Earliest Quotes

1. "When I call to mind my earliest impressions, I wonder whether the process ordinarily referred to as growing up is not actually a process of growing down; whether experience, so much touted among adults as the thing children lack, is not actually a progressive dilution of the essentials by the trivialities of living."
Author: Aldo Leopold

2. "Dark house, by which once more I standHere in the long unlovely street,Doors, where my heart was used to beatSo quickly, waiting for a hand,A hand that can be clasp'd no more -Behold me, for I cannot sleep,And like a guilty thing I creepAt earliest morning to the door.He is not here; but far awayThe noise of life begins again,And ghastly thro' the drizzling rainOn the bald street breaks the blank day."
Author: Alfred Tennyson

3. "Give your clients the earliest delivery consistent with quality - whatever the inconvenience to us."
Author: Arthur C. Nielsen

4. "Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning."
Author: Bertrand Russell

5. "Courage is a heart word. The root of the word courage is cor - the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage meant "To speak one's mind by telling all one's heart." Over time, this definition has changed, and today, we typically associate courage with heroic and brave deeds. But in my opinion, this definition fails to recognize the inner strength and level of commitment required for us to actually speak honestly and openly about who we are and about our experiences -- good and bad. Speaking from our hearts is what I think of as "ordinary courage."
Author: Brené Brown

6. "There is a thinking in primordial images, in symbols which are older than the historical man, which are inborn in him from the earliest times, eternally living, outlasting all generations, still make up the groundwork of the human psyche. It is only possible to live the fullest life when we are in harmony with these symbols; wisdom is a return to them."
Author: C.G. Jung

7. "The Didache is the earliest known document outside the NT to identify the problem of settled faith communities in conflict with traveling, itinerant preachers and prophets. The Didachist does not doubt the validity of such persons, but recognizes that not all of them are worthy witnesses to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Those who teach falsely for their own gain are identified as "Christ peddlars," a term known first from the Didache"
Author: Clayton N. Jefford

8. "In the first ages they were wise men; in the middle age, madmen; in these latter ages, cunning men: in the earliest time they were honest; in the middle time, rogues; in these last times, fools: at first they dealt with nature; then with the Devil; and now not with the Devil, or with nature either: in the first ages the magicians were wiser than the people; in the second age, wickeder than the people; and in our age, the people are both wiser and wickeder than the magicians."
Author: Daniel Defoe

9. "From the earliest moments of life, children begin to learn the fundamentals of language. The most powerful influence for effective language development are the verbal interactions with caregivers."
Author: David Perlmutter

10. "One had known the care of other men from his earliest years, a part of the duty of his birthright; the other had come to it later, but both felt that burden to be the will of God, she had no doubt at all-both accepted that duty without question, would honor it, or die in trying. She only hoped it wouldn't come to that-for either of them."
Author: Diana Gabaldon

11. "Some of my earliest political feelings were based on the anti-Japanese bubblegum cards I got. There were also Spanish Civil War bubblegum cards. Awful."
Author: Ed Asner

12. "Note to self: Overthrow government of magical Britain at earliest convenience."
Author: Eliezer Yudkowsky

13. "Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. If life is to be sustained hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired."
Author: Erik H. Erikson

14. "Since 1849 I have studied incessantly, under all its aspects, a question which was already in my mind since 1832. I confess that my scheme is still a mere dream, and I do not shut my eyes to the fact that so long as I alone believe it to be possible, it is virtually impossible. ... The scheme in question is the cutting of a canal through the Isthmus of Suez. This has been thought of from the earliest historical times, and for that very reason is looked upon as impracticable. Geographical dictionaries inform us indeed that the project would have been executed long ago but for insurmountable obstacles. [On his inspiration for the Suez Canal.]"
Author: Ferdinand De Lesseps

15. "The earliest phase of social formations found in historical as well as in contemporary social structures is this: a relatively small circle firmly closed against neighboring, strange, or in some way antagonistic circles."
Author: Georg Simmel

16. "Also by my earliest days, I was fascinated by a utopian vision of what the world could be like. I've thought that science could be the basis for a better world, and that's what I've been trying to do all these years."
Author: George E. Brown Jr.

