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The Ethel of this story is a fascinating creature who would have a good time wherever there were a few males, but no longer could she voyage through life quite so jollily without attracting the attention of the censorious. Chaperon seems to be one of the very few good words of which our authoress had never heard.
- J.M. Barrie, Preface to The Young Visiters by Daisy Ashford (age 9) (1919) [full text]
No man has any right to take beautiful and simple things out of their places, wrap them up in a tissue of his own conceits, and hand them about the universe for gods and men to wonder upon. If he must convey simple things let him convey them simply. If I, for instance, must steal a loaf of bread, would it not be better to walk out of the shop with it under my coat than to call for it in a hansom and hoodwink the baker with a forged cheque on Coutts’s bank? Surely.
- Maurice Hewlett, preface to the second edition of Earthwork out of Tuscany (1898) [full text]
Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.
- Charlotte Brontë, Preface to the 2nd Edition of Jane Eyre (1847) [full text]
