"Preface" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mentioned—too frequently by far, to my infinite vexation at the time, and now to my deep and ineradicable regret. The sonnet-book out of which arose much of the correspondence printed in this chapter, contains in its preface and notes hardly an allusion to him, and yet he was, in my judgment, out of all reach and sight, the greatest sonnet-writer of his time. The sonnet first sent was Pride of Youth, but as this formed part of The House of Life series, it was withdrawn, ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... the pirated editions are incomplete in that they omit the Preface and seven additional chapters which were first published in the London edition of 1891. In other cases certain passages have been mutilated, and faulty spellings ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... I remember, was the "Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous upon the Reality and Perfection of Human Understanding," and before Jerry had been long gone from the house I was completely absorbed in what Fraser in his preface calls "the gem of British metaphysical literature." But had I known what was to happen to Jerry on that sunny afternoon, or conceived of the dialogue in which he was to take a part, I should have regretted the intellectual attraction of Berkeley's fine volume which had ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... what I replied, but I am sure I did not speak pleasantly. I was out of humor with the whole world, and particularly with her. She brought a little chair that was near by, and sat down by me. She was a very straightforward person about speaking, and so she said, without any preface: ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... exceptionally well-written book by this prolific author. It is full of interest and strong situations. The date of the events is supposed to be early in the eighteenth century, and of course all matters nautical are under sail (or oars). That date is stated in the Preface. ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... There were the blind Mr. Levett, and the acidulous Mrs. Williams, and the colourless Mrs. De Moulins, all old and ailing—a trying group amid which to spend one's days. His guinea was always ready for the poor acquaintance, and no poet was so humble that he might not preface his book with a dedication whose ponderous and sonorous sentences bore the hall-mark of their maker. It is the rough, kindly man, the man who bore the poor street-walker home upon his shoulders, who makes one forget, ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... have still some othes left to swear here.... The visitants are all men without exception, but the principall inhabitants are stale knights and captains out of servis, men with long rapiers and breeches, who after all turne merchant here, and trafficke for news. Some make it a preface to dinner and travell for a stomache, but thriftier men make it their ordinary, and boarde here very cheape. Of all such places it is least troubled with hobgoblins, for if a ghost would walk here he could not." Of "the singing ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... youth 'with the face of a beautiful girl'—and corresponded with for several years. More than sixty years later these letters were handed over by Henry Reeve to Krasinski's grandson, and published in Paris in 1902 with a Preface by Dr. Kallenbach, of Lwow University, ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... required form on the eighteenth of August. "You will observe here and there," he remarked in his preface, "some severity appears. I have not fortitude enough always to bear with calmness calumnies which necessarily include me, as a principal agent in the measures censured, of the falsehood of which I have the most unqualified consciousness. I trust I shall always be able ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... Preface Note to New Edition The Confessions of a Duffer A Border Boyhood Loch Awe Loch-Fishing Loch Leven The Bloody Doctor The Lady or the Salmon? A Tweedside Sketch The Double Alibi The ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... was one of the very few in modern times who have been sensible of the great merit of these writings, as is evident from the extract from the preface to his translation of Proclus's Theological Elements. (Ferrar. 4to. 1583.) Patricius, prior to this, enumerates the writings of Proclus, and they are included in his wish that all the manuscript Greek commentaries on Plato were ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... would yawn over a long preface like so much Latin, the Editor will not, in the present instance, subject them to so extraordinary a stretch of ennui, by any lengthy comment on the character of his last volume. He hopes that its contents will be found equal to either of its predecessors; and, if any ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - No. 291 - Supplement to Vol 10 • Various