17. "From my earliest days, I was fascinated by science."
Author: George E. Brown Jr.

18. "A bronze plaque read: GAIUS PLINIUS CAECILIUS SECUNDUSDan made a face. "Get a load of the guy with the funny name.""I think that's Pliny the younger, the famous Roman writer," Amy supplied. She bent down to read the English portion of the tablet. "Right. In A.D. 79, Pliny chronicled the destruction of Pompeii by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. It's one of the earliest eyewitness accounts of a major disaster."Dan yawned. "Doesn't this remind you of the clue hunt? You know–you telling me a bunch of boring stuff, and me not listening?"
Author: Gordon Korman

19. "There is but little room for doubt that Egypt led the way in the creation of the earliest known group of civilizations which arose on both sides of the land bridge between Africa and Eurasia in the fourth millennium B.C."
Author: James Henry Breasted

20. "[...] we have in our treatise a series of fifty-seven examinations, almost exclusively of injuries of the human body forming a group of observations furnishing us with the earliest known nucleus of fact regarding the anatomy, physiology and pathology of the human body. Crude and elementary as they are, the method by which they were collected was scientific, and these observations, together with the diagnoses and the explanatory commentary in the ancient glosses, form the oldest body of science now extant."
Author: James Henry Breasted

21. "Mr. Bennet was among the earliest of those who waited on Mr. Bingley. He had always intended to visit him, though to the last always assuring his wife that he should not go; and till the evening after the visit was paid she had no knowledge of it. It was then disclosed in the following manner. Observing his second daughter employed in trimming a hat, he suddenly addressed her with:"
Author: Jane Austen

22. "If the entire course of evolution were compressed into a single year, the earliest bacteria would appear at the end of March, but we wouldn't see the first human ancestors until 6 a.m. on December 31st. The golden age of Greece, about 500 BCE, would occur just thirty seconds before midnight."
Author: Jerry A. Coyne

23. "Our television transmitters leak out from the Earth. And actually, there's a sphere surrounding the Earth from the earliest television signals, maybe 70 years ago, that's going out one light year per year. But it's really weak."
Author: Jill Tarter

24. "Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun,When first on this delightful land he spreadsHis orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit and flower,Glistening with dew; fragrant the fertile earthAfter soft showers, and sweet the coming onof grateful Evening mild; the silent Night,With this her solumn bird and hisfair Moon,And these the gems of Heaven, their starry train;But neither breath of morn nor rising sunOn this delightful land, nor herb, fruit, flowerGlistening with dew, nor fragrance after shower,Nor grateful Evening mild, nor silent Night,With this her solumn bird, nor walk by Moon,Or glittering starlight, without thee is sweet"
Author: John Milton

25. "The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time. They have the mystery of ferns that disappeared a million years ago into the coal of the carboniferous era. They carry their own light and shade. The vainest, most slap-happy and irreverent of men, in the presence of redwoods, goes under a spell of wonder and respect. Respect--that's the word. One feels the need to bow to unquestioned sovereigns. I have known these great ones since my earliest childhood, have lived among them, camped and slept against their warm monster bodies, and no amount of association has bred contempt in me. p. 168"
Author: John Steinbeck

26. "The theme of invisibility has haunted me for many years, since earliest girlhood. A woman often feels ‘invisible' in a public sense precisely because her physical being - her ‘visibility' - figures so prominently in her identity. She is judged as a body, she is ‘attractive' or ‘unattractive', while knowing that her deepest self is inward, and secret: knowing, hoping that her spiritual essence is a great deal more complex than the casual eye of the observer will allow… it might be argued that all persons, defined to themselves rather more as what they think and dream than what they do, are ‘invisible'."
Author: Joyce Carol Oates

27. "Anyway, how can you say things like that? You don't know me at all." She wasn't really caught up in this game, but she was enjoying it, as she had enjoyed the dozens of declarations that had been made to her since she was eleven. Her earliest memories were of being told how beautiful she was. Something in her never believed the words, never felt satisfied. It wasn't modesty; it was a craving for more proof than anyone had ever yet given her. Her mind worked constantly at trying to understand for herself exactly what other people saw when they looked at her. She could never grasp it whole and living. Her deepest fantasy was to step outside of her skin and look at herself and find out just what people were thinking about. She spent her life experimenting with people to see how she could make them react, as if, in their response, she could discover herself."
Author: Judith Krantz

