End

For other uses, see Ends.

An End or Ending, in general use, is the termination of something, whether that something is an object, action, effort, story or a life. In philosophy and ethics, an end is the ultimate goal in a series of steps.

• End, begin, all the same. Big change. Sometimes good, sometimes bad.
  • Aughra, voiced by Billie Whitelaw in The Dark Crystal (1982), directed by Jim Henson and Frank Oz.

• What one needs to do at every moment of one's life is to put an end to the old world and to begin a new world.
  • Nikolai Berdyaev, The Beginning and the End (194).

• END, n. The position farthest removed on either hand from the Interlocutor.
  • Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

• Like the legend of the Phoenix
  All ends with beginnings
  What keeps the planets spinning (uh)
  The force from the beginning.
  • Daft Punk Random Access Memories Get Lucky

• The only true ending is death. Any other movie ending is arbitrary.
  • Roger Ebert, qtd.in Opposable Thumbs (2023)

• A bad beginning makes a bad ending.
  • EuripidesÆolus, Frag. 32.

• Et redit in nihilum quod fuit ante nihil.
  • It began of nothing and in nothing it ends.
  • Cornelius Gallus, translated by Robert Burton in Anatomy of a Melancholie (1621).

• A morning Sun, and a Wine-bred child, and a Latin-bred woman seldom end well.
  • George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum (1651).

• There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.
  • Frank Herbert interview, 3 February 1969, California State College, Fullerton.

• These struggles have got to result in happy endings for all, and the readers must learn not to worship tragedy as the highest art any more.
  • 1990 interview in Conversations with Maxine Hong Kingston edited by Paul Skenazy and Tera Martin (1998)

• Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
  Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
  But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
  When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!
  • Rudyard Kipling, The Ballad of East and West.

• This is The End; my only friend, The End.
  • Jim Morrison, "The End", The Doors (recorded August 1966; released January 4, 1967).

• All's well that ends well; still the fine's the crown;
  Whate'er the course, the end is the renown.
  • William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well (1600s), Act IV, scene 4, line 35. Finis coronat opus. Proverb in Lehmann's Florilegium Politicum, etc. (1630). La Fin courronnera le tout. French saying.

• The end crowns all;
  And that old common arbitrator, Time,
  Will one day end it.
  • William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602), Act IV, scene 5, line 224.

• The end will show the whole truth.
  • William the Silent, To his brother Louis, commenting on The Count of Egmont's visit to Philip II about the problems in the Netherlands, 1565, as quoted in William the Silent (1902) by Frederic Harrison, p. 22.

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 220-21.

• Whatsoever thou takest in hand, remember the end, and thou shalt never do amiss.
  • Ecclesiasticus, VII. 36.

• Finem respice (or Respice finem).
  • Have regard to the end.
  • Translation of Chilo's saying.

• He who has put a good finish to his undertaking is said to have placed a golden crown to the whole.
  • Eustathius, Commentary on the Iliad.

• Si finis bonus est, totum bonum erit.
  • If the end be well, all will be well.
  • Gestæ Romanorum, Tale LXVII.

• It is the end that crowns us, not the fight.
  • Robert Herrick, Hesperides, 340.

• Having well polished the whole bow, he added a golden tip.
  • Homer, The Iliad, Book IV, III.

• En toute chose il faut considérer la fin.
  • We ought to consider the end in everything.
  • Jean de La Fontaine, Fables, III. 5.

• Et le chemin est long du projet à la chose.
  • The road is long from the project to its completion.
  • Molière, Le Tartuffe (1664), III. 1.

• The end must justify the means.
  • Matthew Prior, Hans Carvel, line 67.

• Par les mêmes voies on ne va pas toujours aux mêmes fins.
  • By the same means we do not always arrive at the same ends.
  • St. Real.

• Look to the end of a long life.
  • Solon's words to Crœsus.

• It is commonly and truly also said: "Matters be ended as they be friended."
  • Thomas Starkey, England in the Reign of Henry VIII, Book I, Chapter III. 33.

• Beginning