... them or to call attention to them. The only one of my predecessors in translating all the poems contained in this volume whom I need mention particularly is Mr. Howes. His book was published posthumously in 1845; but though it is stated in the preface to want the author's last corrections, a good deal of it must have been written long before, as the translation of the Satires is announced as nearly half finished in the introduction to a translation of Persius by the same author published in 1809, and some specimens given in the notes ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... No ceremony, sir, if you please. For any business we may have to arrange there is room enough between these four walls. At all events I'll just say a few words to you by way of preface, which may save ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... witchcraft at first," remarked Samuel Gray, by way of preface to some weird account of his own; "but I cannot doubt my senses. I had been to Boston on business for the parson and, being belated, was riding along the road homeward. I had just reached the old Plaistowe field, when I suddenly discovered a long black something, like ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... into question, and having nothing but truth to offer in excuse for this narrative, I omit all unnecessary preface, desiring only that the reader may believe what I have faithfully related. Our fleet, consisting of six goodly ships, the Charles, Unicorn, James, Globe, Swan, and Rose, under the supreme command of Captain Benjamin Joseph, who sailed as general in the Charles, our admiral ship, fell down ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... intend to follow the good tanner through his minute records; but merely write thus much, as necessary preface to a quaint little love story. Premising that the duchess had sent, after her usual fashion, a marriage present to a certain lady, by two of her maids of honor (by name Agnes and Mary), we shall transfer the narrative to our pages in Master ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... principal aim of these tales of the old days in California, that are gone "for good." Mark Twain says in his preface to "Roughing It" that there is a great deal of information in his work which he regrets very much but which really could not be helped, as "information seems to stew out of me naturally, like the precious ottar of ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... become this many-sided man's biographer. The description is slightly touched with the humorous hyperbole characteristic of its author; but it is in substance just, and I cannot but wish that it were possible, within the limits of a preface, to set out the whole of it in excuse for the many inevitable shortcomings of this volume. Having thus made an "exhibit" of it, there would only remain to add that the difficulties with which De Quincey confronts an intending biographer of Coleridge must necessarily be ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... officers were standing at a table; the one a shortish thick man in a laced round jacket, the other a genteel-looking man whose blood seemed to circulate more tranquilly. The first, which was the captain-general De Caen, fixed his eyes sternly upon me, and without salutation or preface demanded my passport, my commission! Having glanced over them, he asked in an impetuous manner, the reason for coming to the Isle of France in a small-schooner with a passport for the Investigator? I answered in a few words, that ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... have on the subject of poetry is that in the Sh by the ancient Shun, when he said to his Minister of Music, 'Poetry is the Expression of earnest thought, and singing, is the prolonged utterance of that expression.' To the same effect is the language of a Preface to the Shih, sometimes ascribed to Confucius and certainly older than our Christian era: 'Poetry is the product of earnest thought. Thought cherished in the mind becomes earnest; then expressed in words, it becomes poetry. The feelings move inwardly, and are embodied in words. ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... With Preface to Moliere's Works by Honore de Balzac, Criticisms on the Author by Sainte-Beuve, Portraits by Coypel and Mignard, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... in his preface) not respecting arts but philosophy, and our subject not manual but natural powers, we consider those things which relate to gravity, levity, elastic force, the resistance of fluids and the like forces, whether attractive or impulsive; and, therefore, ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... by Suderman in his preface to Dame Care had made a great impression on my mind and in discussing my future with the Hernes I quoted these lines and said, "I am resolved that my mother shall not 'rise from the feast of life empty.' Think of it! She has never seen a real play ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... with a preface concerning the work, nor endeavour to obviate any criticisms which can be made on it. The good- natured reader, if his heart should be here affected, will be inclined to pardon many faults for the pleasure he will receive from a tender sensation: ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... resources, they decided to write stories and read them to each other. These tales, coloured by the surroundings, were of a sombre cast. Here Thrawn Janet was begun. In a preface, written years later, Mrs. Stevenson gives a graphic description of the first writing of ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... for every one that was born, there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, that died in the womb. He could see how it went—the hordes of half-educated people who read books and were moved to write something like them. Each manuscript was a separate tragedy; and often there would be a letter or a preface to make certain that one did not miss the sense of it. Here would be a settlement-worker, burning with a message, but unable to draw a character or to write dialogue; here would be a business-man, who had studied up the dialect of the region where he spent his ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... no preface at all, Fra Battista made direct confession to all his gods (whether remote or throned within the sanctuary-rail) that he had committed the sin whereof he was accused. A perceptible shiver of sensation ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... only disturb him. I did not preface it by a stipulation of confidence because that is idle. Of course you will keep the secret; it is your interest; it is a great possession. I know very well you will be most jealous of sharing it. I know it is as safe with you as ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... be noted that the first and second editions of these essays on Wagner appeared in pamphlet form, for which the above first preface was written. ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... * The Preface, and the nineteen Poems marked with an asterisk, were not contained in the first edition. One Poem has been omitted, and many ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons
... PREFACE THE immense popularity which Bergson's philosophy enjoys is sometimes cast up against him, by those who do not agree with him, as a reproach. It has been suggested that Berg-son's writings are welcomed simply because they offer a theoretical justification for a ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen
... different plan in my own compositions, and endeavoured to correct rather than encourage the taste of the day. To this I would answer, that it is easier to perceive the wrong than to pursue the right, and that I have never contemplated the prospect 'of filling (with Peter Bell, see its Preface,) permanently a station in the literature of the country.' Those who know me best, know this, and that I have been considerably astonished at the temporary success of my works, having flattered no ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... consisted in the abandonment of all selfish passions. The sentiments of the mystic writers were collected and arranged by Tauler (1361), in a well-known work, entitled "German Theology." Luther, in a preface to this book, expresses his admiration of its contents, and asserts that he had found in it the doctrines of ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... fell and beat as in the undying world around her the winds and the tides rise and fall and beat unceasingly. But as I went on I abandoned that idea also. To me the story seems to bear the stamp of truth upon its face. Its explanation I must leave to others, and with this slight preface, which circumstances make necessary, I introduce the world to Ayesha and ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... Matthew Arnold, in the preface to his well-known collection of Wordsworth's poems, accords to the poet a rank no less exalted. "I firmly believe that the poetical performance of Wordsworth is, after that of Shakespeare and Milton, of which all the world now recognizes the worth, undoubtedly the most considerable in our language ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... as above, is an officer of great bravery and ability. His conduct at the battle of Rich Mountain, in Western Virginia, as colonel of that regiment, and his experience in the war with Mexico, constitute a happy preface to his late brilliant achievement. This same 10th Indiana is fully up to the feat of rapid marches. At one time, being detailed to go to Greensburg from Campbellsville, to repel an anticipated attack of Secesh, the march was made by the Hoosier boys in three hours, a distance of twelve miles, ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... up late at night writing a sketch of my preface and notes for the heads of chapters. I was tired, fell into a profound sleep, dreamed I was teaching the emperor of China to pronounce 'chrononhotonthologos,' and in the morning was wakened by the sound of the gong; the signal ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... difficult to believe one more than the other; and that finally, considering this nobility as they wish it, in one place they lose and in the other they do not win, as may be seen more clearly in the Preface to the Lives. ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... I conclude this Preface with a quotation from William Law on the value of the mystical writers. "Writers like those I have mentioned," he says in a letter to Dr. Trapp, "there have been in all ages of the Church, but as they served not the ends of popular ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... once, with harassed anxious faces, and bulging portfolios under their arms. The extraordinary meeting of the Petrograd Soviet was over. I stopped Kameniev-a quick moving little man, with a wide, vivacious face set close to his shoulders. Without preface he read in rapid French a copy of the resolution ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... preface to the "Essays," as translated by John Florio. A copy of Florio's "Montaigne" is known to have been in the library of Shakespeare, one of the few extant autographs of the poet being in a copy of this translation now preserved in the library of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... or two of the MSS. this introductory poem is stated to be a preface of the Cathemerinon only: but the great majority of the codices support the view which is undoubtedly suggested by internal evidence, that the poem is a general introduction to the whole of Prudentius' ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... the motions of the earth. The appearance of this work is important in the history of free thought, because it raised a clear and definite issue between science and Scripture; and Osiander, who edited it (Copernicus was dying), forseeing the outcry it would raise, stated untruly in the preface that the earth's motion was put forward only as a hypothesis. The theory was denounced by Catholics and Reformers, and it did not convince some men (e.g. Bacon) who were not influenced by theological prejudice. The observations of the Italian astronomer Galileo de' ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... come to bed till long after I was gone to sleep. As soon then as we were both awake, it was but in course to bring our ly-a-bed chat to hand, on the subject of my uneasiness: to which a recital of the love scene I had thus, by chance, been spectatress of, served for a preface. ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... admiration of any great intellectual achievement; and it is much rather for that reason than on account of any value which I imagine my opinion on such a subject can possess, that, having had occasion to name the illustrious author of the 'Origin of Species,' I desire to preface my criticism on what appears to me to be a grave defect in his theory, by intimating my hearty concurrence in its leading principles. That inasmuch as, owing to the exceeding fecundity of the generality of organic beings, more individuals ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... book market, and specially what difficulties it put in the way of our edition of Past and Present. For a few weeks I believed that the letters I had written to the principal New York and Philadelphia booksellers, and the Preface, had succeeded in repelling the pirates. But in the fourth or fifth week appeared a mean edition in New York, published by one Collyer (an unknown person and supposed to be a mask of some other bookseller), sold for twelve and one half ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... 1713 and 1746—the rectification of the names of persons {5} and places—a revision of the punctuation—and a strict conformity, as to general orthography and accentuation, with the Dictionnaire de l'Academie francaise, as edited in 1835. The substance of the avis of 1713 might be stated in a preface; and the avertissement of 1746, a clever composition, would serve as an introduction and memoir of the author. Those who doubt its value may consult the Grand dictionnaire historique, and the Biographie universelle. As one hundred and sixty persons are noticed ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various
... recovery was rapid after that day. Like a veil withdrawn she reflected upon the past as if it were, not a story that was told, but a preface to the real story ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... the job, and quickly agreed to my proposal that he should form one of my party. People get to a very casual way of doing things on the goldfields. There was no formality about my arrangements; Godfrey helping me pack at a store, and during our work I said without preface, "You'd better come too;" "Right," said he, and the matter was settled. Godfrey, a son of one of the leading Sydney families, had started life in an insurance office, but soon finding that he was not cut out for ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... See Dr. Percy's preface to his translation of Mallet's Northern Antiquities, p. xxii. where this question is more ...
— Account of the Romansh Language - In a Letter to Sir John Pringle, Bart. P. R. S. • Joseph Planta, Esq. F. R. S.
... PREFACE. (1)Men would never be superstitious, if they could govern all their circumstances by set rules, or if they were always favoured by fortune: but being frequently driven into straits where rules are useless, and being often kept fluctuating pitiably between hope ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... Mary put her arm round Beth. The lawyer broke the seal, unfolded the will, and remarked by way of preface: "The document is in the ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... to another new factor in these military and naval operations—the so-called German "blockade" of our coasts. [Cheers.] I shall have to use some very plain language. [Cheers.] I may, perhaps, preface what I have to say by the observation that it does not come upon us as a surprise. [Cheers.] This war began on the part of Germany with the cynical repudiation [cheers] of a solemn treaty on the avowed grounds that when a nation's interests ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... science and art have been so well received both in Europe and America. His publishers justly remark, that "probably no public lecturer ever continued, for the same length of time, to collect around him so numerous audiences." The author himself states, in the preface to his Lectures,[35] that from November, 1841, when he commenced his public lectures in the lecture-room of Clinton Hall, in New York, to the close of the year 1844, when he concluded his public labors in this country, he "visited ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... this number—unless we think with Fox, in the preface to his History of Lord Holland, that it is only as to her wakefulness Penelope is compared to the night singing-bird; and so must Milton (for although Coleridge has satisfactorily dealt with the passage in Il Penseroso, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... powers and various acquirements. Such, for instance, was the estimable man to whom I have repeatedly referred as a warm defender of tractoration, and a bitter assailant of its enemies. The story tells itself in the biographical preface to his poem. He went to London with the view of introducing a hydraulic machine, which he and his Vermont friends regarded as a very important invention. He found, however, that the machine was already ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... where there is the largest crop. Speculation, though not encouraged by our Government so much as by those of the Continent, has had, not indeed such forcing, but much wider diffusion: few tanks, but many rivulets. On this point I quote from the preface to the reprint of the work of Ramchundra,[765] which I superintended for the late