28. "For the earliest period of the history of Israel, all that precedes the building of the temple, not a trace can be found of any sanctuary of exclusive legitimacy."
Author: Julius Wellhausen

29. "I made a mistake in judgment about positioning myself with the mayor. Nobody had told me the old city hall idiom about being close to the mayor to 'get his ear.' The pundits use this as a measuring rod: who gets the office closest to the mayor's office, who gets in to see him without an appointment, and who gets to hold his hand, earliest and most often."
Author: Junius Williams

30. "Before I proposed to my now-wife, I was understandably nervous. My father suggested that I take stock of all of my experiences and relationships with women, from my earliest memories to present day, and see if I had learned anything that might inform my decision."
Author: Justin Halpern

31. "So far as we know, Jesus did not write anything, nor did anyone who had personal knowledge of him. There is no archaeological evidence of his existence. There are no contemporaneous accounts of his life or death: no eyewitness accounts, nor any other kind of first-hand record. All the accounts of Jesus come from decades or centuries later; the gospels themselves all come from later times, though they may contain earlier sources or oral traditions. The earliest writings that survive are the letters of Paul of Tarsus, written 20-30 years after the dates given for Jesus's death. Paul was not a companion of Jesus, nor does he ever claim to have seen Jesus before his death."
Author: L. Michael White

32. "So might I suggest at your earliest convenience that you pay a visit to the Okins Funeral Salon to make arrangements?""Why'd I wanna do that?" she says so damn snippy."Because on my return visit you can count on my beatin' the ever-lovin' shit outta you with a rusty shovel. Twice."
Author: Lesley Kagen

33. "Any species capable of producing, at this earliest, juvenile stage of its development... the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, cannot be all bad."
Author: Lewis Thomas

34. "A mother's nurturing love arouses in children, from their earliest days on earth, an awakening of the memories of love and goodness they experience in their premortal existence, Because our mothers love us, we learn, or more accurately remember, that God also loves us"
Author: M. Russell Ballard

35. "During the earliest attacks of Fear and intense unreality, I sometimes uttered these unconscious and shocking words: 'I should prefer to escape into madness to avoid this consuming fear.' Alas, I did not know what I was saying. In my ignorance I believed that madness was a state of insensibility where there was neither pain nor suffering nor joy, but particularly, no responsibility. Never, for one instant, has I even imagined what 'to lose one's reason' actually meant."
Author: Marguerite Sechehaye

36. ". . .from their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustrations as best they can. And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things."
Author: Maurice Sendak

37. "Like the microscopic strands of DNA that predetermine the identity of a macroscopic species and the unique propertires of its members, the modern look and feel of the cosmos was writ in the fabric of its earliest moments, and carried relentlessly through time and space. We feel it when we look up. We feel it when we look down. We feel it when we look within."
Author: Neil DeGrasse Tyson

38. "From my earliest years I had always wanted to be a writer. It was not that I had any particular message for humanity. I am still plugging away and not the ghost of one so far, so it begins to look as though, unless I suddenly hit mid-season form in my eighties, humanity will remain a message short."
Author: P.G. Wodehouse

39. "From its earliest days, stem cell research has been important to the people of Wisconsin."
Author: Ron Kind

40. "Forests to the [early] Northern European peoples were dangerous and generous, domestic and wild, beautiful and terrible. And the forests were the terrain out of which fairy stories, one of our earliest and most vital cultural forms, evolved. The mysterious secrets and silences, gifts and perils of the forest are both the background to and source of these tales....Forests are places where a person can get lost and also hide -- and losing and hiding, of things and people, are central to European fairy stories in ways that are not true of similar stories in different geographies. Landscape informs the collective imagination as much as or more than it forms the individual psyche and its imagination, but this dimension is not something to which we always pay enough attention."
Author: Sara Maitland

41. "It is not the fault of the slaveholder that he is cruel, so much as it is the fault of the system under which he lives. He cannot withstand the influence of habit and associations that surround him. Taught from earliest childhood, by all that he sees and hears that the rod is for the slave's back, he will not be apt to change his opinions in maturer years."
Author: Solomon Northup

