Opening Quotes

This is a collection of quotes that authors choose to open their books, aka epigraphs.

• "You are all a lost generation." — Gertrude Stein
• "He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man." — Samuel Johnson
• "If they give you ruled paper, write the other way." — Juan Ramón Jiménez
• "Never again will a single story be told as though it’s the only one." — John Berger
• "Now a boy is of all wild beasts the most difficult to manage. For by how much the more he has the fountain of prudence not fitted up, he becomes crafty and keen, and the most insolent of wild beasts. On this account it is necessary to bind him, as it were, with many chains." — Plato
• "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
• "He who truly loves the world shapes himself to please it." — Thomas Mann
• "Aspects are within us and who seems Most kingly is the King." — James Hardy
• "Luck: Success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions." — Dawn O'Porter
• "Lawyers, I suppose, were children once." — Charles Lamb
• "Only the sun has a right to its spots." — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• "The punishment matches the guilt: to be deprived of all appetite for life, to be brought to the highest degree of weariness of life." — Søren Kierkegaard
• "In spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at heart." — Anne Frank
• "Ban everything. Purify everything. Moral cleanse everything. Anything that was bad or is bad, destroy it. Especially in the forest, where you live your life as a tree, wielding an axe." — Sigmond C. Monster
• "Dreams are not so different from deeds as some may think. All the deeds of men are only dreams at first. And in the end, their deeds dissolve into dreams." — Theodor Herzl