Court of Directors ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... a pause, during which the newcomer shut the window and closed the door leading to the next room. Then he came up to the old duke, touched him gently on the shoulder, to wake him from his torpor, and without further preface, as though to cut short any explanation that was not absolutely ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... all hands, our old friend "the Bore," familiarly known as "the old Auger," opens his mouth to tell us of a little incident illustrative of his personal prowess, and, by way of preface, commences at Eden, and goes laboriously through the patriarchal age, on through the Mosaic dispensation, to the Christian era, takes in Grecian and Roman history by the way, then Spain and Germany and ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... piracy in the eighteenth century. Capt. Charles Johnson, in his account of that period, A General History of the Pyrates (London, 1724), devotes nearly a third of his book (pp. 161-260 of the first edition) to Roberts, as "having made more Noise in the World" than others, and declares (p. 3 of preface) that "Roberts and his Crew, alone, took 400 Sail, before he was destroy'd". Of his appearance we have this picture, from the same chronicler's account of his last fight: a tall dark Welshman of near forty, ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... to them, nor scolds, nor enforces the obvious. Content that what he has spoken he has spoken, he places a magnificent trust on a single expression. He neither explains, nor falters, nor repents; he introduces his work with no preface, and cumbers it with no notes. He will not lower nor raise his voice for the sake of the profane and idle who may chance to stumble across his entertainment. His living auditors, unsolicited for the tribute of worship or an alms, find themselves ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... girl?" said Mowbray, gently disengaging himself from her hold.—"What is it you can have to ask that needs such a solemn preface?—Remember, I hate prefaces; and when I happen to open a ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... Offices. Upon the same principle we have not entitled the following collection of tales, Instructive or Moral; though it is in this sense that the author applied to them the epithet exemplares, as he states distinctly in his preface. The Spanish word exemplo, from the time of the archpriest of Hita and Don Juan Manuel, has had the meaning ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... put forth as a preface, designed to exhibit the character of a forthcoming volume, but Miss Evans adroitly changed the subject ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... Having delivered this preface, he divided the men into two gangs; one, under the boatswain, to attend to the rigging, clear the canvas of the ice, get the pumps and the capstans to work, and see all ready for getting sail on the schooner; the other, under the second mate, to get tackles ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... been stated in the Preface, it will scarce be necessary to say that the names and some of the places mentioned in this book are fictitious. Some of the scenes, and many of the characters that figure in these pages, are real, and there are those living who will ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... the foregoing section will appear superfluous, polemical, sophistic—three bad things. I wrote it, and I let it stand, however, because it serves as preface to what I have to say in general about Michelangelo's ideal of form. He was essentially a Romantic as opposed to a Classic artist. That is to say, he sought invariably for character—character in type, character in attitude, character in every action of each ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... the chair, quite overwhelmed by what he had heard. "Commence at the beginning, for I feel that my joy renders this old head confused, and I must gradually accustom myself to it. Tell me the whole history of the Russian campaign, for it is the preface I ought to read in order to be able to understand the book. And, then, in conclusion, tell me what the good Lord has done, and whether He will now employ His old Blucher. I feel as though an altar-taper had been suddenly lighted in my heart, and ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... anecdotes, he obtained an audience of Miss Stuart, in order to display them; at the same time offering her his most humble services in the situation to which it had pleased God and her virtue to raise her. But he was only in the preface of his speech, when he reminded her so ludicrously of Buckingham's mimicry of him that she burst into a peal of laughter in his very face, and rushed stifling from the room. Thus ignominiously was sounded ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... the Tusculan Questions and the treatise upon Oratory, of the dates of 1468, 1469—which are unluckily wanting. M. Bernhard preserves four copies of the Euclid of 1482, because they have printed variations in the margins. One of these copies has the prefix, or preface of one page, printed in letters of gold. I saw another such a copy at Paris. Here is the Milan Horace of 1474—the text only. The Catholicon by Gutenberg, of 1460: UPON VELLUM: quite perfect as to the text, but much ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the author of "Rab and his Friends" tells us in the preface, is a re-publication of articles written in 1848, on the death- bed of the author, a man of many accomplishments and of a most lovable nature. He would lie and dictate or write in pencil these happy and wistful memories of days ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... in March, 1825, with a preface by Sir Richard; but without Borrow's name. The intellectual impressions which this task, reaching 3,600 pages, produced on Borrow's mind were, said the publisher, "mournful." The grisly and sordid stories of crime ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... Or an Instrument to cleanse the Stomach: with divers New Experiments of Tobacco and Cofee: with a Preface of Sir H. Blunt. ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... Preface to the new Edition, and the Introductory Notices to each separate work, will contain an account of such circumstances attending the first publication of the Novels and Tales as may appear interesting in themselves, or proper to be communicated to the ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... understanding to get through his own tasks. It will not be necessary for you to read the whole book. All that will interest you—with regard to our matter I mean of course, for the whole book is interesting as a record of travel in a country then quite unknown—is the preface, and two or three chapters which I ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... the slippers are only by way of preface?" said Leon; "though, to be sure, they are usually the conclusion ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... history of Brazil may not be familiar to every reader, male and female,—for I hope to have many of the latter,—I will preface the narration of my residence ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... length at which this miracle and its accompanying effects are recorded, indicates very clearly the Evangelist's idea of their relative importance. Two verses are given to the story of the miracle; all the rest of the chapter to its preface and its issues. It was a great thing to heal a man that was blind from his birth, but the story of the gradual illumination of his spirit until it came to the full light of the perception of Christ as the Son of God, was far more to the Evangelist, and ought ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... profanity pretty close to the surface at all times, but the wellspring of it that gushed from him as once more he dragged Kendrick off his feet sounded the depths of anxiety and formed a lurid preface to angry argument. Had Kendrick forgotten Stiles? They couldn't hope to save both prisoners at once. Get Stiles first and they could organize a ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... ... volumes x.-xiv., the preface to vol. xi. containing important researches into the French communes. To the Table chronologique des diplomes, chartes, lettres, et actes imprimes concernant l'histoire de France he contributed three volumes in collaboration with Mouchet (1769-1783). ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... Faust" is by no means a philosophical or moral tract. It is, first of all and throughout, a living, breathing work of art, instinct with beauty and faithful in its every line to the principle laid down by its author in the preface to one of his earlier volumes: "Poetical imagination must fail altogether if it descends from its natural sphere and assumes work which is properly that of economic or political experience. Nor can it usefully urge its own peculiar intuitions as ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... any regular metre is easily perceived. These poems, built upon cadence, are more subtle, but the laws they follow are not less fixed. Merely chopping prose lines into lengths does not produce cadence, it is constructed upon mathematical and absolute laws of balance and time. In the preface to his "Poems", Henley speaks of "those unrhyming rhythms in which I had tried to quintessentialize, as (I believe) one scarce can do in rhyme." The desire to "quintessentialize", to head-up an emotion until it burns white-hot, seems to be ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... the history of the House of Borgia has been culled are not to be examined in a preface. They are too numerous, and they require too minute and individual a consideration that their precise value and degree of credibility may be ascertained. Abundantly shall such examination be made in the course ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... This word is still so used in the northern counties. It is, I think, used in this sense in the preface to ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... give my opinion I am bound to preface it by a personal statement which you are not to take, if you please, as a statement of the law. You ask me to decide—on the facts with which you have supplied me—whether your friend is, according to the law ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... Mrs. Nichols' heart, caused by her unusual position and her intense anxiety that her plea might be successful, had stopped her speaking at the close of a brief preface to her plea. She, however, soon rallied, though her voice was tremulous throughout, from the conviction that only an eminently successful presentation of her subject, could spike the enemy's batteries and win a verdict of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... a writer of verses.' In April, 1823, The Forest Minstrel and other Poems, by William and Mary Howitt, made its appearance in a not particularly appreciative world. The verses were chiefly descriptive of country sights and sounds, and had been produced, as stated in the Preface, 'not for the sake of writing, but for the indulgence of our own overflowing feelings.' The little book created no sensation, but it was kindly noticed, and seems to have attracted a few quiet readers who, like the writers, were lovers ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... point on which I venture to