Epigraphs

I was just struck by how much I enjoy epigraphs, and decided that it is time to create a place to share them with one another here on LT. I hope others would enjoy sharing these as well.

From Crashing Through: A True Story of Risk, Adventure, and The Man Who Dared to See by Robert Kurson:

"To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself." - Soren Kierkegaard

"Fear and hope are alike underneath." - Richard Ford, epigraph in The Last Kind Words by Tom Piccirilli

In re #1. Perhaps you can clear up a lingering matter. Didn't Kirekegaard also say somewhere, "Desire is an art"? Pretty good for a clergyman too, incidentally. If he didn't, someone else should have. Fun point you raise: maybe I'll dig up some more. How 'bout Fr Rolfe: "divo amico desideratissimo" -- "to the divine friend, most desired". Of-course, hs tragedy was that he never found that person, except in his fiction. -- Goddard

"Living with a saint is more grueling than being one."......from Queen of America by Luis Alberto Urrea

#4 Oh that's quite brilliant! And very true. I love epigraphs too so I'm marking the thread for now. Will be back later.

In rebus 4 & 5. My goodness, such cynicism. Not to be too much The Bad Kid in School, but this epigram -- not epiGRAPH, incidentally -- only works because of its assumptions, thus making it self-referential and, considered from the purely logical point of view, just so much agitated wind. -- G

From Tropical Fish: Stories Out of Entebbe by Doreen Baingana:

"Abagyenda bareeba,
Those who travel, see."

--Kinyankore proverb

From The Dalai Lama's Cat. It is part dedication, part epigraph, I think.

"In loving memory of our own little Rinpoche, Princess Wussik of the Sapphire Throne.

She brought us joy; we loved her well.
May this book be a direct cause for her, and all living beings, to quickly and easily attain complete enlightenment.
May all beings have happiness and the true causes of happiness;
May all beings be free from suffering and the true causes of suffering;
May all beings never be parted from the happiness that is without suffering, the great joy of nirvana, liberation;
May all beings abide in peace and equanimity, their minds free from attachment and aversion, and free from indifference."

Nice!

>8 krazy4katz:,9
The only way to follow that is the epigraph to Pale fire:

This reminds me of the ludicrous account he gave Mr. Langton, of the despicable state of a young gentleman of good family. "Sir, when I heard of him last, he was running about town shooting cats." And then in a sort of kindly reverie, he bethought himself of his own favorite cat, and said, "But, Hodge shan't be shot: no, no, Hodge shall not be shot."

--James Boswell, the Life of Samuel Johnson

>6 HarryMacDonald: Goddard: It's odd how we make the distinction between epigram and epigraph — as far as I can see from the OED they both meant roughly the same thing in English until fairly recently (an inscription, especially something written over a door), but at some point in the mid-19th century they diverged to their present meanings.

thorold, don't you get tired of trumping my ace? Grateful & incorrigible, -- G. PS you might want to cast a glim on the new discussion of music literature on the Group-page E=F flat (which it does only in some systems -- though one picks one's battles). Incidentally, while I defer to you, to the OED, and certainly to the 19th-century (which gave us PARSIFAL and painless dentistry), I also recall my sainted Mother (a 20-th century person), who in these kinds of discussions would look at my with Olympian grandeur and ask "Vass you der, Chollie?"

"You don't have any right to be here."

From Flagrant Conduct by Dale Carpenter

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Anna Kerenina

From Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon:

Epigraph #1: "Despising all my glory, abandoning my high estate, leaving my family, I would go over mountains and hills, through seas and lands, till I should arrive at the place where my Lord the King resides, that I might see not only his glory and magnificence, and that of his servants and ministers, but also the tranquility of the Israelites. On beholding this my eyes would brighten, my reins would exult, my lips would pour forth praises to God, who has not withdrawn his favor from his afflicted ones." - letter of Hasdai Ibn Shaprut, minister of the Caliph of Spain , to Joseph, ruler of Khazaria, circa 960

Epigraph #2: "From no on, I'll describe the cities to you,' the Khan had said, 'in your journeys you will see if they exist." - Italo Calvino, "Invisible Cities"

"They call me The Professor and I say, 'You're right. I professed to do something and I did it.'"

