Firsts Quotes - Page 23

• If you want to maximize your total potential ... you have to know yourself first.

  Mark McGwire

  Baseball, Want, Know Yourself

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• After having produced aquatic animals of all ranks and having caused extensive variations in them by the different environments provided by the waters, nature led them little by little to the habit of living in the air, first by the water's edge and afterwards on all the dry parts of the globe. These animals have in course of time been profoundly altered by such novel conditions; which so greatly influenced their habits and organs that the regular gradation which they should have exhibited in complexity of organisation is often scarcely recognisable.

  Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

  Science, Animal, Air

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• The decisive step in evolution, the first step toward macroevolution, the step from one species to another, requires another evolutionary method than that of sheer accumulation of micromutations.

  Richard Goldschmidt

  Science, Steps, Evolution

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• The distinguishing of the strata, or layers, in the embryonic membrane was a turning-point in the study of the history of evolution, and placed later researches in their proper light. A division of the (disc-shaped) embryo into an animal and a plastic part first takes place. In the lower part (the plastic or vegetative layer) are a serous and a vascular layer, each of peculiar organization. In the upper part also (the animal or serous germ-layer) two layers are clearly distinguishable, a flesh-layer and a skin-layer. (1828)

  Karl Ernst von Baer

  Animal, Light, Organization

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• Water helped ancient man learn those first lessons about the rights of others and responsibility to a larger society.... It became part of the moral and mental legacy parents passed on to their children.

  Max Meyer

  Children, Responsibility, Men

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• In the discovery of lemmas the best aid is a mental aptitude for it. For we may see many who are quick at solutions and yet do not work by method ; thus Cratistus in our time was able to obtain the required result from first principles, and those the fewest possible, but it was his natural gift which helped him to the discovery.

  Proclus

  Hard Work, Science, Discovery

  13 Copy quote

• Late April and you are three; today
  We dug your garden in the yard.
  To curb the damage of your play,
  Strange dogs at night and the moles tunneling,
  Four slender sticks of lath stand guard
  Uplifting their thin string.
  
  So you were the first to tramp it down.
  And after the earth was sifted close
  You brought your watering can to drown
  All earth and us. But these mixed seeds are pressed
  With light loam in their steadfast rows.
  Child, we've done our best.

  W. D. Snodgrass

  Uplifting, Dog, Children

  W. D. Snodgrass, “Heart's Needle”

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• There is nothing like the first hot days of spring when the gardener stops wondering if it's too soon to plant the dahlias and starts wondering if it's too late. Even the most beautiful weather will not allay the gardener's notion (well-founded actually) that he is somehow too late, too soon, or that he has too much stuff going on or not enough. For the garden is the stage on which the gardener exults and agonizes out every crest and chasm of the heart.

  Henry Mitchell

  Beautiful, Spring, Heart

  Henry Mitchell (2003). “The Essential Earthman: Henry Mitchell on Gardening”, p.17, Indiana University Press

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• Our modern Western culture only recognises the first of these, freedom of desires. It then worships such a freedom by enshrining it at the forefront of national constituitions and bills of human rights. One can say that the underlying creed of most Western democracies is to protect their people's freedom to realise their desires, as far as this is possible. It is remarkable that in such countries people do not feel very free. The second kind of freedom, freedom from desires, is celebrated only in some religious communities. It celebrates contentment, peace that is free from desires.

  Ajahn Brahm

  Country, Religious, Buddhist

  110 Copy quote

• A characteristic of those who are still progressing in blessed mourning is temperance and silence of the lips; and of those who have made progress - freedom from anger and patient endurance of injuries; and of the perfect - humility, thirst for dishonors, voluntary craving for involuntary afflictions, non- condemnation of sinners, compassion even beyond one's strength. The first are acceptable, the second laudable; but blessed are those who hunger for hardship and thirst for dishonor, for they shall be filled with the food whereof there can be no satiety.

