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Preface   /prˈɛfəs/   Listen
Preface

noun
1.
A short introductory essay preceding the text of a book.  Synonyms: foreword, prolusion.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Preface" Quotes from Famous Books



... elementary a nature to find their way into the brains of the megalomaniac rhetoricians who control their country's fate. They will never endorse that saying of Stendhal's: "In Italy, with the exception of Milan, the death-penalty is the preface of all civilization." (To this day, the proportion of murders is still 13 per cent higher in Palermo ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... Sciences morales et politiques, and became a member of the Institute. In 1903 he contributed to the Revue de metaphysique et de morale a very important essay entitled Introduction a la metaphysique, which is useful as a preface to the study ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn

... amazement. He is equivalent to our Matchtet, only a little more intelligent. There is a terrible deal of affectation, dreariness, straining after originality, and as little of anything artistic as there was salt in that porridge we cooked in the evening at Bogimovo. In the preface this Rod regrets that he was in the past a "naturalist," and rejoices that the spiritualism of the latest recruits of literature has replaced materialism. Boyish boastfulness which is at the same time coarse and clumsy.... "If we are not as talented ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... sometimes followed them so closely that he simply turned their prose into verse. Mr. James Gairdner, who is a high authority on the Wars of the Roses, calls Shakespeare "an unrivaled interpreter" of that long and terrible conflict. (See the preface to his "Houses of Lancaster and York.") In the preface to his "Richard III" Mr. Gairdner is still more explicit. He says: "A minute study of the facts of Richard's life has tended more and more to convince me of the general fidelity of the portrait with which we have been ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... Preface My Watch Political Economy The Jumping Frog Journalism In Tennessee The Story Of The Bad Little Boy The Story Of The Good Little Boy A Couple Of Poems By Twain And Moore Niagara Answers To Correspondents To Raise Poultry Experience ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... iii. 291, 292, gives the most complete summary of this remarkable conversation; but it is substantially the same as the briefer sketch in the Tocsain contre les massacreurs de France, Rheims 1579, pp. 78, 79—a treatise of which the preface (L'Imprimeur aux lecteurs, dated June 25, 1577) shows that it was written before the death of Charles IX., but the publication of which was from time to time deferred in the vain hope that the authors of the inhuman massacre might yet repent. The new ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... in the preface to the first Edition of this work, and in the Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle, that it was in consequence of a wish expressed by Captain Fitz Roy, of having some scientific person on board, accompanied by an offer from him of giving up part ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... Ransford without preface or ceremony, "you've got to act quickly! You got my wire—a few words will explain it. I went up to town this morning in answer to a message from the bank where Braden lodged his money when he returned to England. To tell you the truth, the managers there and myself have, since ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher

... the list of printed plates, or "instructions to the binder." The half-title, title, dedication, &c., will often be found to be printed on odd sheets that have to be made up into section A. This preliminary matter is usually placed in the following order: Half-title, title, dedication, preface, contents, list of illustrations or other lists. If there is an index, it should be put at the end ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell

... In the preface of the "Critique of Political Economy," published at Berlin, in 1859, Marx explained how we two, in 1845, in Brussels, intended to work out together the antagonism of our views—that is, the materialistic philosophy of history, ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels

... doctor cast his eye up at the compass suspended above the captain's head. "Hallo!" said he—But before he could give utterance to the sentiments to which "hallo" was the preface, the hoarse voice of the first mate came rolling down the companion-hatch,—"A squall, sir! scoorin' doon like mad! Wund's veered richt roond ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne

... valuable compendium for all who expect to become mothers.—In the short preface prefixed to this little work, Dr. Bull judiciously remarks, that feelings of delicacy often prevent many young married females from making to their medical attendant, a full disclosure of the circumstances connected with their state, and which ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.