disagree with Mr. Ellis I have stated in a note upon his preface to the NOVUM ORGANUM, promising at the same time a fuller explanation of the grounds of my own conclusion, ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... deeply touched by the glowing breath of charity which every page exhaled, and was even guilty of the imprudence of writing an approving letter to the author, which letter he authorised him to insert in his work by way of preface. And yet now the Congregation of the Index Expurgatorius was about to place this book, issued in the previous June, under interdict; and it was to defend it that the young priest had hastened to Rome, inflamed by the desire to ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... again he is by her side renewing his tale of wonders, his interrupted plea. For it was to her he had been speaking the evening before; Maria knew it well. The scorn he showed for a country life, his praises of the town, these were but a preface to the allurements he was about to offer in all their varied forms, as one shows the pictures in a book, turning ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... other day, into Pitiscus's preface to his "Lexicon," where I found a word that puzzled me, and which I did not remember ever to have met with before. It is the adverb 'praefiscine', which means, IN A GOOD HOUR; an expression which, by the superstition of it, appears to ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... made to those parts which relate to the King's Private Library at Paris, and to Strasbourg: these having been executed by different pens, evidently in the hands of individuals of less wrongheadedness and acrimony of feeling than the Parisian Printer. Mons. Crapelet has prefixed a Preface to his labours, in which he tells the world, that, using my more favourite metaphorical style of expression, "a CRUSADE has risen ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... notes this point; see also Freeman, Hist. Norm. Conq., iv. 828, and the preface to my edition of Macfarlane's Camp of Refuge (Historical Novels Series), where I have discussed this subject ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... our insular apathy in the matter of influencing foreign opinion), and two or three interesting studies of French life and letters under the conditions of war. In fine, a book full of scholarly grace, such as may well achieve the writer's hope, expressed in his preface, of renewing the friendship he has already made with those readers "whose minds have become attuned to his," though they are now "separated from him by leagues of sea and occupied in noble and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... no prefatory remarks to the first and second editions of the following work. It was thought, when the printer made his final call for copy, that a preface might be written with more propriety if the public should indicate sufficient interest in the book to make its improvement and enlargement necessary. That interest, owing to the theme rather than the treatment, has not been withheld. The investigation of the subject was ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... over, and the upshot of the fighting has shown that we could quite well have afforded to laugh at the doomed Inca, I am in another difficulty. I may be supposed to be hitting Caesar when he is down. That is why I preface the play with this reminder that when it was written he was not down. To make quite sure, I have gone through the proof sheets very carefully, and deleted everything that could possibly be mistaken for a ...
— The Inca of Perusalem • George Bernard Shaw
... successors, till the Revolution, were favored with few and brief intervals of peaceful sway. The inferior members of the court party, in times of high political excitement, led scarcely a more desirable life. These remarks may serve as a preface to the following adventures, which chanced upon a summer night, not far from a hundred years ago. The reader, in order to avoid a long and dry detail of colonial affairs, is requested to dispense with an account of the train of circumstances ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... published by himself, and in the German language, which we possess; for the later lectures that were published were delivered by him in Latin, and the first sermons we have of his were also written by him in that language. We give here the title and preface ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... caring to face the Franciscan, whom I saw on the opposite side of the court, in conference with a lady just arrived at the inn,—I drew the taffeta curtain betwixt us, and being determined to write my journey, I took out my pen and ink and wrote the preface to ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... washing, Nora, and you can dry," said Gertie in that peculiar tone which Nora had learned to recognize as the preface to something disagreeable. ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... Falconidae are the eagles. Let me preface what little I have to say about these birds with the remark that I am unable to set forth any characteristics whereby a novice may recognise an eagle when he sees one on the wing. The reader should disabuse his mind of the idea ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... Fielding, whose first novel, Joseph Andrews, was begun as a skit or parody upon Pamela. R. is described as "a stout, rosy, vain, prosy little man." Life by Sir W. Scott in Ballantyne's Novelists Library. Works with preface by L. Stephen (12 ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... l'oublier. Elle reste debout, et tot ou tard elle triomphe, parce qu'elle est la pensee de Dieu et le besoin du monde.