Begin - Quotes
We humans have two great problems: the first is knowing when to begin; the second is knowing when to stop.
Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.
There`s a story behind everything. How a picture got on a wall. How a scar got on your face. Sometimes the stories are simple, and sometimes they are hard and heartbreaking. But behind all your stories is always your mother`s story, because hers is where yours begin.
Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.
One of the most important gifts we can give our children is the confidence to say "I don`t know." It`s the foundation from which we begin our investigation of the world: asking questions, taking the necessary time to understand the answers, and searching for new answers when the ones we have in hand don`t seem to work. The feeling of not knowing is also the source of wonder and awe.
Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand - and melting like a snowflake.
It is only with true love and compassion that we can begin to mend what is broken in the world.
Believers unhesitatingly attribute every good thing in the world to God - and then respond to bad things by saying, "God works in mysterious ways." If God`s ways are so mysterious, and we can`t begin to understand his thinking behind tsunamis and drought and pediatric cancer, then what makes you think you understand his intentions when it comes to pretty sunsets or cute puppies or helping you find the peanut butter?
Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it.
In the mountains, we see a valley covered by a sea of white clouds. The surface of the clouds gleams, immaculate. We start to walk toward the valley. The air becomes more humid, then less clear; the sky is no longer blue. We find ourselves in a fog. Where did the well-defined surface of the clouds go? It vanished. Its disappearance is gradual; there is no surface that separates the fog from the sparse air of the heights. Was it an illusion? No, it was a view from afar. Come to think of it, it`s like this with all surfaces. This dense marble table would look like a fog if I were shrunk to a small enough, atomic scale. Everything in the world becomes blurred when seen close up. Where exactly does the mountain end and where do the plains begin? Where does the savannah begin and the desert end? We cut the world into large slices. We think of it in terms of concepts that are meaningful for us, that emerge at a certain scale.
You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.
If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.