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Preface Quotes By George Bernard Shaw

Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing. — George Bernard Shaw

Preface Quotes By Cassandra Blizzard

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. — Cassandra Blizzard

Preface Quotes By Charlotte Bronte

The foregoing preface was written by my wife with a view to the publication of "The Professor," shortly after the appearance of "Shirley." Being dissuaded from her intention, the authoress made some use of the materials in a subsequent work - "Villette." As, however, these two stories are in most respects unlike, it has been — Charlotte Bronte

Preface Quotes By G.K. Chesterton

For the modern world will accept no dogmas upon any authority; but it will accept any dogmas on no authority. Say that a thing is so, according to the Pope or the Bible, and it will be dismissed as a superstition without examination. But preface your remark merely with "they say" or "don't you know that?" or try (and fail) to rememver the name of some professor mentioned in some newspaper; and the keen rationalism of the modern mind will accept every word you say. — G.K. Chesterton

Preface Quotes By Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Plato's philosophy is a dignified preface to future religion. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Preface Quotes By Richard LaGravenese

The real Liberace - and I'll preface this by saying that I didn't know the real one - was a man who didn't come from much. His father left him and his family for another woman. His father was a musician, which I thought was pretty interesting. — Richard LaGravenese

Preface Quotes By Kenneth Oppel

The preface? Why would he waste time with the preface? Skip the preface and move on to the meat of the thing! — Kenneth Oppel

Preface Quotes By Friedrich Nietzsche

On this perfect day, when everything is ripening and not only the grape turns brown, the eye of the sun just fell upon my life: I looked back, I looked forward, and never saw so many and such good things at once. It was not for nothing that I buried my forty-fourth year today; I had the right to bury it; whatever was life in it has been saved, is immortal. The first book of the Revaluation of All Values, the Songs of Zarathustra, the Twilight of the Idols, my attempt to philosophize with a hammer - all presents of this year, indeed of its last quarter! How could I fail to be grateful to my whole life? - and so I tell my life to myself. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Preface Quotes By Subrahmanijan Chandrasekhar

I should like to preface my remarks with a personal statement in order that my later remarks will not be misunderstood. I consider myself an atheist. — Subrahmanijan Chandrasekhar

Preface Quotes By Thomas J. Paprocki

I wish to preface my reflections by saying that I am conducting this prayer service and am speaking to you now with great reluctance. I did not seek to enter any controversy and I don't relish being part of one. But I have given this matter a great deal of thought and prayer, which has led me to the conviction that God is calling me to speak out and conduct these prayers. — Thomas J. Paprocki

Preface Quotes By Alexander McCall Smith

That, incidentally, gives me the greatest possible pleasure - the knowledge that we are all linked by our friendship with a group of fictional people. What a pleasant club of which to be a member! [from the preface; on writing for people around the world] — Alexander McCall Smith

Preface Quotes By Michio Kaku

PREFACE A New Look at the Legacy of Albert Einstein Genius. Absent-minded professor. The father of relativity. The mythical figure of Albert Einstein - hair flaming in the wind, sockless, wearing an oversized sweatshirt, puffing on his pipe, oblivious to his surroundings - is etched indelibly on our minds. "A pop icon on a par with Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe, he stares enigmatically from postcards, magazine covers, T-shirts, and larger-than-life posters. A Beverly Hills agent markets his image for television commercials. He would have hated it all," writes biographer Denis Brian. Einstein is among the greatest scientists of all time, a towering figure who ranks alongside Isaac Newton for his contributions. Not surprisingly, Time magazine voted him the Person of the Century. Many historians have placed him among the hundred most influential people of the last thousand years. — Michio Kaku

Preface Quotes By Bud Grant

If you have something critical to sat to a player, preface it by saying something positive. That way when you get to the criticism, at least you know he'll be listening. — Bud Grant

Preface Quotes By Emilie Richards

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. — Emilie Richards

Preface Quotes By D. V. Ager

In the preface to his great History of Europe, H. A. L. Fisher wrote: "Men wiser than and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following upon another as wave follows upon wave ... " It seems to me that the same is true of the much older [geological stratigraphical] history of Europe. — D. V. Ager