—MIGNET, Portraits, ii. 295. C'est toujours le sens commun inapercu qui fait la fortune des hypotheses auxquelles il se mele.—COUSIN, Fragments Phil. i. 51. Preface of 1826. Wer da sieht wie der Irrthum selbst ein Traeger mannigfaltigen und bleibenden Fortschritts wird, der wird auch nicht so leicht aus dem thatsaechlichen Fortschritt der Gegenwart auf Unumstoesslichkeit unserer Hypothesen schliessen.—Das richtigste Resultat der geschichtlichen ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... host as surety, first placed in Donaldson's hands the means by which he became afterward best known. Fearless as he undoubtedly was, an ascension was undertaken with the misgivings which usually preface an initial stepping from terra firma to the inconstant air. Once aloft, however, with the widespreading splendor and endless immensity of the earth's surface unrolling beneath him, and an exquisite physical exhilaration thrilling along his nerves, Donaldson became heart and soul an aeronaut. The ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... in their preface profess thus: 'It had bene a thing, we confesse, worthie to haue bene wished, that the Author himselfe had liu'd to haue set forth, and ouerseen his owne writings; But since it hath bin ordain'd otherwise, ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... translations. It has seen far more editions than any other, it is admitted on all hands to be by far the most faithful, and yet nobody seems to have a good word to say for it or for its author. Jervas no doubt prejudiced readers against himself in his preface, where among many true words about Shelton, Stevens, and Motteux, he rashly and unjustly charges Shelton with having translated not from the Spanish, but from the Italian version of Franciosini, which did not appear until ten years after Shelton's first volume. A suspicion of incompetence, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of Rabelais, in his preface, "have deservedly gained esteem by translating; yet not many condescend to translate but such as cannot invent; though to do the first well, requires often as much genius as to do the latter. I wish, reader, thou mayest be as willing to do ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... a prince he was of the love and contentment of his own subjects, as I assured myself he would not think it fit to do any thing of so great consequence without acquainting them with his intentions." Winwood, vol. ii. p. 222. Sir Walter Raleigh has this passage in the preface to his History of the World: "Philip II., by strong hand and main force, attempted to make himself not only an absolute monarch over the Netherlands, like unto the kings and monarchs of England and France, but, Turk like, to tread under his feet all their natural and fundamental laws, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... UPON MELANCHOLY, printed 1676, I pray look into it, and read the ninth page of his Preface, 'Democritus to the Reader.' There is something there which touches the point we are upon; but I mention the author to you, as the pleasantest, the most learned, and the most full of sterling sense. The wits of Queen Anne's ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... great Tolstoy read the preface of this work, he wrote to Korolenko, "I often sobbed and wept. Millions of copies of this work ought to be distributed; it ought to be read by every one who has a heart. No discourse, no novel or play, can produce the effect that your ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... to the documents directly relating to the Memoirs, and among these are several attempts at a preface, in which we see the actual preface coming gradually into form. One is entitled Casanova au Lecteur, another Histoire de mon Existence, and a third Preface. There is also a brief and characteristic Precis de ma vie, dated November ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... still makes a sorrowful impression on me to see an individual to whom happiness has been allotted go under, much more, to see a line become extinct." And in defence of his realism he has said further in his preface to "Countess Julie": "The theatre has for a long time seemed to me the Biblia pauperum in the fine arts, a bible with pictures for those who can neither read nor write, and the dramatist is the revivalist, and the revivalist dishes tap the ideas of the day in popular form, so popular that the ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... by way of preface, lest we might seem cold to the very remarkable merits of "Sir Rohan's Ghost," if we treated it as a book worth finding fault with, instead of condemning it to the indifferent limbo of general eulogy. It is our deliberate judgment that no first volume by any author ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... force to conuince the errours of Krantzius and others, according to our purpose. [Sidenote: A notable testimonie of Saxo concerning the Islanders.] And vndoubtedly as touching the trueth of our histories, it is euident that Saxo Grammaticus attributeth very much vnto them: whose words in his preface of Denmarke be these: Neither is the diligence of the Thylenses (for so he calleth Islanders) to be smothered in silence: who when as by reason of the natiue barrennes of their soile, wanting nourishments ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... conquer the stars, but it does nothing by jumps. As a Scientist, as well as a philosopher, I am accustomed to reaching the Transcendental by winding paths. It is characteristic of me that I should have consented to preface this remarkable Sonnet Cycle only after supreme deliberation, and that I should at last have determined to speak in behalf of the Car ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor • Wallace Irwin |
