Preface Quotes

1. "Their story, as the Delany sisters like to say, is not meant as "black" or "women's" history, but American history. It belongs to all of us. (From the Preface of "Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years)"
Author: Amy Hill Hearth

2. "I write for the beauty of the printed word"from PREFACE to BIPOLAR BUFFALO"
Author: Anthony Antek

3. "NOT to my contemporaries, not to my compatriots but to mankind I commit my now completed work in the confidence that it will not be without value for them, even if this should be late recognised, as is commonly the lot of what is good. For it cannot have been for the passing generation, engrossed with the delusion of the moment, that my mind, almost against my will, has uninterruptedly stuck to its work through the course of a long life.preface to the second edition of "the world as will and representation"
Author: Arthur Schopenhauer

4. "The bouquetBetween me and the worldyou are a bay, a sailthe faithful ends of a ropeyou are a fountain, a wind, a shrill childhood cry.Between me and the worldyou are a picture frame, a windowa field covered in wildflowersyou are a breath, a bed,a night that keeps the stars company.Between me and the world, you are a calendar, a compassa ray of light that slips through the gloomyou are a biographical sketch, a book marka preface that comes at the end.between me and the worldyou are a gauze curtain, a mista lamp shining in my dreamsyou are a bamboo flute, a song without wordsa closed eyelid carved in stone.Between me and the worldyou are a chasm, a poolan abyss plunging downyou are a balustrade, a walla shield's eternal pattern."
Author: Bei Dao

5. "The first effect of the mind growing cultivated is that processes once multiple get to be performed in a single act. Lazarus has called this the progressive 'condensation' of thought. ... Steps really sink from sight. An advanced thinker sees the relations of his topics is such masses and so instantaneously that when he comes to explain to younger minds it is often hard ... Bowditch, who translated and annotated Laplace's Méchanique Céleste, said that whenever his author prefaced a proposition by the words 'it is evident,' he knew that many hours of hard study lay before him."
Author: Bowditch

6. "I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."[From the Preface]"
Author: C.S. Lewis

7. "One of the most often posed questions I receive from clients and readers is: "Why is there so much evil in the world? Why is there so much violence and hate?"The answer is simple. Because we've forgotten who we are and why we are here on this planet. That answer may sound like the preface to some airy-fairy metaphysical book, but it's not. Understanding who we are is essential to living a balanced life. I am talking, of course, about the human soul."
Author: Cassandra Blizzard

8. "A preface to the first edition of "Jane Eyre" being unnecessary, I gave none: this second edition demands a few words both of acknowledgment and miscellaneous remark."
Author: Charlotte Brontë

9. "Well, " I began,"I've been roped into shenanigans."Without preface, Catcher muttered a curse ,then leaned over slipped his wallet from his jeans, and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill, which he handed to Mallory."
Author: Chloe Neill

10. "Some readers may have noticed an icy little missive from Noam Chomsky ["Letters," December 3], repudiating the very idea that he and I had disagreed on the "roots" of September 11. I rush to agree. Here is what he told his audience at MIT on October 11:I'll talk about the situation in Afghanistan.... Looks like what's happening is some sort of silent genocide.... It indicates that whatever, what will happen we don't know, but plans are being made and programs implemented on the assumption that they may lead to the death of several million people in the next—in the next couple of weeks.... very casually with no comment.... we are in the midst of apparently trying to murder three or four million people.Clever of him to have spotted that (his favorite put-down is the preface 'Turning to the facts...') and brave of him to have taken such a lonely position. As he rightly insists, our disagreements are not really political."
Author: Christopher Hitchens

11. "I never read prefaces, and it is not much good writing things just for people to skip. I wonder other authors have never thought of this."
Author: Edith Nesbit

12. "Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."[Preface to Brissot's Address to His Constituents (1794)]"
Author: Edmund Burke

13. "Universul este o cenusa în prefacere al carei rost nu-l întelege nimeni."
Author: Emil Cioran

14. "Prejudice in this country is like chapters in a book. Chapter One: Hating the Africans and Indians. Chapter Two: Don't forget the Irish. Chapter Three: Polish jokes."..... "Hispanics? Latinos? Whatever you call us? Maybe we're Chapter Fifteen or Sixteen on the East Coast, but we're the preface in the West."
Author: Emilie Richards

15. "I am a disciple of the philosopher Dionysus, and I would prefer to be even a satyr than a saint.Ecce Homo, Preface - 2"
Author: Friedrich Nietzsche

16. "In his Preface to the 1892 edition of Tess of the d'Urbervilles Hardy warns the reader that ‘a novel is an impression, not an argument'. However, the text offers several explanations of Tess's tragedy; social, psychological, hereditary, and fatalistic, all of which proceed from the assumption that Hardy's text is in some sense determined, and that the character of Tess is somehow knowable. Indeed, the tragedy of Tess is in this sense overdetermined. But it should be remembered that the character of Tess is constructed in the text from many points of observation, including that of the ambivalent narrator; constructed that is from impressions."
Author: Geoffrey Harvey

17. "PREFACE PROBLEM: Nobody reads prefaces.SOLUTION: Call the preface Chapter 1.NEW PROBLEM CREATED BY SOLUTION: Chapter 1 is boring.RESOLUTION: Throw away Chapter 1 and call Chapter 2 Chapter 1."
Author: Gerald M. Weinberg

18. "?We all share the same origin, our mothers; all of us come in at the same door. - from the preface to 'Demian"
Author: Hermann Hesse

