The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace. — Jhumpa Lahiri
The beginning is the most important part of the work. — Plato
As the child approaches a new text he is entitled to an introduction so that when he reads, the gist of the... story can provide some guide for a fluent reading. — Marie Clay
We are the opening verse of the opening page of the chapter of endless possibilities. — Rudyard Kipling
Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light. — Joseph Pulitzer
The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance. — George Eliot
The beginning is the most important part...for that is the time character is being formed. — Plato
Beginning is not only a kind of action. It is also a frame of mind, a kind of work, an attitude, a consciousness. — Edward Said
The first chapter sells the book; the last chapter sells the next book. — Mickey Spillane
The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms. — Socrates
The world before us is a postcard, and I imagine the story we are writing on it. — Mary E. Pearson
Short Preface Quotes
Everything before Jesus is preface. Everything after Jesus is appendix. Jesus is the story. — Kevin DeYoung
Readers soon tire of prefaces, and skip them, and so the labor of writing them is lost. — Sarah Josepha Hale
[P]erhaps you notice how the denial is so often the preface to the justification. — Christopher Hitchens
He who always prefaces his tale with laughter, is poised between impertinence and folly. — Johann Kaspar Lavater
The TEN Commandments are not prefaced with "If you're in the mood". — Laura Schlessinger
Shaw's plays are the price we pay for Shaw's prefaces. — James Agate
The preface is the most important part of a book. Even reviewers read a preface. — Philip Guedalla
A good preface must be the root and the square of the book at the same time. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Unless you are a Bernard Shaw you find a preface a most embarrassing business. — Stacy Aumonier
Don't share your secrets if you preface them with 'just don't tell anybody. — Igor Babailov
Preamble Quotes
Indians today are governed by two different ideologies. Their political ideal set in the preamble of the Constitution affirms a life of liberty, equality and fraternity. Their social ideal embodied in their religion denies them. — B. R. Babasaheb Ambedkar
Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Yet the whole preamble of the second authorization act for the Marshall Plan showed the direction Congress was ready to take about breaking down barriers within Europe. — W. Averell Harriman
If the American Revolution had produced nothing but the Declaration of Independence, it would have been worthwhile. — Samuel Eliot Morison
The real difference between the United States and other nations lies not in the words of the preamble to the Constitution, but in the fact that the substantive clauses of that Constitution are enforced by individuals independent of and not beholden to the elected branches. — Harold H. Greene
Like an apparently strict musical form it breaks the five minute whole into its structural parts - a descriptive preamble, the action of taking the cards, the development of the cards' manipulation and the revelation of what has been achieved. — Gavin Bryars
Virginity is now a mere preamble or waiting room to be got out of as soon as possible; it is without significance. — Ursula K. Le Guin
I'd like to quit thinking of the present as some minor insignificant preamble to something else. — Richard Linklater
In a thousand words I can have the Lord's Prayer, the 23rd Psalm, the Hippocratic Oath, a sonnet by Shakespeare, the Preamble to the Constitution, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and almost all of the Boy Scout Oath. Now exactly what picture were you planning to trade for all that? — Roy H. Williams
Well, first let's say that the fundamental responsibility of any government is national security - in the preamble to the Constitution, provide for the common defense and insure domestic tranquility. — Angus King
Prelude Quotes
So as a prelude whites must be made to realise that they are only human, not superior. Same with Blacks. They must be made to realise that they are also human, not inferior. — Steven Biko
Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science. — James Clerk Maxwell
Humor is a prelude to faith and laughter is the beginning of prayer. — Reinhold Niebuhr
This break is a prelude to war, which should, in light of the low level of USSR military technology and internal political and economic difficulties caused by a war, finish off Bolshevism once and for all. — Stephen Kotkin
I was fifteen years old, and I hardly knew how to play a simple Bach prelude on the piano when I began to compose music, and at the most advanced level. I had never studied such things as harmony. — Gyorgy Legeti
I was fifteen years old, and I hardly knew how to play a simple Bach prelude on the piano when I began to compose music, and at the most advanced level. I had never studied such things as harmony. — Gyorgy Ligeti
A great piece of music is beautiful regardless of how it is performed. Any prelude or fugue of Bach can be played at any tempo, with or without rhythmic nuances, and it will still be great music. That's how music should be written, so that no-one, no matter how philistine, can ruin it. — Dmitri Shostakovich
What is love but a prelude to sorrow...with heartache ahead for your goal. — Nina Simone
Healthy discontent is the prelude to progress. — Mahatma Gandhi
A great piece of music is beautiful regardless of how it is performed. — Dmitri Shostakovich
Prayer is the preface to the book of Christian living; the text of the new life sermon; the girding on of the armor for battle; the pilgrim's preparation for his journey. It must be supplemented by action or it amounts to nothing. — Austin Phelps