Preface Quotes By Anonymous

The classic formulation of the materialist conception of history is that of the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, written in 1859. — Anonymous

Preface Quotes By Lawrence Venuti

General editors' preface The growth of translation studies as a separate discipline is a success story of the 1980s. The subject has developed in many parts of the world and is clearly destined to continue developing well into the twenty-first century. Translation studies brings together work in a wide variety of fields, including linguistics, literary study, history, anthropology, psychology, and economics. This series of books will reflect the breadth of work in translation studies and will enable readers to share in the exciting new developments that are taking place at the present time. — Lawrence Venuti

Preface Quotes By Marcus Tullius Cicero

The following passage is one of those cited by Copernicus himself in his preface to De Revolutionibus: "The Syracusan Hicetas, as Theophrastus asserts, holds the view that the heaven, sun, moon, stars, and in short all of the things on high are stationary, and that nothing in the world is in motion except the earth, which by revolving and twisting round its axis with extreme velocity produces all the same results as would be produced if the earth were stationary and the heaven in motion ... " — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Preface Quotes By Bertrand Russell

Who ever heard a theologian preface his creed, or a politician conclude his speech with an estimate of the probable error of his opinion? — Bertrand Russell

Preface Quotes By Nelson Algren

Nor all your piety nor all your preaching, nor all your crusades nor all your threats can stop one girl from going on the turf, can stop one mugging, can keep one promising youth from becoming a drug addict, so long as the force that drives the owners of our civilization is away from those who own nothing at all. — Nelson Algren

Preface Quotes By Susan Peek

In many chapels, reddened by the setting sun, the saints rest silently, waiting for someone to love them." These words, penned by an unknown priest, long dead,were the inspiration for my new series on the lives of saints who have fallen deep into the shadows of obscurity. My hope is that, in reading their heroic stories, you will make the acquaintance of some of God's Forgotten Friends. (From the Preface of "Saint Magnus The Last Viking") — Susan Peek

Preface Quotes By Thomas Hardy

The negative often meant nothing more than the preface to the affirmative — Thomas Hardy

Preface Quotes By Chloe Neill

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. — Chloe Neill

Preface Quotes By Gary J. Bass

I shall be perfectly frank with you," which is how politicians in both Delhi and Washington preface a real whopper of a lie: — Gary J. Bass

Preface Quotes By Charlotte Bronte

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. — Charlotte Bronte

Preface Quotes By Christopher Morley

Everywhere, as we go about our small business, we must discern the fingerprints of the gigantic plan, the orderly and inexorable routine with neither beginning nor end, in which death is but a preface to another birth, and birth the certain forerunner of another death. — Christopher Morley

Preface Quotes By Karen Marie Moning

I hate sentences that begin with my name followed by the claim - indubitably erroneous - that the speaker knows something about me. Those kinds of sentences rank right up there with the ones that begin with You know what your problem is? That's always a doozy. Talk about a trick question. Nothing worth hearing ever follows that preface. — Karen Marie Moning

Preface Quotes By Charles Dickens

APPENDIX 2 THE PREFACE TO OLIVER TWIST AND THE NEWGATE NOVEL CONTROVERSY — Charles Dickens

Preface Quotes By Igor Babailov

Don't share your secrets if you preface them with 'just don't tell anybody. — Igor Babailov

Preface Quotes By John Owen

Reader, if thou intendest to go any farther, I would entreat thee to stay here a little. If thou art, as many in this pretending age, a sign or title gazer, and comest into books as Cato into the theatre, to go out again, - thou hast had thy entertainment; farewell! — John Owen

Preface Quotes By William Wordsworth

We not only wish to be pleased, but to be pleased in that particular
way in which we have been accustomed to be pleased. — William Wordsworth

Preface Quotes By Ellen Glasgow

It would appear, from the best examples, that the proper way of beginning a preface to one's work is with a humble apology for having written at all. — Ellen Glasgow