  John Climacus

  Blessed, Humility, Compassion

  Saint John (Climacus) (1959). “The Ladder of Divine Ascent”

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• If you've been married for 400 years, as I have, it's nice to experience first love again and you can vicariously through a book.

  E. L. James

  Nice, Book, First Love

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• It's like trying to describe what you feel when you're standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon or remembering your first love or the birth of your child. You have to be there to really know what it's like.

  Harrison Schmitt

  Children, First Love, Trying

  35 Copy quote

• When it comes to physicians there is a common thread that is a major barrier to solving our concerns. We are divided. The result is a divide and conquer scenario, in which we negotiate as adversaries, first with government and then with one another about our relative worth, while the "conqueror" observes and continues to rule.

  Brian Day

  Health, Government, Common Threads

  4 Copy quote

• It is impossible not to feel stirred at the thought of the emotions of man at certain historic moments of adventure and discovery - Columbus when he first saw the Western shore, Pizarro when he stared at the Pacific Ocean, Franklin when the electric spark came from the string of his kite, Galileo when he first turned his telescope to the heavens. Such moments are also granted to students in the abstract regions of thought, and high among them must be placed the morning when Descartes lay in bed and invented the method of co-ordinate geometry.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Morning, Ocean, Adventure

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• One appreciates that daily life is really good when one wakes from a horrible dream, or when one takes the first outing after a sickness. Why not realize it now?

  William Lyon Phelps

  Dream, Appreciation, Appreciate

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• Understanding God is not attained by calling into session all arguments for and against Him, in order to debate whether He is a reality or a figment of the mind. God cannot be sensed as a second thought, as an explanation of the origin of the universe. He is either the first and the last, or just another concept.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Atheist, Reality, Understanding God

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1976). “God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism”, p.120, Macmillan

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• The triumph can't be had without the struggle. And I know what struggle is. I have spent a lifetime trying to share what it has meant to be a woman first in the world of sports so that other young women have a chance to reach their dreams.

  Wilma Rudolph

  Motivational, Sports, Dream

  68 Copy quote

• If at first you don't succeed, lie, lie again.

  Laurence J. Peter

  Inspirational, Funny, Success

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• The worst things in history have happened when people stop thinking for themselves, especially when they allow themselves to be influenced by negative people. That's what gives rise to dictators. Avoid that at all costs. Stop it first on a personal level, and you will have contributed to world sanity as well as your own.

  Donald Trump

  Thinking, People, Giving

  136 Copy quote

• You have two gardens: your own garden and that of your beloved. First, you have to take care of your own garden and master the art of gardening. In each one of us there are flowers and there is also garbage. The garbage is the anger, fear, discrimination, and jealousy within us. If you water the garbage, you will strengthen the negative seeds. If you water the flowers of compassion, understanding, and love, you will strengthen the positive seeds. What you grow is up to you.

  Nhat Hanh

  Art, Buddhist, Flower

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• Stories first heard standing at a mother's knee, are never wholly forgotten, — a little spring that never quite dries up in our journey through scorching years.

  Giovanni Ruffini

  Mom, Mother, Stories

  "Doctor Antonio: a tale of Italy".

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• I've never done anything for money. My first love is things of limited commercial appeal. I could be happy doing Shakespeare for the rest of my life.

  Karen Allen

  First Love, Love Is, Done

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• The great thing and the hard thing is to stick to things when you have outlived the first interest, and not yet got the second, which comes with a sort of mastery.

  Janet Erskine Stuart

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

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• Act after having made assessments. The one who first knows the measure of far and near wins - this is the rule of armed struggle.

  Sun Tzu

  War, Struggle, Winning

  Sun Tzu (2005). “The Art of War”, p.123, Shambhala Publications

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• Fourthly, the way of the artisan. The way of the carpenter is to become proficient in the use of his tools, first to lay his plans with true measure and then perform his work according to plan. Thus he passes through life.

  Miyamoto Musashi

  War, Tools, Use

  Miyamoto Musashi, Victor Harris (2007). “A Book of Five Rings: With the Unfettered Mind”

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