We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat and dismay may be the preface to our successors' victory, though that victory itself will be temporary; we fight rather to keep something alive than in the expectation that anything will triumph. — T. S. Eliot
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
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
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
I think that every so-called history book and film biography should be prefaced by the statement that what follows is the author's rendition of events and circumstances. — Barbara Kruger
Every paper published in a respectable journal should have a preface by the author stating why he is publishing the article, and what value he sees in it. I have no hope that this practice will ever be adopted. — Morris Kline
Even though my entire writing persona is prefaced on me not being an expert, I kind of am an expert. I know a lot. — Jonathan Gold
Good wine needs neither bush nor preface to make it welcome. And they drank the red wine through the helmet barr'd. — Walter Scott
There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits. (Preface to the French edition). — Karl Marx
Now I had lived long enough and had heard enough from urchins my age and from other slaves, to distrust the person who calls himself merciful, or just, or kindly. Usually these are the most cruel, niggardly and selfish people, and slaves learn to fear the master who prefaces his remarks with tributes to his own virtues. — Elizabeth Borton de Trevino
Books, too, begin like the week – with a day of rest in memory of their creation. The preface is their Sunday. — Walter Benjamin
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
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. — James Rollins
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
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
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. — James Loeb
Abraham Lincoln did speak about keeping the man before the dollar, but he was talking at that moment about slavery, and referring to keeping the humanity of the slave higher in view than the self-interest of the slaveholders. This does not quite make Lincoln a challenger of the corporations; in fact, he prefaced those words by saying that Republicans were for the man AND the dollar. — Allen C. Guelzo
I try to preface everything with "this isn't new." Because most social movements have happened before and I get that. Nothing I'm doing is new. — Yara Shahidi
What I am trying to figure out in my preface is how Romans could operate without the simple items - maps - that are necessary for running such a huge empire. — Garry Kasparov
[John] Calvin is revered as a thinker of immense importance in Reformed thought, Jonathan Edwards could say in his preface to his treatise on Freedom of the Will that he had derived none of his views from the work of Calvin, though he was willing to be called a "Calvinist" for the sake of convention. — Oliver D. Crisp
First of all, I should preface this by the observation that artists are not the best judges of what they've done and the word definitive does not belong, in my opinion, in any conversation about art. When somebody says it's the "definitive" something, I'm always recoiling. — Nicholas Meyer
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
They tell me that So-and-So, who does not write prefaces, is no charlatan. Well, I am. I first caught the ear of the British public on a cart in Hyde Park, to the blaring of brass bands,and this . . . because . . . I am a natural-born mountebank. — George Bernard Shaw
That same preface also contains a single line that really does sum everything up: 'Some other places were not so good but maybe we were not so good when we were in them.' — Jeff Greenwald
I was carrying a beautiful alcoholic conflagration around with me. The thing fed on its own heat and flamed the fiercer. There was no time, in all my waking time, that I didn't want a drink. I began to anticipate the completion of my daily thousand words by taking a drink when only five hundred words were written. It was not long until I prefaced the beginning of the thousand words with a drink. — Jack London
My general writing preface is to write an outline and then ignore about half of it, both on a micro level with the individual book, and on a macro level with the series as a whole, and that's pretty much what's happened. — Daniel Handler
A preface is a species of literary luxury, where an author, like a lover, is privileged to be egotistical. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon
[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
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 Preface — John Dee
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
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
Books should stand on their own feet ... If they need shoring up by a preface here, an introduction there, they have no more right to exist than a table that needs a wad of paper under one leg in order to stand steady. — Virginia Woolf
Average Jones had come by his nickname inevitably. His parents had foredoomed him to it when they furnished him with the initials A. V. R. E. as preface to his birthright of J for Jones. His character apparently justified the chance concomitance. He was, so to speak, a composite photograph of any thousand well-conditioned, clean-living Americans between the ages of twenty-five and thirty. — Samuel Hopkins Adams
A friend told me of visiting the Dalai Lama in India and asking him for a succinct definition of compassion. She prefaced her question by describing how heart-stricken she'd felt when, earlier that day, she'd seen a man in the street beating a mangy stray dog with a stick. "Compassion," the Dalai Lama told her, "is when you feel as sorry for the man as you do for the dog." — Marc Ian Barasch
In Conclusion
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