Preface Quotes By Andrew Chaikin

It's almost as if Kennedy grabbed a decade out of the 21st century," Cernan said, "and spliced it into the 1960s." That helps to explain why, as I wrote in 1993 in the preface of this book, we weren't entirely ready for Apollo, and why we have struggled to absorb its impact ever since it happened. How could the most futuristic thing humans have ever done be so far in the past? — Andrew Chaikin

Preface Quotes By Plutarch

This excerpt is presented as reproduced by Copernicus in the preface to De Revolutionibus: "Some think that the earth remains at rest. But Philolaus the Pythagorean believes that, like the sun and moon, it revolves around the fire in an oblique circle. Heraclides of Pontus and Ecphantus the Pythagorean make the earth move, not in a progressive motion, but like a wheel in rotation from west to east around its own center." — Plutarch

Preface Quotes By Greg Dening

Reading. The erotics of reading for me -- its moment of trembling pleasure -- lie in those times when I realise that what I am reading is just what I was about to say. It is a moment of jealousy and disappointment, as if the occasion had been stolen from me, but it is a moment of excitement, too -- because I think I would like to try and say it better, because now the monologue in my mind has become dialogue. My immediate impulse is to write something, anything, notes to tell me the significance of what I have read, an appreciative letter to the author, the first sentences in a preface to a book that will never be written. Th archives of my readings are monumentally high. I can never let these erotic moments go. They are the paper trail of my mind. — Greg Dening

Preface Quotes By Jordan Maxwell

Ignorance and its denial will, sad to say, lead us down the same road as it did in all past history. — Jordan Maxwell

Preface Quotes By Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

A good preface must be the root and the square of the book at the same time. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Preface Quotes By Charles Spurgeon

Victory needs conflict as its preface. — Charles Spurgeon

Preface Quotes By Leonard Peikoff

Ayn Rand held that art is a 're-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgements.' By its nature, therefore, a novel (like a statue or a symphony) does not require or tolerate an explanatory preface; it is a self-contained universe, aloof from commentary, beckoning the reader to enter, perceive, respond. — Leonard Peikoff

Preface Quotes By Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde THE PREFACE The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things — Oscar Wilde

Preface Quotes By George Bernard Shaw

It annoys me to see people comfortable when they ought to be uncomfortable; and I insist on making them think in order to bring them to conviction of sin. If you don't like my preaching you must lump it. I really cannot help it. In the preface to my Plays for Puritans I — George Bernard Shaw

Preface Quotes By Charles Dickens

APPENDIX A PREFACE TO THE CHEAP EDITION (1858) — Charles Dickens

Preface Quotes By C.S. Lewis

No one can say 'He jests at scars who never felt a wound' for I have never for one moment been in a state of mind to which even the imagination of serious pain was less than intolerable. If any man is safe from the danger of under-estimating this adversary, I am that man. — C.S. Lewis

Preface Quotes By Walt Whitman

Re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.
[From the preface to Leaves Grass] — Walt Whitman

Preface Quotes By Henry Ward Beecher

Some have supposed that the mosquito is of a devout turn, and never will partake of a meal without first saying grace. The devotions of some men are but a preface to blood-sucking. — Henry Ward Beecher

Preface Quotes By Kentetsu Takamori

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

Preface Quotes By Bei Dao

the bouquet

Between me and the world
you are a bay, a sail
the faithful ends of a rope
you are a fountain, a wind,
a shrill childhood cry.

Between me and the world
you are a picture frame, a window
a field covered in wildflowers
you are a breath, a bed,
a night that keeps the stars company.

Between me and the world,
you are a calendar, a compass
a ray of light that slips through the gloom
you are a biographical sketch, a book mark
a preface that comes at the end.

between me and the world
you are a gauze curtain, a mist
a lamp shining in my dreams
you are a bamboo flute, a song without words
a closed eyelid carved in stone.

