10 great literary epigraphs

3:06 pm - January 6, 2012: 69 notes

10 great literary epigraphs

Flavorpill recently published The 25 Greatest Epigraphs in Literature. Here is my counter offer.

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What is past is prologue. —Inscription in Washington, D.C., museum
from White Teeth by Zadie Smith

This is the patent age of new inventions
For killing bodies, and for saving souls,
All propagated with the best intentions.
—Byron
from The Quiet American by Graham Greene

Beware the company of young men and of persons of the great world…. Do not seek to be seen in the company of the great. —Imitation of Jesus Christ, Book I, Chapter VIII
from “Violante or Wordly Vanities” by Marcel Proust

Happiness is not based on oneself, it does not consist of a small home, of taking and getting. Happiness is taking part in the struggle, where there is no borderline between one’s own personal world, and the world in general. —Lee H. Oswald, letter to his brother
from Libra by Don DeLillo

There was but one man who understood me, and he didn’t understand me. —Hegel
from The Vices by Lawrence Douglas

There was nothing to it. The Super Chief was on time, as it almost always is, and the subject was as easy to spot as a kangaroo in a dinner jacket. —Raymond Chandler
from Gun, with Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem

All the lives we could live, all the people we will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is what the world is. —Aleksander Hemon, The Lazarus Project
from Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

Every dog has his day,
and a good dog
just might have two days.
—Johnny Copeland
from Vineland by Thomas Pynchon

How can I live my life without committing an act with a giant scissors? —Joyce Carol Oates, “An Interior Monologue”
from “Willing” by Lorrie Moore

Into this wild abyss,
The womb of nature and perhaps her grave,
Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,
But all these in their pregnant causes mixed
Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless the almighty maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more worlds,
Into this wild abyss the wary fiend
Stood on the brink of hell and looked a while,
Pondering his voyage…
—John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book II
from The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman