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To
The Memory of the Dead
whose bravery won the glory
which the living enjoy
E. P. Alexander
[Brigadier-General in the Confederate Army,
Chief of Artillery, Longstreet's Corps]
Military Memoirs of a Confederate (1907)
To
THE GRENADIER GUARDS
The 1st Guards,
in which John Churchill,
afterwards Duke of Marlborough,
received his first commission on September 14, 1667,
of which he was Colonel from the year 1704 to 1711
and from 1714 till his death,
and which served under him at the battles of
the Schellenberg, Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde,
and Malplaquet,
and in all the principal sieges and other
great operations
during ten victorious campaigns,
this work is dedicated by the author
in memory of
the courtesies and kindness
shown to him by the Regiment in
the Great War.
Winston S. Churchill
Marlborough
His Life and Times (1933-1938)
NOTICE:
All men, gods, and planets in this story are imaginary.
Any coincidence of names is regretted.
— R.A.H.
Robert A. Heinlein
Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
To my uncles
WALTER SELIGSOHN
who volunteered in 1914 and was
shot off his horse on the Russian front in 1915
JULIUS SELIGSOHN
and
FRANZ KAUFMANN
both Oberleutnant, Iron Cross, First Class, 1914-1918,
one a devout Jew,
one a devout convert to Christianity,
one killed in a Nazi concentration camp in 1942,
one shot by the Secret Police in 1944,
both for gallantly helping others
in obedience to conscience, defiant
Walter Kaufmann
The Faith of a Heretic (1961)
To my wife, Grace, who not only
endured a basement full of rattlesnakes
for more than thirty years, but also suffered the
annoying imposition of austerity that
goes with research in the home
Laurence M. Klauber
Rattlesnakes
Their Habits, Life Histories, and Influence on Mankind (1956)
To Charles Williams
... Reviewers, who have not had time to re-read Milton, have failed for the most part to digest your criticism of him; but it is a reasonable hope that of those who heard you in Oxford many will understand hence-forward that when the old poets made some virtue their theme they were not teaching but adoring, and that what we take for the didactic is often the enchanted. ...
C. S. Lewis
A Preface to Paradise Lost (1942)
The Printer to the Reader
Courteous Reader, There was no Argument at first intended to the Book, but for the satisfaction of many that have desired it, I have procured it, and withal a reason of that which stumbled many others, why the Poem Rimes not.
John Milton
Paradise Lost, Second Edition (1674)
Complete Poems and Major Prose
edited by Merritt Y. Hughes
An argument or abstract by the author himself is of course a clear help to appreciating an epic poem. As for writing in blank verse — well, if you are John Milton; and further, your poetical mode in Paradise Lost is vouched for in a pleasant forewording poem by Andrew Marvell, a velvet setting for this great jewel — then we reasonably may not complain of the lack of rhyme.
[ a Prologue, armed but unspoken — ]
It is not the works, but the belief which is here decisive and determines the order of rank — to employ once more an old religious formula with a new and deeper meaning, — it is some fundamental certainty which a noble soul has about itself, something which is not to be sought, is not to be found, and perhaps, also, is not to be lost. — The noble soul has reverence for itself. —
Friedrich Nietzsche
Beyond Good and Evil, #287
Ayn Rand
cancelled quotation for
The Fountainhead (1943)
Perhaps the best way to communicate The Fountainhead's sense of life is by means of the quotation which had stood at the head of my manuscript ...
Ayn Rand
Introduction to the 25th Anniversary Edition (1968)
The Fountainhead
Dedicated to all those who believe that
there is a happy land far, far away.
Eric Frank Russell
The Great Explosion (1962)
The characters in this book are imaginary,
and resemblances to them, if any, borne by actual persons or corpses
are accidental and in some cases deplorable.
Rex Stout
The Silent Speaker (1946)
NOTICE.
Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR
Per G. G., Chief of Ordnance.
Mark Twain
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
The Annotated Huckleberry Finn speculates that "G. G." most likely is a nod to Twain's friend General Grant, although never actually himself a Chief of Ordnance.
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