Between me and the world
you are a chasm, a pool
an abyss plunging down
you are a balustrade, a wall
a shield's eternal pattern. — Bei Dao

Preface Quotes By Sarah Kane

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 supportave
what do you offer.
... if I could remember any more of my lines I'd add them
so 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. — Sarah Kane

Preface Quotes By Jenny Lawson

It's tempting to preface everything with "In my life I've found" so that people can't yell at me for being wrong (I often am) or misinformed (sure) or overly emotional (HOW DARE YOU). But this is a book about my life so I have to simply hope that unsaid disclaimer is just implied. This is my life, and my observations of it, and they change as I change. That's one of the frightening things about writing a book that no one ever tells you. You have to pin down your thoughts and opinions and then they exist on a page, ungrowing, forever. You may convince yourself that you were never stupid or coarse or ignorant but one day you reread your seventh-grade diary and rediscover the person who one day becomes you, and you vacillate between wanting to hug this unfinished, confused stranger and wanting to shake some damn sense into her. — Jenny Lawson

Preface Quotes By Betty Smith

There's a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky. It grows in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps. It grows up out of cellar gratings. It is the only tree that grows out of cement. It grows lushly ... survives without sun, water, and seemingly without earth. It would be considered beautiful except that there are too many of it. — Betty Smith

Preface Quotes By Gerald M. Weinberg

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. — Gerald M. Weinberg

Preface Quotes By David Andrew Westwood

THE OLD ARE LIKE BOOKS

The old are like books, crack-spined,
Their foxed pages dogeared at favorite paragraphs
While whole chapters have been forgotten.
Each cover scuffed, dust-jackets lost,
Titles alluding to something long out of style,
Prose suffering from an overuse of footnotes,
Occasional longueurs, over-repetitions of the main theme,
But overall, unique and idiosyncratic tales.
Of another era, but preface to this. — David Andrew Westwood

Preface Quotes By Sloane Crosley

I think the rule of thumb should be this: if you preface a sentence about a friend with the phrase, 'I love X, but ... ' more than once in any conversation, you should stop hanging out with them. — Sloane Crosley

Preface Quotes By Grenville Kleiser

Your life is like a book. The title page is your name, the preface your introductions to the world. The pages are a daily record of your efforts, trials, pleasures, discouragements, and achievements. Day by day your thoughts and acts are being inscribed in your book of life. Hour by hour, the record is being made that must stand for all time. Once the word 'finish' must be written, let it then be said of your book that it is a record of noble purpose, generous service, and work well-done. — Grenville Kleiser

Preface Quotes By Charles Dickens

I remarked in the original Preface to this Book, that I did not find it easy to get sufficiently far away from it, in the first sensations of having finished it, to refer to it with the composure which this formal heading would seem to require. My interest in it was so recent and strong, and my mind was so divided between pleasure and regret - pleasure in the achievement of a long design, regret in the separation from many companions - that I was in danger of wearying the reader with personal confidences and private emotions. — Charles Dickens

Preface Quotes By Brian Kernighan

As we said in the preface to the first edition, C "wears well as one's experience with it grows." With a decade more experience, we still feel that way. — Brian Kernighan

Preface Quotes By Chaim Bentorah

Preface WITH THE ADVENT OF multiple modern English translations of the Bible being published over the last fifty years, Christians have come to realize that there can be a wide range of meanings and renderings of various words from the Bible in the original language. As a Hebrew teacher and student of ancient languages one of the most common questions I get is, "What is the best translation?" This is usually followed by the question, "Which translation is the closest to the original Biblical language?" The answer I give to both questions is, "All of them." With few exceptions, every translation and paraphrase of the Bible is done with much scholarship and prayer by the translators. Every translator is convinced that he or she has presented the best renderings for each word and firmly believes they have given the rendering that is closest to the original language. So we now ask the question as to why there are — Chaim Bentorah

