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Those who will not start, will never finish. (Jack Adams)
Take us back to the beginning again... (Daniela Andersen)
Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending. (Anonymous)
With every rising of the sun, think of your life as just begun. (Anonymous)
Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can. (Arthur Ashe)
When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love. (Marcus Aurelius)
When we start out with something, we usually will try everything. But as we learn, we can pare down ideas that we find out don't matter. We're left with the essentials. (Leo Babauta)
Start a painting with fresh ideas, and then let the painting replace your ideas with its ideas. (Darby Bannard)
There is no such thing as a long piece of work, except one that you dare not start. (Charles Baudelaire)
One may start with a few color areas on the canvas; another with a myriad of lines, another with a profusion of colors... Once I sense the suggestion I begin to paint intuitively. The suggestion then becomes a phantom that must be caught and made real. (William Baziotes)
- How to Live on 24 Hours a Day...
Beware of undertaking too much at the start. Be content with quite a little. Allow for accidents. Allow for human nature, especially your own. (Arnold Bennett)
A well begun is half ended. (Arthur Christopher Benson)
First draw dog, then fleas. First paint apple, then worm holes. (Sergei Bongart)
The ultimate wisdom, which deals with beginnings, remains locked in a seed... which calls forth faith rather than reason. (Hal Borland)
Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spent the rest of the day putting the pieces together. (Ray Bradbury)
Art got its start / as a thumbprint / in the mud (Bob Brendle)
That's the horrible thing starting out, you get distracted a lot because anything is easier than writing. It's just the same enemy – blank paper. (Jimmy Breslin)
It was a dark and stormy night... (Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton)
I was always an early riser. Happy the man who is! Every morning day comes to him with a virgin's love, full of bloom and freshness. The youth of nature is contagious, like the gladness of a happy child. (Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton)
In every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment. (Thomas Carlyle)
Begin at the beginning... and go on till you come to the end: then stop. (Lewis Carroll)
Man starts over again everyday, in spite of all he knows, against all he knows. (Emile M. Cioran)
If you really don't know where to start or if you're stuck, start generating random connections and allow your intuition to tell you if one might lead somewhere interesting. (John Cleese)
The birds they sing at break of day, 'Start again...' I hear them say. (Leonard Cohen)
Take the first step, and your mind will mobilize all its forces to your aid. But the first essential is that you begin. Once the battle is started, all that is within and without you will come to your assistance. (Robert Collier)
-on beginning a painting...
Give something to everything, then give everything to something. (Jim Crow)
A great flame follows a little spark. (Dante)
It takes a lot more energy to start a painting than it takes to finish up... Pastel is a fast medium and I take advantage of the energy and intuition to get out of the gate fast. (Paul deMarrais)
All paintings start out of a mood, out of a relationship with things or people, out of a complete visual impression. (Richard Diebenkorn)
I don't go into the studio with the idea of 'saying' something. What I do is face the blank canvas and put a few arbitrary marks on it that start me on some sort of dialogue. (Richard Diebenkorn)
The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing. (Walt Disney)
Don't hesitate to paint intense color from the start. It is far easier to subdue a color later than to make a weak lifeless area come alive again. (Jeanne Dobie)
Now you know that you can't go wrong... If you start each day with a song. (Jimmy Durante)
'We must do something' is the unanimous refrain. 'You begin' is the deadening refrain. (Walter Dwight)
Be willing to be a beginner every single morning. (Meister Johann Eckhart)
What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. (T. S. Eliot)
Every moment is a fresh beginning. (T. S. Eliot)
Every artist was first an amateur. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
The great majority of men are bundles of beginnings. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
I succeeded in simply attending at the birth of all my works. (Max Ernst)
Let me arise and open the gate, / to breathe the wild warm air of the heath... (Violet Fane)
So many artists forget the beginner's mind philosophy. This is all-important for artists as this allows ideas to percolate without judgment of what is right or wrong. (Gwen Fox)
When I started out, there were a lot of things I knew I couldn't do, and a lot of things I only found out I couldn't do by going and doing it. And no-one was watching, and nobody cared. (Neil Gaiman)
The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy. (John Galsworthy)
Without delay I began work, without hesitation and all of a fever. (Paul Gauguin)
Know that to begin is often better than to think. (Robert Genn)
Start with the foreground. Compositions fail when the foreground is treated as an afterthought. (Robert Genn)
Remember the importance of phrases... a piece of something, an entry, a moment, a mark. This adjusts the pressure of the giant task of creating the perfect masterwork. (Sara Genn)
Iaculis dignissim! - Grab the brush! (Kjerkius Gennius, 36BC)
Remember that you're nothing but a beginner - even if you've been working on your craft for fifty years. We are all just beginners here, and we shall all die beginners. (Elizabeth Gilbert)
Every beginning is cheerful. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
Boldness has genius, power and magic. Engage, and the mind grows heated. Begin, and the work will be completed. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
Starting a painting is starting an argument in terms of canvas and paint. (John Graham)
When painting outdoors, sit on your hands and look before starting. (Irwin Greenberg)
To paint is always to start at the beginning again, yet being unable to avoid the familiar arguments about what you see yourself painting. (Philip Guston)
Don't get hung up on details right away. First bake your cake and then add the icing. (Tony van Hasselt)
It is so hard and long before a student comes to a realization that these [first] few large simple spots in right relations are the most important things in the study of painting. They are the fundamentals of all painting. (Charles Hawthorne)
I generally 'see' the finished work before I start and carry it around in my head for weeks, or longer, before beginning a painting. (Janet Hayes)
Nothing, of course, begins at the time you think it did. (Lillian Hellman)
As long as you can start, you are all right. The juice will come. (Ernest Hemingway)
In search for the perfect beginning. (Robert Henri)
I must always have a clear image of the form of a work before I begin. Otherwise there is no impulse to create. (Barbara Hepworth)
First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination. (Napoleon Hill)
There's always something you missed or something you didn't notice or somehow you got wrong... I don't really have a beginning. (Damien Hirst)
Each morning is the open door to a new world - new vistas, new aims, new tryings. (Leigh Mitchell Hodges)
He has the deed half done who has made a beginning. (Horace)
- The Book of Questions...
