Great Throughts Treasury

"Whoever has the symbol has thereby the beginning of the spiritual idea; symbol and reality together furnish the whole." - Odo Casel, aka Johannes Casel

"Is there any doctrine of immortality that can say anything more simple yet definitive about man’s fate after death? He has come from God and returns to God. From the very beginning, man is bound up with God; and this bond continues to exist, unaffected by death which befalls the body only. God’s creation of man’s spirit, then, must be understood as a principle whose consequence is immortality." - Hermann Cohen

"The fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the death of wisdom. Skepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom." -

"[To reporters at beginning of news conference] I am ready for the questions to my answers." -

"Love is the emblem of eternity: it confounds all notion of time: effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end." - Madame de Staël, Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein, born Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Madame Necker

"The Good must be the beginning and the end even of all evil things. For the Good is the final Purpose of all things, good and bad alike." - Dionysius the Areopagite, aka Saint Dionysius the Areopagite NULL

"The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom." - William O. Douglas, fully Judge William Orville Douglas

"A passionate translation of the Sh’ma: Sh’ma: listen, or wake up. Yisroel: you who seek to understand and connect with God. Adonai: the Eternal One who has been present since the beginning of time and who expresses love and wisdom by entering our hearts and our world as Eloheynu: our God. Adonai Ekhad: this Eternal energy is the unity within and between all things." - Leonard Felder

"The end of passion is the beginning of repentance." -

"Reverence for God is the beginning of wisdom." - Emmet Fox

"A sense of purpose and fulfillment is the single strongest issue flowing out of the quest for meaning… The end of the quest for meaning is the beginning of the journey of faith. Indeed, nothing better illuminates the entire journey of life and faith, and in particular the special challenge of finishing them well, than the issue of purpose." - Os Guiness

"Life is a journey, a voyage, a quest, a pilgrimage, a personal odyssey, and we’re all at some unknown point between the beginning and the end of it… The humanness of life as a journey is something we should all care enough about to seek to make sense of it and to make up our minds for ourselves." - Os Guiness

"Moderate effort over a long time is important, no matter what you are trying to do. One brings failure upon oneself by working extremely hard at the beginning, attempting to do too much, and then giving up after a short time." -

"In the beginning the church was a fellowship of men and women centering on the living Christ. Then the church moved to Greece, where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome, where it became an institution. Next it moved to Europe, where it became a culture, and, finally, it moved to America, where it became an enterprise." - Richard Halverson, fully Richard Christian Halverson

"It is dangerous to take human freedom for granted, to regard it as a prerogative rather than as an obligation, as an ultimate fact rather than as an ultimate goal. It is the beginning of wisdom to be amazed at the facts of our being free." - Abraham Joshua Heschel

"It is the dimension of time wherein man meets God, wherein man becomes aware that every instant is an act of creation, a Beginning, opening up new roads for ultimate realizations. Time is the presence of God in the world of space, and it is within time that we are able to sense the unity of all beings." - Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The beginning of faith is not a feeling for the mystery of living or a sense of awe, wonder, or fear. The root of religion is the question what to do with the feeling for the mystery of living, what to do with awe, wonder, or fear. Religion, the end of isolation, begins with a consciousness that something is asked of us. It is in that tense, eternal asking in which the soul is caught and in which man’s answer is elicited." - Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The grandeur of nature is only the beginning. Beyond the Grandeur is God." - Abraham Joshua Heschel

"Things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for the transcendence, for the reference everywhere to mystery beyond all things. It enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal." - Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The transformation from non-living to living requires two steps. First, environmental sources must provide the energy needed to add an atom or two (also taken from the environment) to a molecular complex. The second step, the process is reversed; the added atoms and energy have to be returned to the environment – otherwise nothing more than a chemical activity is occurring. Thus, right at life’s beginning, natural selection seems inevitable." - David Hockey

"He has half the deed done who has made a beginning." -

"Before the beginning of great brilliance, there must be chaos. Before a brilliant person begins something great, they must look foolish in the crowd." - I Ching, Book of Changes or Zhouyi NULL