42. "..the family motto, after all, is 'To Have and To Hold'. We were always a warrior breed, but we don't fight solely for lands and material wealth. There's an understanding, drummed into all of us from our earliest years, that success-true success-means capturing and holding , something more. That something more is the future-to excel is very well, but one needs to excel and survive. To seize lands is well and good, but we want to hold them for all time. Which means creating and building a family-defending the family that is, and creating the next generation. Because it's the next generation that's our future. Without securing that future, material success is no real success at all."
Author: Stephanie Laurens

43. "Books are not holy relics,' Trefusis had said. 'Words may be my religion, but when it comes to worship, I am very low church. The temples and the graven images are of no interest to me. The superstitious mammetry of a bourgeois obsession for books is severely annoying. Think how many children are put off reading by prissy little people ticking them off whenever they turn a page carelessly. The world is so fond of saying that book s should be "treated with respect". But when are we told that _words_ should be treated with respect? From our earliest years we are taught to revere only the outward and visible. Ghastly literary types maundering on about books as "objects"..."
Author: Stephen Fry

44. "To Renard's suspicious eye, Elizabeth's nebulous role at court had taken on a new and sinister signifiance. This unspoken Protestant heir presumptive was suddenly the greatest obstacle to Prince Philip's path to England and Renard had already resolved to dispose of her at his earliest conveneicne. Accordingly, he invited her to dance and tried his hand at a little subtle flattery. They manoevered delicately down the Hall, like two scorpions locked in mortal combat, but no matter how he tried, he could not get close enough to sting."
Author: Susan Kay

45. "To trace the development of mind from earliest times...requires...not a categorical concept, but a functional one.... The most promising operational principle for this purpose is the principle of individuation.[p. 310]" "[yet she also says:]...we have no physical model of this endless rhythm of individuation and involvement, we do have its image in the world of art, most purely in dance;...this dialectic of vital continuity...[p. 355]"
Author: Susanne K. Langer

46. "Inspirations sleet through the universe continuously. Their destination, as if they cared, is the right mind in the right place at the right time. They hit the right neuron, there's a chain reaction, and a little while later someone is blinking furiously in the TV lights and wondering how the hell he came up with the idea of pre-sliced bread in the first place.Leonard of Quirm knew about inspirations. One of his earliest inventions was an earthed metal nightcap, worn in the hope that the damned things would stop leaving their white-hot trails across his tortured imagination. It seldom worked. He knew the shame of waking up to find the sheets covered with nocturnal sketches of seige engines for apple-peeling machines."
Author: Terry Pratchett

47. "Until you put these things to right, you're not entitled to boast of the justice meted out to thieves, for it's a justice more specious than real or social desirable. You allow these people to be brought up in the worst possible way, and systematically corrupted from their earliest years. Finally, when they grow up and commit the crimes that they were obviously destined to commit, ever since they were children, you start punishing them. In other words, you create thieves, and then punish them for stealing."
Author: Thomas More

48. "The day of the full moon, when the moon is neither increasing nor decreasing, the Babylonians called Sa-bat, meaning "heart-rest." It was believed that on this day, the woman in the moon, Ishtar, as the moon goddess was known in Babylon, was menstruating, for in Babylon, as in virtually every ancient and primitive society, there had been since the earliest times a taboo against a woman working, preparing food, or traveling when she was passing her monthly blood. On Sa-bat, from which comes our Sabbath, men as well as women were commanded to rest, for when the moon menstruated, the taboo was on everyone. Originally (and naturally) observed once a month, the Sabbath was later to be incorporated by the Christians into their Creation myth and made conveniently weekly. So nowadays hard-minded men with hard muscles and hard hats are relieved from their jobs on Sundays because of an archetypal psychological response to menstruation."
Author: Tom Robbins

49. "An unknown and forgotten treasure of the earliest Christians, a manual for living used by the generation of Jesus followers immediately after the apostles."
Author: Tony Jones

50. "I never have known a man of ordinary common-sense who did not urge upon his sons, from earliest childhood, doctrines of economy and the practice of accumulation."
Author: William Graham Sumner

Earliest Quotes Pictures