What are the greatest lines of literature ever written?

[The Lone Liberal]

I know but that would be telling.

[greatauntoftriplets]

1. Well, I know what I consider to be the ...

"greatest lines of literature ever written". But I would not try to tell you what to think. LMAO.

[The Lone Liberal]

2. Smarty pants answers skews the curve

And makes it hard on everyone else in the class.

[greatauntoftriplets]

3. Should I run to find the particular D.H. Lawrence book?

[janx]

4. There are so very many options! But I would go for the old:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; the the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.

Damn that is good literature. It cannot be beat.

There are others to rival it, but it's literature without rival.

[Catch22Dem]

10. Pure fiction

And Nelson DeMille is better at it.

[MarianJack]

22. Don't pay attention to the flame bait

You're right.

As far as literature in English goes, my favorites are "A Tale of Two Cities", "The Grapes of Wrath", and "Ragtime".

[markses]

51. I like the adaptation

Rot a peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface."

[Breezy du Nord]

65. Good and evil are names for what people do

Not for what they are.

[liberalmuse]

5. 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...'

Perhaps not one of the greatest lines of literature, but it is the only one that comes to mind, other than, 'With shaking fingers, he clumsily unfastened the stubborn ties that bound her large, voluptuous....' I filled my head with some pretty rank garbage in the early years.

[ACK]

35. Prefer the some of the last lines of that Dickens Tale

It is a far, far better thing that I do that I have ever done before. It is a far, far better place that I got to than I have ever been before."

No, I know that is not quite right but I do not have the Tale of Two cities with me this second.

[qwertyMike]

60. Tale of Two Cities

My father used to tell me that it had the best opening and closing lines in literature.

[Wolfman 11]

52. "it was the best of times, it was the BLURST of times?!"

[moof]

6. "Soylent green is people"

n/t

[southerngirlwriter]

7. oh dear God, where do I start??

"Come children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out." --Thackeray, in Vanity Fair

"Owen Meany, the only son of a New Hampshire granite quarrier, believes he is God's instrument; he is." --Irving, in A Prayer for Owen Meany

"I am not a smart man, particularly, but one day, at long last, I stumbled from the dark woods of my own, and my family's, and my country's past, holding in my hands these truths: that loves grows from the rich loam of forgiveness, that mongrels make good dogs; that the evidence of God exists in the roundness of things. This much, I've figured out. I know this much is true." --Lamb, in I Know This Much Is True

I could go on for hours without even touching the stuff I'd have to look up.

GREAT THREAD! Thank you!

[lazarus]

8. Just pick some Shakespeare

Personally, I love the bit in Henry IV where Falstaff is describing his mock battle to Prince Hal and Pointz, and every time he's interrupted, he increases the number of opponents. It's just hilarious.

There's a ton of good stuff from Lear, Hamlet, Henry V, any of them.

[CalProf]

9. Well...

"And so we beat on, boats against the current, born back ceaselessly into the past."

Scotty Fitzgerald--the last line of The Great Gatsby

My kindergartner's yanking my arm, otherwise I'd give you a few more. I love collecting great lines. Thanks for the thread. I look forward to seeing how it grows...

[The Lone Liberal]

15. Ah, but you are close to wining the prize.

Those are great and glorious lines of English.

[RainDog]

29. I would include

"He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark field of the republic rolled on under the night."

and I have to add...

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

or

"Stately plump Buck Mulligan..."

[alphafemale]

30. I Love "The Great Gatsby!!"

Best English language novel EVER.

[SharonAnn]

11. Oh, westryn wind, when wilt thou blow

Oh, westryn wind, when wilt thou blow
That the small rain down can rain?
Christ, that my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again.

[Catch22Dem]

12. Gotta go with Joseph Heller

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, that specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of the clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.

"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka replied.

---

"Men," he began his address to the officers, measuring his pauses carefully. "You're American officers. The officers of no other country in the world can make that statement. Think about it."

[wa state wanderer]

13. Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly,

caught in the web of duty. ~Stephen King

[lpbk2713]

14. ........ and the old man went to sleep, dreaming about the lions.

I get a feeling of peace whenever I think about that. One of my all-time favorite books.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

16. Call me Ishmael.

and the other 200 or so pages there after.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

18. Beat me by seconds!

Great minds think alike, eh? ;-)

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

19. Too funny.

Yeah, guess so.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

17. Call me Ishmael.

[Tredge]

21. Gah you beat me to it!

n/t

[Tredge]

20. Two off the bat:

"Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me."
- Herman Melville, "Moby Dick"

It's the first sentence that always gets the most attention, but that whole paragraph is divine.

"The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. AT LENGTH I would be avenged; this was a point definitively settled -- but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong."
- Edgar Allen Poe, "The Cask of Amontillado"

That paragraph is poetry in prose.

[WillyBrandt]

23. "He felt the helplessness of every man in the presence...

...of female tears, and she cried."

From Light in August by Faulkner. I've never heard it quoted by anyone, but damn that hits hard. Perfect pitch, both lyrically and in terms of sheer human understanding. Most guys knows what Faulkner's talking about.

[Laughing Mirror]

24. last line of Nabokov's Lolita

I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita

[kskiska]

26. I like the first lines of Lolita…

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.

Love that book. Every few years I re-read it. Beautiful writing, and not a curse word in it, considering the subject matter.. I thought James Mason was a great Humbert.

[HEyHEY]

25. hmmmm

I can't pick sentences...but I love Dickins.

My favourite all time line though...I know it's a silly choice but from the rum diary

"If we hire one more pervert here we're sunk!"

[Ronnie]

44. Also Dickens,

I think. "Shut up and drink your gin."

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

27. So. What's wrong with telling?

Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around-nobody big, I mean-except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff-I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy.

[jpgray]

28. Paradise Lost has some of the best

Or maybe Pope's Odyssey. Don't know why everyone hates that one. Then there's Gogol's Dead Souls--that sixth chapter is just godlike.

Too many and too personal.

:D

[Interrobang]

31. Hmmm, I don't know. I'm quite partial to...

"You know," said Pretty Alice, "you speak with a great deal of inflection." "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman, Harlan Ellison

"Myself am Hell." _Paradise Lost_, John Milton

"She doth sometimes council take, and sometimes tea." "The Rape of the Lock." Alexander Pope

"Her hand, her foot, her very look's a cunt." "The Imperfect Enjoyment," John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

and that paragraph from Isaac Bashevis Singer's "The Last Demon" that I keep quoting...

[Bridget Burke]

32. end of "The Dead" James Joyce

"The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover's eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.

"Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling.

"A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

(I'm ignoring Shakespeare--nobody can compete with The Bard.)

[GCP]

33. Henry V, Feast of St. Crispin's Day

It ends with this incandescent prose:

From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition; 
Make him a member of the gentry, even if he is a commoner.
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

[JohnKleeb]

34. All Quiet on the Western Front: Erich Maria Remarque

"Do I walk? Have I feet still? I raise my eyes, I let them move round, and turn myself with them, one circle, one circle, and I stand in the midst. All is as usual. Only the Militiaman Stanislaus Katczinsky has died. Then I know nothing more."
Thats what my one quote in my sig is based on btw.

[OldEurope]

38. But you surely know that the translation is not the very best?

The original title "Im Westen nichts Neues" is wonderful, because you can use it every time when you find out that anything in histoy ( or fashion or what ever) is kind of repeating.
Nothing new in the West: soldiers dying for capital´s sake. :nuke:

[JohnKleeb]

56. I wouldnt know being I didnt read the German version

Thanks though.

[LanternWaste]

36. My Top Three Picks

My top three picks in no particular order (and will most liekly change on any given day and in any given mood I'm in <g>)

Shakespeare's monologue given by Henry V just before the Battle of Agincourt ("...for he that sheds his blood with me this day shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, this day shall gentle his condition" Man! I love that stuff!)