"If the universe is running down like a clock, the clock must have been wound up at a date which we could name if we knew it. The world, if it is to have an end in time, must have had a beginning in time" - William Ralph Inge

"Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter - not of course our individual minds, but the mind in which the atoms out of which our individual minds have grown exist as thought." -

"While the right to talk may be the beginning of freedom, the necessity of listening is what makes the right important." -

"Vanity is the beginning of corruption." - Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

"We are always beginning to live, but we are never living." -

"Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather fear that it shall never have a beginning." - John Henry Newman, aka Cardinal Newman and Blessed John Henry Newman

"Life is not completed in a single life span; it cannot but pass on its impulses if the chain of life is traced back into the past, one does not come to a beginning, and if one follows it into the future, one generation follows the next, and no end is ever found." - Tsung Ping or Zong Bing, style name as Zong Shaowen

"Everything is small at the beginning and then increases, except trouble, which is great at its beginning and then decreases." - Arab Proverbs

"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity." - Gilda Radner, fully Gilda Susan Radner

"Mankind will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation. The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living. What we lack is not a will to believe but a will to wonder." - Fritz A. Rothschild

"The relation of existence to time is characterized by two polar elements: temporality and uninterruptedness. Existence is evanescent and always faces the prospect of annihilation, of being thrown out of the stream of time, yet it also exhibits some degree of permanence as the continuous duration in time. Without an element of constancy there could be no permanence within temporality and no knowledge of reality, since our categories of reason are “mirrors, in which the things are reflected in the light of their constancy… Things perish within time, while time itself is everlasting… The present moment is not a terminal but a signal of beginning, an act of creation." - Fritz A. Rothschild

"Time is the presence of God in the world of space, and it is within time that we are able to sense the unity of all beings… Every instant is an act of creation. A moment is not a terminal but a flash, a signal of Beginning. Time is perpetual innovation, a synonym for continuous creation. Time is God’s gift to the world of space." - Fritz A. Rothschild

"It is precisely the conflict between the good or divine principle, on the one hand, and the evil or adverse principle on the other, which constitutes the meaning of human life and human history, from the beginning to the end of time." - Karl Wilheim Friedrich Schlegel, later Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel

"The usual conception of God as one single being outside of the world and behind the world is not the beginning and the end of religion. It is only one manner of expressing God, seldom entirely pure and always inadequate." - Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher

"It is said: “When a mountain is piled up, the first basket of earth is the beginning of the end… and when one travels, the first step is the beginning of the arrival.”" - Seng-Chao or Sengzhao NULL

"As for the necessity of coining new names for God, it is incomprehensible that philosophy and civilization can be enriched by ceasing to think of God as Life, Truth, Beauty, and Love, and beginning to think of Him as a blind and whirling space-time configuration dancing dizzily in an Einstein universe, plunging forward along a path of which He is ignorant, toward a goal of which He knows nothing whatever." - Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen

"The sun exactly at noon is exactly at the beginning to go down. And a creature when he is born is exactly beginning to die." - Hui Shi or Huizi

"Love is the emblem of eternity: it confounds all notion of time, effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end." -

"It is possible to believe that all the past is but the beginning of a beginning, and that all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn. It is possible to believe that all the human mind has ever accomplished is but the dream before the awakening… We are creatures of the twilight." -

"To find God is but the beginning of wisdom, because then for all our days we have to learn his purpose with us and to live our lives with him." -

"The soul after death goes nowhere where it has not been from the very beginning, nor does it become other than that which it has always been, the one eternal omi-present." - Yajnavalkya NULL

"In the beginning was God, today was God, tomorrow will be God. Who can make an image of God? He has no body. He is as a work which comes out of your mouth. That word! It is no more, it is past, and still it lives! So is God." - Pygmy Prayer NULL

"The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; by doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth." - Pierre Abelard, aka Abailard or Abaelard or Habalaarz

"Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust - we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible player." - Albert Einstein

"Human history begins with man's act of disobedience which is at the very same time the beginning of his freedom and development of his reason." -

"Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I shall have the belief that I can do it. I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it, even if I may not have it at the beginning." -

"He has half the deed done who has made a beginning." -

"It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome." - William James