Wisdom Quotations

Beginnings

Adrienne Rich:
Life on the planet is born of woman.

George Eliot:
Deep unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state.

Isaiah Berlin:
Only barbarians are not curious about where they come from, how they came to be where they are, where they appear to be going, whether they wish to go there, and if so, why, and if not, why not.

Ivy Baker Priest:
The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning.

Kalidasa:
Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the
Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!

Lazurus Long:
Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.

Robert Frost:
You're searching, Joe, for things that don't exist; I mean beginnings. Ends and beginnings -- there are no such things. There are only middles.

Wallace Stevens:
Reality is the beginning not the end,
Naked Alpha, not the hierophant Omega,
Of dense investiture, with luminous vassals.