Preface Quotes By R.J. Childerhose

Although much has been written of the exploits of Canadians who answered the call to arms in World Wars I and II, nothing has been written about the young men who flocked to join the Cold War. Thanks to Canada's menacing presence, Russia has never invaded Germany.
The author menaced Russia, as a fighter pilot based in NATO Europe during the 1950s. Much of the material herein is derived from his diaries of that period. Some names have been changed to protect the guilty. Accounts have been embellished. No harm or libel is intended. The harm is to the author's self-image. The diaries reveal that he was brash and intolerant. He considers it one of life's miracles that his friends put up with him. — R.J. Childerhose

Preface Quotes By Geoffrey Harvey

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. — Geoffrey Harvey

Preface Quotes By Soren Kierkegaard

If Hegel had written the whole of his Logic and in the Preface disclosed the fact that it was only a thought-experiment (in which however at many points he had steered clear of many things), he would have been the greatest thinker who ever lived. As it is, he is merely comic. — Soren Kierkegaard

Preface Quotes By Victor Hugo

So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation which, in the midst of civilization, artificially creates a hell on earth, and complicates with human fatality a destiny that is divine; so long as the three problems of the century - the degradation of man by the exploitation of his labour, the ruin of women by starvation and the atrophy of childhood by physical and spiritual night are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words and from a still broader point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, there should be a need for books such as this. — Victor Hugo

Preface Quotes By Giacomo Casanova

They [his readers, whom he asks to be his friends] will find that I have always loved truth so passionately that I have often resorted to lying as a way of first introducing it into minds which were ignorant of its charms (Casanova, p.34, Vol 1 Preface). — Giacomo Casanova

Preface Quotes By Lynn Barber

I'm never exactly a slave to facts at the best of times. But does it matter? Who owns memories after all? — Lynn Barber

Preface Quotes By George Bernard Shaw

One hardly knows which is the more appalling: the abjectness of the credulity or the flippancy of the scepticism.
- Shaw's PrefaceGeorge Bernard Shaw

Preface Quotes By M.K. McDaniel

Preface:
It was a bright, sunny normal day ... but it wasn't. The enemy lurked unseen, the ravenous beast it was, undetected and slowly moving forward. Unobtrusive, silent, ravenously consuming light, happiness, hope, and all that mattered. Darkness the love, hate the prize, evil intent the hope, bitterness the joy. No one wanted to see it. Blindness consumed the concerned ... Until the children came forward refusing to surrender the greatest power of all ... The power to choose their own Destiny! — M.K. McDaniel

Preface Quotes By Thomas Lewis

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) — Thomas Lewis

Preface Quotes By Palmiro Campagna

Foreword by Major-General (Retired) Richard Rohmer Preface to the Fourth Paperback Edition Preface to the Third Paperback Edition Preface to the Second Paperback Edition Preface to the First Edition — Palmiro Campagna

Preface Quotes By George Bernard Shaw

The truth sticks in our throats with all the sauces it is served with: it will never go down until we take it without any sauce at all. — George Bernard Shaw

Preface Quotes By August Strindberg

Everything can happen, everything is possible and probable. Time and place do not exist; on a significant bases of reality, the imagination spins, weaving new patterns; a mixture of memories, experiences, free fancies, incongruities and improvisations. — August Strindberg

Preface Quotes By B.J. Novak

I can't even handle love, there's no way I can handle it being taken away. I won't survive it. Please. Please. Please!
I said that I had something to say to her, which made her listen in a way that she didn't when I simply said things without the preface. Even though the preface meant nothing, it calmed her, just as it calmed real people, for the same no-reason.
I told her what people tell people. That this was what it felt like when love was taken away - but that it wasn't the truth, it was just a feeling. It would pass. It would take time.
She would recharge.
She didn't believe me.
No one ever believes it, I said. That's part of what the feeling is. — B.J. Novak

Preface Quotes By Jay Williams

Ode to Douglas Adams

In the solar system we inhabit, we live on a small planet we all call Earth. Okay, when I say small, I mean it's small compared to say, oh, Jupiter. Earth is something like a dime compared to Jupiter's beach ball. On this Earth is a fairly large country we all call The United States of America. Of course, when I say fairly large, it's like the U.S. is a piece of broccoli next to China's really large cauliflower. Now that I think of it, that may not be a good comparison as it depends on the restaurant you go to. At the place I was at last night it would be a good comparison as the cauliflower was larger than the broccoli. Not that I'd touch either. I had a hamburger with fries and somebody at the next table had those ghastly vegetables.

