#commence

I have commenced my auspicious reign and am in quiet possession of the Presidential Mansion... this winter I intend to do something in the way of entertaining that shall be the admiration and talk of all Washington world. ↗

— Julia Gardiner Tyler

#am #commenced #entertaining #i #intend

All the gestures of children are graceful; the reign of distortion and unnatural attitudes commences with the introduction of the dancing master. ↗

— Joshua Reynolds

#children #commences #dancing #distortion #gestures

There stands no contradiction between giving voice to legitimate anxiety and at the same time, as and when exchange of fire commences, looking to the rest of the country, as well as all of us in the House, to give full moral support to our forces. ↗

— Charles Kennedy

#between #commences #contradiction #country #exchange

The whole of that part of Southern Africa which is controlled by racial minorities is experiencing either consistent and regular guerilla activity or is faced with advanced preparation for its commencement. ↗

— Joe Slovo

#advanced #africa #commencement #consistent #controlled

It is evident that in the period designated as that of the kings, when Rome commenced her career of conquest, she was, for that time and country, a great and wealthy city. ↗

— Goldwin Smith

#city #commenced #conquest #country #designated

Commencement speeches were invented largely in the belief that outgoing college students should never be released into the world until they have been properly sedated. ↗

— Garry Trudeau

#belief #college #college students #commencement #into

Unlike any other creature on this planet, human beings can learn and understand without having experienced. They can think themselves into other peoples’ places. Of course, this is a power like my brand of fictional magic that is morally neutral. One might use such a power to manipulate or control, just as much as to understand or sympathize. And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or peer inside cages. They can close their hearts and minds to any suffering that does not touch them personally. They can refuse to know. I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think that they have any fewer nightmares than I do. ↗

— J.K. Rowling

#jk-rowling #experience

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life. You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default. ↗

— J.K. Rowling

#harvard-commencement-speech #life

Education commences at the mother's knee, and every word spoken within hearsay of little children tends toward the formation of character. ↗

— Hosea Ballou

#children #commences #education #every #formation