The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.
T. S. Eliot

My first recollection is that of a bugle call.
Douglas MacArthur

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
P. J. O'Rourke

Man's love is of man's life a part; it is a woman's whole existence. In her first passion, a woman loves her lover, in all the others all she loves is love.
Lord Byron

Adversity is the first path to truth.
Lord Byron

The poor dog, in life the firmest friend. The first to welcome, foremost to defend.
Lord Byron

The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines - so they should go as far as possible from home to build their first buildings.
Frank Lloyd Wright

"Think simple" as my old master used to say - meaning reduce the whole of its parts into the simplest terms, getting back to first principles.
Frank Lloyd Wright

The first hundred years are the hardest.
Wilson Mizner

Life's a tough proposition, and the first hundred years are the hardest.
Wilson Mizner

During the first period of a man's life the greatest danger is not to take the risk.
Soren Kierkegaard

Born again?! No, I'm not. Excuse me for getting it right the first time.
Dennis Miller

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.
Epictetus

First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.
Epictetus

No greater thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.
Epictetus

Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig. I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.
Epictetus

Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.
Epictetus

Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.
Blaise Pascal

If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?
Blaise Pascal

A person is always startled when he hears himself called old for the first time.
Oliver Wendell Holmes