It would appear, from the best examples, that the proper way of beginning a preface to one's work is with a humble apology for having written at all.

... the ordinary is simply the universal observed from the surface, that the direct approach to reality is not without, but within. Touch life anywhereand you will touch universality wherever you touch the earth.

To drink for pleasure may be a distraction, but to drink from misery is always a danger.

He felt with the force of a revelation that to throw up the clods of earth manfully is as beneficent as to revolutionize the world. It was not the matter of the work, but the mind that went into it, that counted - and the man who was not content to do small things well would leave great things undone.

It is difficult to deal successfully, he decided, with a woman whose feelings cannot be hurt.

Energy had fastened upon her like a disease.

Of one thing alone I am very sure: it is a law of our nature that the memory of longing should survive the more fugitive memory of fulfillment.