From the Preface to "Sex and the American Male." I was saddened by the passing of Douglas Adams and wrote the preface to sound a little like his "Hitchhiker's..." books and to honor him. I hope he's smiling. — Jay Williams

Preface Quotes By Letitia Elizabeth Landon

A preface is a species of literary luxury, where an author, like a lover, is privileged to be egotistical ... — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Preface Quotes By Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

A preface is usually an excrescence on a good book, and a vain apology for a worthless one; — Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

Preface Quotes By C.S. Lewis

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] — C.S. Lewis

Preface Quotes By Todd Henry

PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION How much work did you do today that you will be proud of tomorrow? I don't mean just how you handled the big things, but also how you addressed the little, seemingly insignificant ones. Did you make progress on what matters most to you, or did you allow the buzz, busyness, and expectations of others to squelch your passion and focus? I've been asking these questions of others and myself each day for more than a decade, and they are the main reason I originally felt compelled to write Die Empty. Through my work I've encountered many teams of brilliant, sharp, amazing, talented people who have at some point "settled in" or begun coasting on past success. Unfortunately, — Todd Henry

Preface Quotes By Arthur Schopenhauer

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 — Arthur Schopenhauer

Preface Quotes By Lang Leav

Death, like fiction, is brutal in its symmetry. Take this story and strip it down -all the way back- until you are left with two points. Two dots on a vast, blank canvas, separeted by a sea of white. Here, we have come to the first point, where the batj is drawn and the hand is reachinh for the razor blade. I will meet you at the next, by the axle of a screaming wheel, the revolution of a clock, the closing of an orbit. — Lang Leav

Preface Quotes By Charles Dickens

It is wonderful how Virtue turns from dirty stockings; and how Vice, married to ribbons and a little gay attire, changes her name, as wedded ladies do, and becomes Romance.
From Charles Dickens' Preface to Oliver Twist, printed in 1841 — Charles Dickens

Preface Quotes By Henry David Thoreau

Indeed, the best books have a use, like sticks and stones, which is above or beside their design, not anticipated in the preface,not concluded in the appendix. Even Virgil's poetry serves a very different use to me today from what it did to his contemporaries. It has often an acquired and accidental value merely, proving that man is still man in the world. — Henry David Thoreau

Preface Quotes By John Steinbeck

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. — John Steinbeck

Preface Quotes By Thomas Hardy

His experience of women was great enough for him to be aware that the negative often meant nothing more than the preface to the affirmative; and it was little enough for him not to know that in the manner of the present negative there lay a great exception to the dallyings of coyness. — Thomas Hardy

Preface Quotes By Curzio Malaparte

May the new era be an era of liberty and respect for everyone
including writers! Only through liberty and respect for culture can Europe be saved from the cruel days of which Montesquieu spoke in the Esprit des lois: "Thus, in the days of fables, after the floods and deluges, there came forth from the soil armed men who exterminated each other." Boook XXXII, Chapter XXIII. — Curzio Malaparte

Preface Quotes By Bill Willingham

I'm about to start reading it again, because what good is a story you only want to read once? — Bill Willingham

Preface Quotes By Debra N. Mancoff

Despite the fact that Machen included the story in his collection The Angel of Mons in 1915, with a long preface refuting the truth of the story, the world preferred to believe that in fact St. George had led the bowmen of Agincourt against the Germans at Mons. — Debra N. Mancoff

Preface Quotes By Bill Bryson

Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was at the time American consul in Liverpool, provided a preface, then almost instantly wished he hadn't, for the book was universally regarded by reviewers as preposterous hokum. Hawthorne under questioning admitted that he hadn't actually read it. "This shall be the last of my benevolent follies, and I will never be kind to anybody again as long as [I] live," he vowed in a letter to a friend. — Bill Bryson

