proper novel came in 2003, called 'Dead I Well May Be.'

Adrian McKinty

#85. When I first started out, 'Time' magazine did an article on what it called 'the sick comics,' and they were myself, Shelley Berman, Nichols & May, Jonathan Winters, Lenny Bruce, and Mort Sahl. We were considered 'sick.'

Bob Newhart

#86. You may not be aware of a recent survey that showed that if the First Amendment were put to a popular vote today, it would fail by a 60% to 40% vote.

James E. Rogers

#87. If the October days were a cordial like the sub-acids of fruit, these are a tonic like the wine of iron. Drink deep or be careful how you taste this December vintage. The first sip may chill, but a full draught warms and invigorates.

John Burroughs

#88. Deer Reeder: First may I say, sorry for any werds I spel rong. Because I am a fox! So don't rite or spel perfect.

George Saunders

#89. The coach must never forget that he is, first of all, a teacher. He must come (be present), see (diagnose), and conquer (correct). He must continuously be exploring for ways to improve himself in order that he may improve others and welcome every person and everything that maybe helpful to him.

John Wooden

#90. we may not be able to meet each other in this world. so let us make a deal. whoever reaches beyond the horizon first, will wait for the other to join. then we can live happily in heaven.

Joseph Mathew

#91. It may seem difficult at first, but everything is difficult at first.

Miyamoto Musashi

#92. One wide-awake persistent enemy may be worth twenty friends. Friends point out all the good things you do. You know all about that. Your enemies point out your mistakes. Get yourself a first-class enemy, cultivate him, and when you achieve success thank him.

Harold Hobbs

#93. It is a well known fact that most artists produce their best work early in their career. They may refine what they do but you usually get the measure of what they are about on their first outing.

Bill Drummond

#94. $20 by Vanessa Place, the first product of VanessaPlace Inc., debuted on May 3, 2013 at Cage, NYC.
The limited edition of $20, available for $50, sold out within the hour.

$20 - Poetry that speaks for itself

Vanessa Place

#95. If at first you don't succeed, try again. If it still doesn't work out, success may not be your thing.

Warren Miller

#96. We may divide thinkers into those who think for themselves and those who think through others. The latter are the rule and the former the exception. The first are original thinkers in a double sense, and egotists in the noblest meaning of the word.

Arthur Schopenhauer

#97. What's important in Libya is, first of all, it has a good deal of oil. A lot of the country is unexplored; there may be a lot more. And it's very high-quality oil, so very valuable.

Noam Chomsky

#98. Storms of every sort, torrents, earthquakes, cataclysms, 'convulsions of nature,' etc., however mysterious and lawless at first sight they may seem, are only harmonious notes in the song of creation, varied expressions of God's love.

John Muir

#99. The first presentation of my show was given in May, 1883, at Omaha, which I had then chosen as my home. From there we made our first summer tour, visiting practically every important city in the country.

Buffalo Bill

#100. It is the lone worker who makes the first advance in a subject; the details may be worked out by a team, but the prime idea is due to enterprise, thought, and perception of an individual.

Alexander Fleming