One rose is enough for the dawn. (Edmond Jabes)
Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome. (Samuel Johnson)
Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable. (Franz Kafka)
An empty canvas, apparently really empty, that says nothing and is without significance – almost dull, in fact – in reality, is crammed with thousands of undertone tensions and full of expectancy. Slightly apprehensive lest it should be outraged. (Wassily Kandinsky)
Sometimes it takes me days or weeks to get something clear in my head on what I want to do. Everything is in steps. One thing leads to another. (Alex Katz)
There is an old saying 'well begun is half done' – 'tis a bad one. I would use instead – Not begun at all until half done. (John Keats)
When I start a story, I don't know where it's going. (Stephen King)
You don't have to see the top of the staircase to take the first step. (Martin Luther King, Jr.)
It is a great difficulty and a great necessity to have to start with the smallest. (Paul Klee)
I must begin, not with hypothesis, but with specific instances, no matter how minute. (Paul Klee)
Don't wait until you know who you are to get started. (Austin Kleon)
I see the canvas and I begin... It's a necessary evil to get into the work, and it's pretty marvelous to be able to get out of it. (Willem de Kooning)
In nothingness, there is everything, energy. The ending is a beginning. (Jiddu Krishnamurti)
The most difficult stage is getting started. (George Kubac)
But usually I begin things through a drawing, so a lot of things are worked out in the drawing. But even then, I still allow for and want to make changes. (Roy Lichtenstein)
I rarely begin a work with any clear or predetermined idea as to how the work should look. Even when I do, I seldom find the completed work matching up with the original projection. (Noyes Capehart Long)
It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun. (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
In creating, the only hard thing's to begin; A grassblade's no easier to make than an oak. (James Russell Lowell)
Greatly begin! Though thou have time / But for a line, be that sublime... (James Russell Lowell)
The first beginnings of things cannot be distinguished by the eye. (Lucretius)
So what's a 'start' anyway?... You reduce everything to its basic masses of color... You keep adjusting the masses... judging one color against another. (Jeff Mahorney)
When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love - then make that day count. (Steve Maraboli)
Give the paint a chance. Give the brush a chance. (John Marin)
'Blind energy' is a good thing. When one begins to paint, everything you know should disappear and the emotional side should take over. (Jeanean Songco Martin)
Starting to paint, I felt gloriously free, quiet, and alone. (Henri Matisse)
My perfect day is sitting in a room with some blank paper. That's heaven. That's gold, and anything else is just a waste of time. (Cormac McCarthy)
If you start a painting and you don't like where it's going, don't give up on it. Just keep going and follow through. You might be surprised how it ends up. (Andrew McDermott)
I usually start by doing one or more color studies of the subject on a piece of canvas taped to cardboard. (Mary Beth McKenzie)
I start every painting by asking myself one essential question, 'Is this a powerful image?' (Suzanne McWhinnie)
I sometimes set myself thinking and imagining that I find amongst men but one single art or science, and that is drawing or painting, all others being members proceeding therefrom. (Michelangelo)
My son's a painter. All through school his teachers tell him he's a genius. I tell him to paint me an apple that looks like an apple before he paints me one that doesn't. Go where you can go, but start from someplace recognizable. (Charles Mingus)
Making art is near akin to singing in a choir... The beginning of each new work is like turning the page of a music book and finding a fresh song - full of rich and virgin melody... (Brad Michael Moore)
For a sailor to sail around the world, the thought is just, sometimes, too much. Thus, one simply goes from port to port in the same direction. (Hal Moore)
The important thing is somehow to begin. (Henry Moore)
Rather than starting inside, I start outside and reach the mental through the physical. (Jim Morrison)
I always get up and make a cup of coffee while it is still dark - it must be dark - and then I drink the coffee and watch the light come... For me, light is the signal in the transition. It's not being in the light, it's being there before it arrives. (Toni Morrison)
I take the first colour that feels right to start a painting with no thought of where it's being applied. That first colour sets the mood for the rest of the painting. (Alfred Muma)
The artist picks up the brush to an empty canvas, only to push forward the color of the mosiac that will be. ('Namaste' Maggie Murphy)
Each painting has a promise implicit in its beginnings – make the finished work fulfill that promise. (Michael Nevin)
There is no such thing as starting where Cezanne left off. You have to start where he started... at the beginning. (Kimon Nicolaides)
Do not grasp the brush before the spirit and the thoughts are concentrated. (Anonymous Chinese painter)
The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first. (Blaise Pascal)