... Grotius' labour it will be sufficient to read what he says in the preface. "We have collated Capella with the several authors who have treated the same subjects: in the two first books with those who have written of the sentiments of the ancient Philosophers, Apuleius, Albricus, and ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny

... New Testament, being done by Wycliffe himself. About eight years after its completion the whole was revised by Richard Purvey, his curate and intimate friend, whose manuscript is still in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. Purvey's preface is a most interesting old document, and shows not only that he was deeply in earnest about his work, but that he thoroughly understood the intellectual and moral conditions necessary ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... If a preface is a light which should serve to illumine the contents of a volume, I choose, not words, but human figures to illustrate this little book intended to enter families where children are growing up. I therefore recall here, as an eloquent symbol, Helen Keller ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori

... verge of temerity, and may justly be said to have never known what terror was. Another summer excursion was a visit to Chamouni, of which he has left memorable descriptions in his letters to Peacock, and in the somewhat Coleridgian verses on Mont Blanc. The preface to "Laon and Cythna" shows what a powerful impression had been made upon him by the glaciers, and how he delighted in the element of peril. There is a tone of exultation in the words which record the experiences of his two ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... across a great variety of amusing information, and then he spends another ten years writing out a fair copy of his labours. Then he thinks it does not quite do in that form, so he snips a paragraph out of the beginning and puts it at the end; next he shifts some more matter from the middle to the preface; then he thinks it over. It seems to him that it is too big, it wants condensation. The scientific world will say he has made too much of it; it ought to read very slight, and present the facts while concealing the labour. So he sets about removing ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... In my preface to the Lion of the North I expressed a hope that I might some day be able to continue the history of the Thirty Years' War. The deaths of Gustavus and his great rival Wallenstein and the crushing defeat of the Swedes and their allies ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty

... to Mr Arnold's preface, and to the account which he gives us of the object which he proposes to himself in poetry: and our notice of this must be brief, as our space is running to its conclusion. He tells us, in a manner most feelingly instructive, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... the character and extent of these works is necessary as a means of understanding their uses. The authors of the volume "The Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley" remark, in their preface, that "the ancient inclosures and groups of works personally examined and surveyed are upwards of one hundred.... About two hundred mounds of all forms and sizes, and occupying every variety of position, ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... not, however, to struggle gradually along; at last we arrived in that Stronghold, where [as preface to the War of 1734, known to ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... After this short preface please to listen while I tell you that once in a little black-timbered cottage, at the skirts of a wood, a young woman sat before the fire rocking her baby, and, as she did so, building a castle in the air: "What a good thing it would be," she thought to herself, ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... to the preface written by his daughter, was born Nov. 4th 1758, at Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In the fall of 1775—being then 17 years of age, he joined a regiment of men raised in Lancaster Co. for the purpose of joining Arnold, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... "A new Preface" is, I find, promised with my story. If there are any among my readers who loved Aesop's Fables chiefly on account of the Moral appended, they will perhaps be pleased to turn backward and learn what I ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... the sixty-seven mills named in the preface of this Report, showing how each mill is at ...
— Report of the Knaresbrough Rail-way Committee • Knaresbrough Rail-way Committee

... Charles's death, a pamphlet was published in London in which the Duchess figures under the fictitious name of Francelie; Louis XIV. designated as Tirannides, and our English king as Prince des Iles. In the preface to the French translation of this pamphlet, which bears the title of Histoire secrete de la Duchesse de Portsmouth, it is stated that the author desired to give, by these changes of name, some ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... at first favorably impressed. Mr. Ormsby's Preface is most striking,—uniting not only touching candor, but innocence absolutely refreshing. The duties of historian, which we just now called so weighty, rest lightly upon his conscious strength. The historian remarks, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... mercy, noble Captaine, and congratulate your addition of honour. It was Ignorance which, I professe, made me salute you with a wrong preface. Now, Capt., I shall bee proud to march under the ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various

... habitual criminals.[28] But by far the most valuable publication with regard to Haggart is one that Borrow must have read in his youth. This was a life of Haggart written by himself,[29] a little book that had a wide circulation, and containing a preface by George Robertson, Writer to the Signet, dated Edinburgh, 20th July 1821. Mr. Robertson tells us that a portion of the story was written by Haggart, and the remainder taken down from his dictation. The profits of this book, Haggart arranged, were to go in part to the school of ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... introduces us; and that it is not a mere translation from Strabo or Pausanias which we are reading, or a commentary on those authors. This reflection leads us to the concluding remark in Mr. Gell's preface (by much the most interesting part of his book) to his Itinerary of Greece, in ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... elements of style in literature The morality of the profession of letters Books which have influenced me A note on realism My first book: 'Treasure Island' The genesis of 'the master of Ballantrae' Preface ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson

... is so great among the Foraminifera as to include not merely those differential characters which have been usually accounted SPECIFIC, but also those upon which the greater part of the GENERA of this group have been founded, and even in some instances those of its ORDERS" (Foraminifera, Preface, x). Yet this same group had been divided by D'Orbigny and other authors into a number of clearly defined families, genera, and species, which these careful and conscientious researches have shown to have been almost all founded on ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... to College' was all very well (diplomacy had prompted this preface), but the words that followed fell so alarmingly on Godwin's ear that he looked up with a resentful expression, ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... century. The arms, No. 2, having been assigned to ST. EDWARD, apatron saint of medival England, were long regarded with peculiar reverence. Ihave placed them, drawn from a fine shield of the thirteenth century in Westminster Abbey, to take a part in forming a group at the head of my Preface, with the shields of the two other saintly Patrons of "old England," ST. GEORGE and ST. EDMUND, No. 1 and No. 3—a red cross on a silver shield, and three golden crowns upon a shield ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell

... Cervantes's own preface to Don Quixote is a perfect model of the gentle, every where intelligible, irony in the best essays of the Tatler and the Spectator. Equally natural and easy, Cervantes is more spirited than Addison; whilst he blends with the terseness of Swift, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... Edited by his Daughter, with a Preface and Notes by his Son. Illustrated with many Copies from his own Sketches, and of a MS. page of "The Song ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood

... and, from an amiable interest, also, in whatever may chance to afford them innocent pleasure, would fain know something more about an author whose works have brought them that gratification than the cold letter of a mere literary preface usually tells: to such readers this—something ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... As an interesting preface to our story we may quote from that curious old tome, "Purchas his Pilgrimage," the following ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... Boys, ma'am"—to Mrs. Goodworth—"are, as your husband remarks, romantic simpletons. No one takes them and their views of life seriously. Certainly not their political views! When they come men they laugh themselves. They are not boys then; they are men. Which is, as it were, the preface to what I might as well tell you. My nephew has resigned his captaincy and quitted the army. Apparently he has come to feel that soldiering is not, after all, the life he prefers. It may be that he will take to the law, or he may wander ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston

... furious; but the solid fact that Gifford had commended his work acted like a charm, and his fury subsided. On the fifth of September (Letters, 1898, ii. 24, note) he received from Murray the first proof, and by December 14 "the Pilgrimage was concluded," and all but the preface had been printed and seen through ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... [5] This uncompromising preface took the place of one in which Major, on his arrival in Scotland in 1518, praised the same Archbishop, then in Glasgow, for his many-sided and 'chamaelon-like mildness.' It is generally recognised that the stern ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes

... heard him cackling to himself in insane glee as he went down the steps. And that hush had endured while they waited in a delicious state of tingling suspense for the first furious sentences which should preface his lifelong ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans

... necessary to state at the outset, that this preface does not in the least represent the book as it naturally strikes the reader. Women may read carelessly, as they have been accused of doing in this instance, but when hundreds of women, writing from all parts of the country, in private ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... Jasmin was now eighteen, and proposed to start business on his own account. This required very little capital; and he had already secured many acquaintances who offered to patronize him. M. Boyer d'Agen, who has recently published the works of Jasmin, with a short preface and a bibliography,{4} says that he first began business as a hairdresser in the Cour Saint-Antoine, now the Cour Voltaire. When the author of this memoir was at Agen in the autumn of 1888, the proprietor of the Hotel du Petit St. Jean informed ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles

... and a more comfortable belief, that the only part of the world which is in the least likely to concern itself with such volumes as these is composed of a number of enlightened and sympathetic persons' (as before, Preface, vii. viii.). The closing consideration ought to overweigh all scruples ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... of it is contained in a small tract in our library, entitled Lyrica Sacra, excerpta ex Hymnis Ecclesiae Antiquis. Privatim excusa Romae, 1818. At the end of the preface is subscribed "T. M. Anglus." And on the title page in MS., "For the Rev. Dr. Milner, Dean of Carlisle, Master of Queen's College, in the University of Cambridge, from T. J. Mathia—" the rest of the name has been cut off in binding; it was probably ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various

... oftentimes the keenest pangs of thirst, and believing that all this torture was the preface to something yet worse, it can well be imagined that we were indeed a sorry party. Even Sergeant Corney ceased trying to animate us, for despair had ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis

... paused for a moment, Paul, who had been in a perfect maze of wonder at this preface ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis

... 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 ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... the fringe of society who keep this world from being perfect. They were also logical heirs to the satire once visited upon Dissenters but which diminished when Dissenters became more restrained in their style of worship. (The Preface to one anti-Methodist satire even takes pains to exclude "rational Dissenters" from its target.) Many Methodists were followers of Calvin. These Methodists brought out the old antagonisms against ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd

... it, who, in her high-crown hat, nicely clean linen, and red petticoat, has been viewed by half the parish. This article of dress is of mighty concern among some ghosts; wherefore a skilful and learned apparition writer, in the Preface of Drelincourt on Death, makes a very pious ghost talk to a lady upon the important subject of scouring a mantua. Before I leave my ghost of dignity, I must take notice of some who delight to seem as formidable as possible, ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor

... Arnold's deservedly famous preface well emphasises one advantage that a tradition of subject and treatment gave to the Greek poet as to the Greek sculptor: the economy of means it made possible, "not a word wasted, not a sentiment capriciously thrown in,"—since every deviation ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... As when of old some orator renowned, In Athens or free Rome, where eloquence Flourished, since mute! to some great cause addressed, Stood in himself collected; while each part, Motion, each act, won audience ere the tongue; Sometimes in highth began, as no delay Of preface brooking, through his zeal of right: So standing, moving, or to highth up grown, The Tempter, all impassioned, thus began. O sacred, wise, and wisdom-giving Plant, Mother of science! now I feel thy power Within me clear; not only to discern Things in their causes, but ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... produced at the Duke's Theatre, Dorset Garden, in February, 1673, but owing to the manifold disadvantages under which it was put on the stage it did not meet with that success it certainly deserved. It was indeed, to quote the preface, 'hugely injured in the acting.' The performers were anything but word perfect and hopelessly forgot or confused their business, which, more especially in a play of such a type as this romantic comedy so full of busy and complicated detail demanding close and continuous attention, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... warrior Death. Temper killed him. In a fit of passion he suddenly died. But the siege went on. The vizier concealed his death and kept the batteries at work, perhaps deeming it best for his own fortunes to be able to preface the announcement of the sultan's ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris

... of Exmouth, in his Preface to "A Discourse and Discovery of Newfoundland," London, 1620, says he was an eye-witness to Sir H. Gilbert's ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt

... Doctors, secular and sacred, and very fiercely against Sprightly's brotherhood. Doctor Lobelia's text was found somewhere in Pope Campbell's New Testament; as it suited the following discourse introduced with the usual inspired preface: ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... this presumptuous pontiff, Hello, had leaped from a preface written for this book. He himself remarked that "extraordinary things can only be stammered," and he stammered in good truth, declaring that "the holy gloom where Rusbrock extends his eagle wings is his ocean, his prey, his glory, and for ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... our Preface would not suffice to prepare the reader for the high importance of this stupendous phenomenon. We We purpose, therefore, devoting our second chapter to the subject, as a preparation for the very ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... standard works in each department of literature; and (2) to confine, then, our reading to that department which suits the particular bent of our mind." Then he lays down these definite rules, telling us how to read: "1. Before you begin to peruse a book, know something about the author. 2. Read the preface carefully. 3. Take a comprehensive survey of the table of contents. 4. Give your whole attention to whatever you read. 5. Be sure to note the most valuable passages as you read. 6. Write out, in your own language, a summary ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder

... exquisitely written? No literary morsel is more delicious. Is the author inveterately dull? It is a kind of preparatory information, which may be very useful. It argues a deficiency of taste to turn over an elaborate preface unread: for it is the attar of the author's roses, every drop distilled at an immense cost. It is the reason of the reasoning, and the ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston

... the place with that Lord Gardenstone of the Court of Sessions who published, late in the last century, a volume of "Miscellanies in Prose and Verse," containing, among other clever things, a series of tart criticisms on English plays, transcribed, it was stated in the preface, from the margins and fly-leaves of the books of a "small library kept open by his Lordship" for the amusement of travellers at the inn of some village in his immediate neighborhood; and taking it for granted, somehow, that Gardenstone was the village, I was looking around me for the ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... already extant, and in many hands, it is necessary that the foreign reader be given to understand of what threads the texture of that book consists, and how much of truth there is in that which that shameless person does, in his preface to the reader, so stupidly write ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... the 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 ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar

... lovely Ines, and many more than a hundred items of interest could be enumerated. The best authority is J. de Araujo, whose monumental Bibliographia Inesiana was published in 1897. Mrs. Behn's novel was immensely popular and is included, with some unnecessary moral observations as preface, in Mrs. Griffith's A Collection of Novels (1777), Vol. III, which has a plate illustrating the tale. It was turned into French by Marie-Genevieve-Charlotte Tiroux d' Arconville (1720-1805), wife of a councillor of the Parliament, an aimable blue-stocking ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... Beck Dobby, and Edwin Waugh, prose author and poet. Giles's Trip to London, and the other sketches by the same author, are highly characteristic of Norfolk. Northamptonshire has its poet, John Clare; and Suffolk can boast of Robert Bloomfield. According to her own statement, printed in the Preface (p. viii) to the E.D.S. Bibliographical List, George Eliot, when writing Adam Bede, had in mind "the talk of N. Staffordshire and the neighbouring part of Derbyshire"; whilst, in Silas Marner, "the district imagined ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat

... error, and I will not insult the memory of Raleigh by supposing, like his contemporaries,* that the auriferous quartz which he brought home had not been collected in America. (* See the defence of Raleigh in the preface to the Discovery of Guiana, 1596 pages 2 to 4.) We cannot judge of things from which we are separated by so long an interval of time. The gneiss of the littoral chain* contains traces of the precious metals (* In ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt

... Lemnos were very masterful. On one memorable occasion they killed all their husbands in one night. Thus the line of Ovid has almost a proverbial force, "Lemniadesque viros nimium quoque vincere norunt."—Heroides, vi. 53. Siebelis in his Preface to Pausanias, p. xxi, gives from an old Scholia a sort of excuse for the action ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... and after dinner carried my wife, her and Deb. to the 'Change, where they bought some things, while I bought "The Mayden Queene," a play newly printed, which I like at the King's house so well, of Mr. Dryden's, which he himself, in his preface, seems to brag of, and indeed is a good play. So home again, and I late at the office and did much business, and then home to supper ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... unpretending, but very powerful, little tract, by the same writer, entitled 'Introductory Lessons on Christian Evidences.' has passed through many editions, has been translated into most of the European languages, and, amongst the rest, very recently into German, with an appropriate preface, by professor Abeltzhauser, of the University of Dublin. It shows to demonstration that as much of the evidence of Christianity as is necessary for conviction may be made perfectly clear to the meanest capacity' and that, in spite of the assertions of Rome and of Oxford to the contrary, the ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers

