Favourite epigraph

[Mr Endon]

Has this been done? Anyway, I'm beginning Beckett's Dream of Fair to Middling Women and I've already found a pearl without having read a single word of his. The epigraph is

A thousand sythes have I herd men telle,
That ther is joye in heven, and peyne in helle;
But -

Geoffrey Chaucer

Love the ellipsis, I just had to share.


This got me thinking,

What's your favourite epigraph?

[Tallgren]

I like the one from Gatsby:

"Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her; If you can bounce high, bounce for her too, Till she cry "Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I must have you!" – Thomas Parke D’Invilliers

It's quite straight forward I suppose, reflecting Gatsby and the spirit of the times (which he may in turn represent) and in that way focusing one of the themes of the novel. Here, men have become animals, performing for women and centering on wealth as the means by seduction. Or, indeed, the illusion of wealth. But the epigraph is also a scathing irony of that very reasoning.

And, it must of course be noted, the quote is a fictional quote from Fitzgerald's own This Side of Paradise.

[Pecksie]

Great thread! I love epigraphs and dedications --- actually started a thread on dedications that didn't go very far :(

Two epigraphs come to mind --- Tolstoy's resoundingly biblical 'Vengeance is mine; I shall repay' in 'Anna Karenina', and Shelley's tender use, in Epipsychidion, of the words of Emilia Viviani, who is also the poem's addressee and one of its subjects.

But I'll surely come up with a lot more :) - like I said, I love checking them, even before I buy the book!