Unlike usual oil paint practice, the first stroke of my brush adds the lightest light, and from there I work backwards to the darkest dark. (Neil Patterson)
All beginnings are involuntary. (Fernando Pessoa)
Mark making is the beginning of it all. (Jo Petty)
There are always twenty excellent reasons for doing nothing for every one reason for starting anything - especially if it has never been done before. (Prince Philip)
One never knows what one is going to do. One starts a painting and then it becomes something quite else. It is remarkable how little the 'willing' of the artist intervenes. (Pablo Picasso)
Every moment of our life can be the beginning of great things. (Joseph Pilates)
The beginning is the most important part of the work. (Plato)
All works of art should begin... at the end. (Edgar Allan Poe)
Often nothing good is accomplished at the first attack. One takes a rest; and then all of a sudden the decisive idea presents itself to the mind. (Henri Poincare)
All beginnings are hard. (Chaim Potok)
It is better to begin in the evening than not at all. (English proverb)
Well begun is half done. (Italian proverb)
Such a beginning, such an end. (Latin proverb)
Your present circumstances don't determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start. (Nido Qubein)
Even from a dark night songs of beauty can be born. (Maryanne Radmacher-Hershey)
It was told in the Bible. A man fell. He bit into knowledge and fell... How do you fall without falling completely? What do you bring as knowledge to a blank canvas? How do you begin? (Milton Resnick)
So they imply that I do not know what I want to represent, or how to begin; that I have only highly imprecise and invariably false ideas of the motif that I am to make into a picture; and therefore that - motivated as I am solely by ignorance and frivolity - I am in a position to start. (Gerhard Richter)
When I begin a painting I always hope to complete it in a few strokes, starting with the first colours I daub down anywhere and anyhow. But it never works, so I add more, without realizing it. (Jean-Paul Riopelle)
Never begin the day until it is finished on paper. (Jim Rohn)
When things become peculiar, frustrating and strange, I think it's a good time to start painting. (James Rosenquist)
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you; Don't go back to sleep. (Rumi)
After you've painted a couple of thousand paintings, then you can begin. (Carl Rungius)
We can maintain the freshness of beginning, of being brought to a sense of awe in every moment by dropping expectation. (Linda Saccoccio)
Dawn itself is the most neglected masterpiece of the modern world. (R. Murray Schafer)
Whenever I can, I paint the powerful and obvious things in my subject first. (Richard Schmid)
A blank canvas is a universal foundation on which can be built a palace or an outhouse. (Ian Semple)
The beginning is always today. (Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
Periods when a creative makes the most attempts will be when the most hits and misses appear. (Dean Keith Simonton)
The first lines put on an empty canvas begin to divide its proportions and surface into different picture areas. Not only do these lines block in different forms but they also suggest movement and direction in the picture. (Ted Smuskiewicz)
Each goodly thing is hardest to begin. (Edmund Spenser)
You know... that a blank wall is an appalling thing to look at. The wall of a museum – a canvas – a piece of film – or a guy sitting in front of a typewriter. Then, you start out to do something – that vague thing called creation. The beginning strikes awe within you. (Edward Steichen)
- b.AD 56 d.AD 117...
All enterprises that are entered into with indiscreet zeal may be pursued with great vigor at first, but are sure to collapse in the end. (Tacitus)
Only that day dawns to which we are awake. (Henry David Thoreau)
When you think you have reached an end point, stop and take a breath, and then take another look at where you are – you might see you're actually at a beginning you didn't know was there. (Sandy Triolo)
Easy is right. Begin right, and you will be easy. Continue easy and you are right... The right way to go easy is to forget the right way, and forget that the going is easy. (Chuang Tzu)
We will be judged by what we finish, not by what we start! (Author unknown)
Each morning my characters greet me with misty faces willing, though chilled, to muster for another day's progress through the dazzling quicksand, the marsh of blank paper. (John Updike)
Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day. (John Updike)
Look with favour upon a bold beginning. (Virgil)
The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days. (Voltaire)
Try to paint one object at first, with larger and fewer brush strokes. (Van Waldron)
Carry the beginning to the last stroke. (Kevin Weckbach)
All serious daring starts from within. (Eudora Welty)
For what human ill does not dawn seem to be an alleviation? (Thornton Wilder)
To begin, begin. (William Wordsworth)
Well begun is half done. That which comes slow comes solid. (Maharishi Mahesh Yogi)
You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great. (Zig Ziglar)
-on Edouard Manet...
In beginning a picture, he could never say how it would come out. (Emile Zola)
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