From No Crystal Stair: A Documentary Novel of the Life and Work of Lewis Michaux by Vaunda Michaux Nelson (YA Novel)

From Zoli by Colum McCann:

"To get back before dark is the art of going." - Wendell Berry

"If you keep quiet, you die. If you speak, you die. So speak and die." - Tahar Djaout

More Shapes Than One by Fred Chappell

For who knows not that Truth is strong, next to the Almighty. She needs no policies, nor strategems nor licensings to make her victorious…Yet is it not impossible that she may have more shapes than one.
—John Milton, Areopagitica

The Last Gentleman by Walker Percy

If a man cannot forget, he will never amount to much.
—Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or

We know that the modern world is coming to an end…At the same time, the unbeliever will emerge from the fogs of secularism. He will cease to reap benefit from the values and forces developed by the very Revelation he denies…Loneliness in faith will be terrible. Love will disappear from the face of the public world, but the more precious will be that love which flows from one lonely person to another…The world to come will be filled with animosity and danger, but it will be a world open and clean.
—Romano Guardini, The End of the Modern World

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

…the specific character of despair is this: it is unaware of being despair.
—Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death

1) The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

You are all a lost generation.
—from a conversation between Hemingway and Gertrude Stein

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever…The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose…The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits…All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.
—Ecclesiastes

2) A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
—Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects

Nice, deniro!

From Miss MacIntosh, My Darling by Marguerite Young:

"For all dead loves and all remembered things.
I have travelled through many seas."

23> That is quite lovely

Digital Barbarism by Mark Helprin

I am all for using machines, but do not let them use you.
—Winston Churchill

From Black Water Rising by Attica Locke:

"If we are blinded by the darkness, we are blinded by the light." - Annie Dillard

"Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards.".....Soren Kierkegard

The October List by Jeffrey Deaver

From The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin:

"God gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time!"

From The Obscene Bird of Night by Jose Donoso:

"Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect that life is no farce; that it is not genteel comedy even; that it flowers and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundest tragic depths of the essential dearth in which its subject's roots are plunged. The natural inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters."...Henry James Sr., writing to his sons Henry and William

From The Canvas by Benjamin Stein:

"We do not know what is true you say. We can only say what counts." (Unattributed)

AND (because this book has two first pages and two epigraphs)......

"Do you want to take the ravine or the river? (no one pays the ferryman with love)" (Unattributed)

From Maidenhair:

"And your ashes will be called, and will be told:
'Return that which does not belong to you;
reveal what you have kept to this time.'
For by the word was the world created, and by the word shall we be resurrected."

--Revelation of Baruch ben Neriah. 4, XLII

From The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers:

"A yellow bird, With a yellow bill, Was perched upon, My windowsill..........I lured him in, With a piece of bread, And then I smashed, His fucking head....."....Traditional U.S. Army Marching Cadence

"To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetfull of evils past, is a mercifull provision in nature, whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil dayes, and our delivered senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions.".....Sir Thomas Browne

"Let me return to my hometown entombed in grass as in a warm and high sea." Giorgio Basani, "Saluta a Roma"

From The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

"For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our father: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is non abiding."..............1 Chronicles 29:15

From The Ploughmen by Kim Zupan

From The Undertaking: Life Studies From The Dismal Trade:

> "Now there is no more catching one's own eye in the mirror, The poor we no longer have with us. Our calm hearts strike only the hour, and God, as promised, proves to be mercy clothed in light. - Jane Kenyon, 1948-1995

> "Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt. - Virgil, 70-19 B.C.

> "And I swear that I don't have a gun. No I don't have a gun." - Kurt D. Cobain, 1967-1994

> :I chose the Vermont Hardwood, dark and shiny. At calling hours we said that her mouth was wrong. It was a comfort, I suppose." - Donald Hall

From Mr. Tall: A Novella and Stories by Tony Earley:

"What luck did ye have this time, Jack?"
"Why, King, I didn't see no unicorn.".....Richard Chase, "The Jack Tales"

From Small: Life and Death on the Front Lines of Pediatric Surgery by Catherine Musemeche MD:

"conch

Hold a baby to your ear, As you would a shell: Sounds of centuries you hear, New centuries foretell.
Who can break a baby's code? And which is the older--, The listener or his small load? The held or the holder?"

---E.B.White