19. "I therefore set to work, and after two and a half years of not inconsiderable labour I now have the privilege and the satisfaction of accompanying the early volumes of the series with this preface."
Author: James Loeb

20. "Generally, if you preface an interview request with, 'I'm an author writing a book,' for some reason, that seems to open a lot of doors."
Author: James Rollins

21. "All this is a preface to the fear and uncertainties which clamber over a man so that in his silly work he thinks he must be crazy because he is so alone."
Author: John Steinbeck

22. "--From "A Familiar Preface", 1912(PR,pp,19-20):"At a time when nothing which is not revolutionary in some way or other can expect to attract much attention I have not been revolutionary in my writings. The revolutionary spirit is mighty convenient in this, that it frees one from all scruples as regards ideas. Its hard, absolute optimism is repulsive to my mind by the menace of fanaticism and intolerance it contains. No doubt one should smile at these things;but, imperfect Esthete, I am no better Philosopher."
Author: Joseph Conrad

23. "The preface? Why would he waste time with the preface? Skip the preface and move on to the meat of the thing!"
Author: Kenneth Oppel

24. "Amida's unimpeded light is the sun of wisdom that destroys the mind of darkness.(Preface in Teaching, Practice, Faith, Enlightenment)"
Author: Kentetsu Takamori

25. "Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of."[From the preface.]"
Author: Kurt Vonnegut

26. "Be sure the safest rule is that we should not dare to live in any scene in which we dare not die." Lewis Carroll, Preface to Sylvie and Bruno"
Author: Lewis Carroll

27. "Not much good has ever been prefaced by variations of "Have a seat." I thought of headmasters' offices and electric chairs."
Author: Melissa Jensen

28. "[H]e looked at me gravely and asked, "Are you ready?" "No," I said. "I'm pretty sure I've never been ready for anything that had to be prefaced with that question."
Author: Mira Grant

29. "Putini vad cum suntem într-adevar, dar toti vad ce ne prefacem ca suntem."
Author: Niccolò Machiavelli

30. "Numai într-un film despre jungla am mai vazut o asemenea liniste în fata mortii. Arborii cresteau imensi, dar traiau numai cei care izbuteau sa-si faca loc cu crengile pentru a ajunge la lumina. Ceilalti mureau deoarece, deasupra, copacii victoriosi îsi uneau frunzisurile si nu mai per¬miteau nici unei raze sa coboare. Pentru ca sa apara un copac trebuia sa moara unul din cei vii. Si cu ce necrutatoare simplitate se întîmpla asta! Fara bocete si fara spaime. În golul fiecarei morti reîncepea, linistita, viata. A fost prima oara cînd m-am gîndit ca moartea este un aliment. Ca viata digera moartea si o preface în viata. Asa cum florile care cresc în noroi prefac duhoarea noroiului în parfum. Si ce daca parfumul se întoarce înapoi în duhoare? În aceasta catastrofa o alta floare îsi va deschide petalele tremurînde. Numai noi întelegem greu, din egoism, o lege pe care copacii din jungla o respecta cu o liniste de catedrala."
Author: Octavian Paler

31. "Of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde THE PREFACE The artist is the creator of beautiful"
Author: Oscar Wilde

32. "If a man were to look over the fence on one side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his left had laid his garden path round a central lawn; and were to look over the fence on the other side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his right had laid his path down the middle of the lawn, and were then to lay his own garden path diagonally from one corner to the other, that man's soul would be lost. Originality is only to be praised when not prefaced by the look to right and left."
Author: Quentin Crisp

33. "But you have friends.You have a lot of friends.What do you offer your friends to make them so supportave.What do you offer your friends to make them so supportavewhat do you offer. "...if I could remember any more of my lines I'd add themso basically this is a preface to the whole play. I would like to quote the whole play. Currently my mind is afraid to remember the play."
Author: Sarah Kane

34. "Loving is limbically distinct from in love. Loving is mutuality ; loving is synchronous attunement and modulation. As such, adult love depends critically upon knowing the other. In love demands only the brief acquaintance necessary to establish an emotional genre but does not demand that the book of the beloved's soul be perused from preface to epilogue. Loving derives from intimacy, the prolonged and detailed surveillance of a foreign soul. (207)"
Author: Thomas Lewis

35. "After all, when a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence. As Ruskin wrote in his earlier and better days, 'No weight nor mass nor beauty of execution can outweigh one grain or fragment of thought.'"—-Thomas Wentworth HigginsonPreface from "Poems" by Emily Dickinson"
Author: Thomas Wentworth Higginson

36. "A Dr van 't Hoff of the veterinary college at Utrecht... finds it a less arduous task to mount Pegasus (evidently borrowed from the veterinary school) and to proclaim in his La Chemie dans l' espace how, during his bold fight to the top of the chemical Parnassus, the atoms appeared to him to have grouped themselves together throughout universal space. ... I should have taken no notice of this matter had not Wislicenus oddly enough written a preface to the pamphlet, and not by way of a joke but in all seriousness recommended it a worthwhile performance."
Author: Van 't Hoff

37. "Books, too, begin like the week – with a day of rest in memory of their creation. The preface is their Sunday."
Author: Walter Benjamin

38. "In the preface of "The Rifles" "Another rule we followed was never kill an animal that we were not going to use for food or clothing." Barnabas Piryuaq"Well, in those high latitudes we found such quantities of seals and walruses that we simply did not know what to do with them.There were thousands and thousands lying there; we walked among them and hit them on the head, and laughed heartily in the abundance which God had created." Jan Welzi 1933."
Author: William T. Vollmann

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