Preface Quotes By John Dee

The art of Navigation demonstrates how, by the shortest good way, by the aptest direction, and in the shortest time, a sufficient ship, between any two places (in passage navigable) assigned, may be conducted; and in all storms and natural disturbances chancing, how to use the best possible means, whereby to recover the place first assigned.
Mathematical PrefaceJohn Dee

Preface Quotes By Jorge Luis Borges

It is worth remembering that every writer begins with a naively physical notion of what art is. A book for him or her is not an expression or a series of expressions, but literally a volume, a prism with six rectangular sides made of thin sheets of papers which should include a cover, an inside cover, an epigraph in italics, a preface, nine or ten parts with some verses at the beginning, a table of contents, an ex libris with an hourglass and a Latin phrase, a brief list of errata, some blank pages, a colophon and a publication notice: objects that are known to constitute the art of writing. — Jorge Luis Borges

Preface Quotes By LeRoi Jones

Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note

Lately, I've become accustomed to the way
The ground opens up and envelopes me
Each time I go out to walk the dog.
Or the broad edged silly music the wind
Makes when I run for a bus...

Things have come to that.

And now, each night I count the stars.
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.

Nobody sings anymore.

And then last night I tiptoed up
To my daughter's room and heard her
Talking to someone, and when I opened
The door, there was no one there...
Only she on her knees, peeking into

Her own clasped hands — LeRoi Jones

Preface Quotes By Anne Bronte

[Preface to second edition:] ... I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. — Anne Bronte

Preface Quotes By Boris Karloff

The average introduction to almost any book is somewhat of a bore — Boris Karloff

Preface Quotes By Christopher Hitchens

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. — Christopher Hitchens

Preface Quotes By Amy Hill Hearth

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) — Amy Hill Hearth

Preface Quotes By Ambrose Bierce

Kindness n: A brief preface to ten volumes of exaction. — Ambrose Bierce

Preface Quotes By Stacy Aumonier

Unless you are a Bernard Shaw you find a preface a most embarrassing business. — Stacy Aumonier

Preface Quotes By Christopher Isherwood

From 1929 to 1933, [age 25-29] I lived almost continuously in Berlin, with only occasional visits to other parts of Germany and to England. Already, during that time, I had made up my mind that I would one day write about the people I'd met and the experiences I was having. So I kept a detailed diary, which in due course provided raw material for all my Berlin stories. [from preface] — Christopher Isherwood

Preface Quotes By Philip Guedalla

The preface is the most important part of a book. Even reviewers read a preface. — Philip Guedalla

Preface Quotes By William T. Vollmann

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. — William T. Vollmann

Preface Quotes By Howard Zinn

Jackson began raids into Florida, arguing it was a sanctuary for escaped slaves and for marauding Indians. Florida, he said, was essential to the defense of the United States. It was that classic modern preface to a war of conquest. Thus began the Seminole War of 1818, leading to the American acquisition of Florida. It appears on classroom maps politely as "Florida Purchase, 1819" - but it came from Andrew Jackson's military campaign across the Florida border, burning Seminole villages, seizing Spanish forts, until Spain was "persuaded" to sell. He acted, he said, by the "immutable laws of self-defense. — Howard Zinn

Preface Quotes By John McEnroe

That's one of the best sets I've seen him play, although I should preface that by saying I haven't seen him play before. — John McEnroe

Preface Quotes By George Bernard Shaw

In the preface to my Plays for Puritans I explained the predicament of our contemporary English drama, forced to deal almost exclusively with cases of sexual attraction, and yet forbidden to exhibit the incidents of that attraction or even to discuss its nature. Your suggestion that I should write a Don Juan play was virtually a challenge to me to treat this subject myself dramatically. The challenge was difficult enough to be worth accepting, because, when you come to think of it, though we have plenty — George Bernard Shaw