Top 500 Firsts Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “Humility is first, second and third in Christianity.”

— Saint Augustine

252. “For the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed so brotherly, made me realize that I’d been happy, and that I was happy still.”

— Albert Camus

253. “The cultivation of a hobby and new forms of interest is a policy of first importance to a public man.”

— Winston Churchill

254. “Life is like a parachute jump, you’ve got to get it right the first time.”

— Eleanor Roosevelt

255. “Just as the sand-dunes, heaped one upon another, hide each the first, so in life the former deeds are quickly hidden by those that follow after.”

— Marcus Aurelius

256. “Any business plan won’t survive its first encounter with reality. The reality will always be different. It will never be the plan.”

— Jeff Bezos

257. “Which of all my important nothings shall I tell you first?”

— Jane Austen

258. “If you have the courage to touch life for the first time, you will never know what hit you. Everything man has thought, felt and experienced is gone, and nothing is put in its place.”

— U.G. Krishnamurti

259. “When you’re in a startup, the first ten people will determine whether the company succeeds or not.”

— Steve Jobs

260. “Reason is the first victim of strong emotion.”

— Frank Herbert

Also featured in: Strong Quotes

261. “Count the cost first. Don’t pay too big a price for pursuing minor values.”

— Jim Rohn

262. “A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows.”

— William James

263. “Understanding is the basis of care. What you would take care of you must first understand, whether it be a petunia or a nation.”

— Dallas Willard

264. “Ah, yes. I remember my first beer.”

— Steve Martin

265. “First be a good animal.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

266. “Faith and works should travel side by side, step answering to step, like the legs of men walking. First faith, and then works; and then faith again, and then works again – until they can scarcely distinguish which is the one and which is the other.”

— William Booth

267. “The first half of my life I went to school, the second half of my life I got an education.”

— Mark Twain

268. “I wish the first word I ever said was the word quote, so right before I die I could say unquote.”

— Steven Wright

269. “Once you have missed the first buttonhole, you’ll never manage to button up.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

270. “No science ever defends its first principles.”

— Aristotle

271. “Staying in touch with contacts is as important as getting them in the first place.”

— Harvey MacKay

272. “There must be a first mover existing above all – and this we call God.”

— Thomas Aquinas

273. “I must have no fear of failure. It was my fear of failure that first kept me from attempting the Master Work.”

— Paulo Coelho

274. “My whole life has been spent waiting for an epiphany, a manifestation of God’s presence, the kind of transcendent, magical experience that lets you see your place in the big picture. And that is what I had with my first compost heap.”

— Bette Midler

275. “If you don’t first handle fear and desire, and you get rich, you’ll only be a high-paid slave.”

— Robert T. Kiyosaki

276. “We all go about longing for love: it is the first need of our natures, the loudest cry of our hearts.”

— George Bernard Shaw

277. “At first opposites attract. Then opposites attack.”

— Rick Warren

278. “If in the first act you introduce a gun, by the third act you have to use it.”

— Anton Chekhov

279. “When people tell a lie about something, they have to make up a bunch of lies to go with the first one. ‘Mythomania’ is the word for it.”

— Haruki Murakami

280. “I was the first one in the gym, and the last one to leave.”

— Muhammad Ali

281. “Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing.”

— Victor Hugo

282. “Man is guided by the stomach. He walks and the stomach goes first and the head afterwards. Have you not seen that? It will take ages for the head to go first.”

— Swami Vivekananda

283. “No one whose first concern is feeling good can be a disciple. We are called to carry a cross and to glorify God.”

— Elisabeth Elliot

284. “The human capacity for burden is like bamboo- far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance.”

— Jodi Picoult

285. “Oh darling, don’t be bitter. It’s the first instinct of the weak.”

— Sarah Dessen

286. “There is little sense in attempting to change external conditions, you must first change inner beliefs, then outer conditions will change accordingly.”

— Bryan Adams

287. “Every individual has the power to change his or her material or financial status by first changing the nature of his or her beliefs.”

— Napoleon Hill

288. “The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.”

— Saint Augustine

289. “There is no greater invitation to love than loving first.”

— Saint Augustine

290. “The first time that she spread her legs for him it had been like opening her jaws for the dentist.”

— Tom Robbins

291. “Sometimes, when everyone else is waiting for someone else to take the first step, you need to be the one to drive the change.”

— Robin S. Sharma

292. “An educated person must learn to act justly, beginning, first of all, with his thoughts, then later in his deeds. That is what it means to be educated.”

— Pramoedya Ananta Toer

293. “Whatever you want others to be, first be that yourself. Then, you will find others responding in like manner to you.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

294. “My first popular book, ‘A Brief History of Time,’ aroused a great deal of interest, but many found it difficult to understand.”

— Stephen Hawking

Also featured in: Book Quotes

295. “The recognition of the sanctity of the life of every man is the first and only basis of all morality.”

— Leo Tolstoy

296. “How to begin to educate a child. First rule: leave him alone. Second rule: leave him alone. Third rule: leave him alone. That is the whole beginning.”

— D. H. Lawrence

297. “Having not said anything the first time, it was somehow even more difficult to broach the subject the second time around.”

— Douglas Adams

298. “The Vedanta teaches men to have faith in themselves first.”

— Swami Vivekananda

299. “Would you like an adventure now, or would like to have your tea first?”

— James M. Barrie

300. “First open your heart, then open your Bible.”

— Rick Warren