... America that the movement attained so much prominence and so influenced the trend of poetry for the years immediately succeeding. Miss Lowell many times, in admirable articles, stated the principles upon which Imagism is based, notably in the Preface to "Some Imagist Poets" and in the Preface to the second series, in 1916. She also elaborated it much more fully in her volume, "Tendencies in Modern American Poetry", 1917, in the articles pertaining ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... preface to the second part of our author's poems, printed in the year 1690, has given his character at large, and tells us; 'That Waller is a name that carries every thing in it that is either great, or graceful ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... importance of the olfactory sense, and in his educational work, Emile (Bk. II), he referred to the odor of a woman's "cabinet de toilette" as not so feeble a snare as is commonly supposed. In the same century Casanova wrote still more emphatically concerning the same point; in the preface to his Memoires he states: "I have always found sweet the odor of the women I have loved"; and elsewhere: "There is something in the air of the bedroom of the woman one loves, something so intimate, so balsamic, such ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... this life was but a short preface to a new existence which began the moment Death had entered the house. Until at last, the life of the future came to be regarded as more important than the life of the present and the people of Egypt turned their teeming land into one vast shrine for ...
— Ancient Man - The Beginning of Civilizations • Hendrik Willem Van Loon

... Austria-Hungary see Ulbrich's Oesterreich-Ungarn in Marquardsen's Handbuch des Oeffentlichen Rechts; Francis Deak, with preface by M.E. Grant Duff; Home Rule in Austria-Hungary, by David King, in the Nineteenth ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey

... of Lincoln's Presidency, it will be necessary to mark the course of the Civil War stage by stage as we proceed. There are, however, one or two general features of the contest with which it may be well to deal by way of preface. ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... Casaubon,[7] scurrilous satire, especially as a political weapon, was a recognizable subspecies in England at least to 1700. The anonymous author, for instance, of A Satyr Against Common-Wealths (1684) contended in his preface that it is "as disagreeable to see a Satyr Cloath'd in soft and effeminate Language, as to see a Woman scold and vent her self in Billingsgate Rhetorick in a gentile and advantageous Garb." But ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte

... Mr. Browning's genius, contains, in its many lines of exquisite fancy and deep pathos, so much that is rich and sweet. It had also, to discard metaphor, its faults of exaggeration and confusion; and it is of these that Mr. Browning was probably thinking when he wrote his more serious apologetic preface to its reprint in 1868. But these faults were partly due to his conception of the character which he had tried to depict; and partly to the inherent difficulty of depicting one so complex, in a succession ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... there only remains the duty, or, rather, the privilege, of saying one parting word more. A Preface may be called a pre-post-erous production, because, though standing at the head of a book, it is almost invariably written after the book is finished, and when the author can take a general review of his work. In the present instance this was impossible. The exigencies ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... careful to explain in the preface of his "History of Java" that as "in the many severe strictures passed upon the Dutch Administration in Java, some of the observations may, for want of a careful restriction in the words employed, appear to extend to the Dutch nation and character generally, I think it proper ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid

... variance, and debate which, in the preface of the said supplication they do allege to have risen among your Grace's subjects, spiritual and temporal, occasioned, as they say, by the uncharitable behaviour and demeanour of divers ordinaries: to this we, the ordinaries, ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... hardly necessary, but I comply with the general custom of adding at the beginning, instead of the end, an apology for writing a book. This seems to me to be the chief object of a preface, and I add to it an appeal for the kindly consideration of the readers ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... of "On Liberty," printed as a preface to this "Little Journey," rivals in worth the wonderful little classic of Ernest Renan to his ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... Canadian voyageurs, on a distant expedition, is not so easy a matter as might be imagined; especially of such a set of vainglorious fellows with money in both pockets, and cocks' tails in their hats. Like sailors, the Canadian voyageurs generally preface a long cruise with a carouse. They have their cronies, their brothers, their cousins, their wives, their sweethearts, all to be entertained at their expense. They feast, they fiddle, they drink, they sing, they dance, they frolic and fight, ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving

... preface these Sermons—which were preached either at Westminster Abbey, or at one of the Chapels Royal—by a Paper read at Sion College, in 1871; and for this reason. Even when they deal with what is usually, and rightly, called "vital" and "experimental" ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley

... In his own preface Mr. Ruskin has told us all that in 1856 it was necessary to know of the genesis of the Harbors. That account may now be supplemented with the following additional facts. In 1826 Turner (in conjunction with Lupton, the engraver) projected and commenced ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin

... the subjoined version of the accompanying new letter of Bonaparte (referred to in my Preface) I am indebted to Mr. H.A.L. Fisher, in the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... I wrote a preface to Mr. Swope's book for the express purpose of informing the American public in this way that I believed that Germany intended at an early date to ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard

... But, without further preface, I will begin with one of the nothings. A few days after the death of the unfortunate Spaniard, related in my last letter, a large log, felled by some wickedly careless woodman, rolled down from one of the hills, and so completely ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... Beverley who broke the silence at last with a species of inarticulate snarl peculiarly his own. Piers' dark eyes were instantly upon him, but he said nothing, merely waiting for the words to which this sound was the preface. ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... hopes that this volume might have gone its way without preface; but as I look over the sheets, I find in them various fallings short of old purposes which require a ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... gentleman of refined mind and high classical attainments, and quite above such ridiculous sensitiveness. In language it is the same thing. There are certain words which are never used in America, but an absurd substitute is employed. I cannot particularise them after this preface, lest I should be accused of indelicacy myself. I may, however, state one little circumstance which will fully prove the correctness of ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... moustached, hawk-featured Englishman who looked all muscle and bones and brain. Jarvis Pasha being in the secret of "Antoun's" identity and business in Cairo, simplified the explanation, and did away with the necessity for a preface. All I had to tell was the brief story of the girls' disappearance with Bedr el Gemaly, and Fenton's following them into space; then, how word had come after ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... Newton 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 ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... needs to be said, by way of Preface, that the articles in the present volume have been selected more with a view to variety and contrast than will be the case with those to follow. And it is right that I should thank Mr. J. R. McIlraith for friendly help in ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... generation," says Dr. Worcester in his Preface, "men have been groping for a theology which should approach the old mysteries, God, evil, the soul and immortality from the point of view of modern scientific and philosophic thought. The old static aspect of the universe has been ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce

... The City Bride, produced in 1696; and a comedy and a masque, Love's a Lottery, and a Woman the Prize. With a New Masque, call'd Love and Riches Reconcil'd (1699), produced about March 1698/9. The Mistakes is clearly apprentice work, for Harris acknowledges in a preface the considerable help of William Mountfort, who took the part of the villain, Ricardo. Mountfort, who had already written three plays himself, cut one of the scenes intended for the fifth act and inserted one of his own ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris

... we should apologize for writing, even so, so long a preface to so succinct a book. The one excuse we can think of is that, having read it, one need not read the book. That book, as we have said, may strike the superficial as jocular, but in actual fact it is a very serious and even profound ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan

... hallucination. There are numerous and decisive experiments which leave no doubt on this point. I will cite only those of Goldscheider and Mueller. These experimenters wrote or printed some formulas in common use, "Positively no admission;" "Preface to the fourth edition," etc. But they took care to write the words incorrectly, changing and, above all, omitting letters. These sentences were exposed in a darkened room. The person who served as the subject of the experiment was placed before them ...
— Dreams • Henri Bergson

... doubt He lifts the window and looks out. —Oh cooling surge of starlit air, Pour on my brow your tide so rare! I see where Verrenberg doth glimmer, And Shepherds' Knoll with snows a-shimmer. He sits him down to write at last, Dips pen and makes the A and O, Which o'er his "Preface" always go. I meanwhile from my post on high Ne'er from my master turn an eye, Look at him now, with far-off gaze Pondering, testing every phrase; The snuffer once he seizes quick And cleans of soot the flaming wick; Then oft in deep abstraction, he Murmurs a sentence audibly, Which I with outstretched ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... Shepard) was then a member. It was very favorably received, and was followed by other stories,—a long series of them,—still lengthening, and which, it is hoped, may be prolonged indefinitely. Recently a new edition has appeared, and for a preface the author has related with touching simplicity the account of his first experience ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic

... Sven Hedin, the Swedish explorer and writer, visited the German front to see the world-war at first hand. "A People in Arms," published in Leipzig and dedicated to the German soldiers, is the result. A preface proclaims the author's neutrality as a Swede and announces that he "swears before God that I have written not a line which is not the truth and have depicted nothing which I have not witnessed with my own eyes." This article is one ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... of the Preface are the initials W.W., making it clear that Watson, the author of Important Considerations and the Quodlibets, was the writer, and accounting for the connection which seemed to exist between the Discursus ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 40, Saturday, August 3, 1850 - A Medium Of Inter-Communication For Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, • Various

