"Dependable Epigraphs" [by Tony Towle]

                       

Dependable Epigraphs

My epigraphs will prepare you for the excursion
                         but not for the ruts in the road.

                                                                           — Virgil                                                                                       

Stay well ahead of your turnips in the garden of life. 

                                                            — Michel de Montaigne

Never parade your ignorance; a discreet amble down a side street will suffice.

                                                                 — Benjamin Disraeli

Don’t swat flies close to the ear of God.

                                                            — St. Francis of Assisi

Metaphors are the unstable companions of an already impractical fellow.

                                                                                                — Henry Ford

Those who are not willing to subvert the law do not have sufficient stake in the outcome of events.

                                                                        — Niccolò Machiavelli

 If patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, religion is certainly the first.

                                                                                                          — Voltaire

Everywhere I go I find a poet has already been there neurotically before me.

                                                                                                 — Sigmund Freud

Socializing is networking to no purpose.

                                                                        — Oscar Wilde

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

                       — Paul Valéry, as quoted in the original French at a press conference by George W. Bush

Farewell, O insatiable biographers of the future.

                                                            — William Shakespeare

Pimp my soporific and annoying orchestral arrangements, bitch.

                                                                                    — Lawrence Welk

The peasant’s place is in the hovel.

                                                 — Harry & Leona Helmsley

The woman’s place is in the novel.

                                                — Henry James

Never let Henry James have the last word.

                                                             — Edith Wharton

You’ve got to know when to stop.

                                                 — Leo Tolstoy

from Winter Journey (Hanging Loose Press, 2008)