... James Macbride, of South Carolina—the early associate of Elliott in his "Botany of South Carolina and Georgia," and to whose death, at the age of thirty-three, cutting short a life of remarkable promise, the latter touchingly alludes in the preface to his second volume—sent to Sir James Edward Smith an account of his observations upon this subject, made in 1810 and the following years. This was read to the Linnaean Society in 1815, and published in the twelfth volume of its "Transactions." From this forgotten paper ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... 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 an integral part of the modern temper, and certainly ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell

... reducing for the press the vast amount of professional as well as general information which he had amassed during a long, active, and earnest life: the material for this "Digest" outstanding as the last, largest, and most important part of it. Had he survived but a few months more, a preface in his own terse and peculiar style, containing his last ideas, would have rendered these remarks unnecessary; but he was cut off on the 8th of September, 1865, leaving this favourite manuscript to the affectionate care of his family and friends. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... knows less about them than those who have periodically come into contact with them but on certain occasions have given the blacks serious study. This is evidenced by Mr. Phillips' own statement when he says in his preface, that "a generation of freedom has wrought less transformation in the bulk of the blacks than might casually be supposed." This failure to understand what the Negroes have thought and felt and done, in other words, the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various

... are an attempt to sketch an attitude towards statecraft. I have tried to suggest an approach, to illustrate it concretely, to prepare a point of view. In selecting for the title "A Preface to Politics," I have wished to stamp upon the whole book my own sense that it is a beginning and not a conclusion. I have wished to emphasize that there is nothing in this book which can be drafted into a legislative proposal and presented to the legislature the day after to-morrow. It was ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... I am trying to make this preface as distasteful as possible, in order that the plays may shine out the more pleasantly, I shall begin (how better?) with an attack on the dramatic critics. I will relate a little conversation which took place, shortly after the publication ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne

... Biographical, Political, Social, Literary, and Scientific. By Hugh Miller. Edited, with a Preface, by Peter Bayne. Boston. Gould & Lincoln. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... in the Practice and Exercise of Arts, one does not always easily distinguish the Abilities of those that work in them. The great Capacity of Vitruvius before the publishing of his Book, which he Composed when he was in Years, had not all the Esteem it deserved; which he complains of in his Preface, and in the Age he lived; though it was full of the most refined Wits, yet he had the fortune of others, to find few to defend him from the Surprizes and Attacks of false Reasoning, and from the injustice that prejudice creates, ...
— An Abridgment of the Architecture of Vitruvius - Containing a System of the Whole Works of that Author • Vitruvius

... up the second book, that on the philosophy of the organism, to read in its preface that a much-to-be-honoured British nobleman had established a foundation of lectures in a Scotch University for forwarding the study of a Natural Theology. The term possessed me. Unlike the old theology woven of myths and a fanciful philosophy of the decadent ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... of the volumes, and even three in some. Then again lists, indexes, dissertations, acts of Saints, seem mingled indiscriminately. This apparent confusion, however, is all on the surface, as the reader will at once see, if he take the trouble to read the second chapter of the general preface prefixed to the first volume of the "January Saints,"' where the plan of the work is elaborately set forth. Let us briefly analyze a volume. The daily order of the Roman martyrology was taken as the basis of Bolland's scheme. Our author first of all arranged the ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... far from troubling my self in any Subject on this kind, that I may justly say in one sence, the Writer of that Absolom, is the Author of this. This favour, as in Justice due, obtain'd from you, I shall not trouble you with a long Preface, like a tedious Compliment at the Door, but desire you to look in for your Entertainment. Onely I cannot forbear telling you, that one thing I am a little concern'd for you, Tories, that your Absoloms and Achitophels, and the ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.



Words linked to "Preface" :   prologize, introduction, textual matter, tell, prologise, say, state, precede, text, prologuize, prefatorial, preamble, foreword, prolusion



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