NIV translation of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount

The preface to Victor Hugo's, Les Miserables

[LWolf]

37. I don't know. There are too many to choose just one set

as "the greatest." And I've read too many books to keep them all straight in my brain; I'd have to be rushing around to favorites to look them up.

Of those posted here so far, I'd have to second the Joseph Heller quote for Catch-22.

And a simple little line that popped into my head; I don't know if it is great literature or just an excuse, but it seems fitting for me right now:

"Not all those who wander are lost."

[OldEurope]

39. Oh, brave new world, that bares such people!

I love Shakespeare, and I, too, love Huxley.
This sentence is history, and future, it´s philosophy and politics.
This sentence can be hope and hell.

[kodi]

40. hamlet act 5 scene 2

it goes to the heart of being

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

[UrbScotty]

41. "Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can get 'em..."

"...but remember, it is a sin to kill a mockingbird."

-Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

[ThomWV]

42. Call me Ishmael

What a great beginning.

[Zorro]

43. Maybe not the greatest, but pretty good

The sea is high again today, with a thrilling flush of wind. In the midst of winter, you can feel the inventions of Spring. A sky of hot nude pearl until midday, crickets in sheltered places, and now the wind unpacking the great planes, ransacking the great planes . . .

The opening paragraph of Justine by Laurence Durrell.

[trof]

45. Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump,

on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it. And then he feels that perhaps there isn't. Anyhow, here he is at the bottom, and ready to be introduced to you. Winnie-the-Pooh.
- A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh <1926> (ch. 1)

[Cheswick2.0]

58. Oh Trof, I love you!

Thank you for that. My mother used to read that to us all the time.

[Character Assassin]

46. "Labor Day Roman Candle Battle" Man, this is ART!

Last year on Labor Day, my cousin Duane's trailer burned to the ground during our annual Roman Candle battle. Aunt Felicia had mixed up a giant batch of frozen daquiris using the homemade ice cream maker. We were all pretty tanked when Duane brought out the four dozen Roman Candles (12-ballers). We divvied up the weapons and chose up sides. Essentially, it was me, my baby brother Eugene, Possum and Calvin against Duane, Arlene, Aunt Mae and Uncle Virgil.

I know it sounds like we were the stronger team but not really 'cause Possum's blind in one eye and has emphysema and has to carry one of them little oxygen bottles with him. Anyways, we started off okay and were singeing their asses pretty good when one of them phosphorous balls got into the neck of Possum's shirt and he run screamin' inside the trailer, phosphorous, oxygen bottle and all and headed toward the kitchen sink hoping for some water to douse his shirt, which was, by that time, going four-alarms. He was what the fire chief of the Grand Prairie Fire Department later referred to as "fully involved."

Possum woulda been home free if it hadn't been for Aunt Felicia who was mixin' up a fresh batch of pina colada's in the kitchen. She'd just poured an entire bottle of that brown rum into the ice cream mixer-thingy when Possum, fully involved as he was, got to the sink.

Apparently, when your rum comes into contact with your flames, you get what's known in pyrotechnic circles as a "flash fire." It pretty much burned all the clothes off of ol' Possum and melted Aunt Felicia's brand new hair-do that she'd got done the day before at the "Curl-up and Dye" hair boutique over by Lake Dallas where they was having a Labor Day.

Duane's trailer went up pretty fast but we managed to get everyone out except for "Precious," Duane's champion pit bull, that he keeps locked in the closet whenever any company or small children are visiting.

Possum went to the big hospital in Dallas and was pretty excited 'cause it was his first-ever helicopter ride. He stayed there for a month and most of his face is growed back now as is Aunt Felicia's hair.

Oh yeah, Duane's pretty much over the loss of "Precious" and has a new trailer. This one's a double-wide and this year we're doing combo Labor Day/Housewarming, as it were.

[Wolfman 11]

47. If much in the world were mystery the limits of that world were not,

for it was without measure or bound and there were contained within it creatures more horrible yet and men of other colors and beings which no man has looked upon and yet not alien none of it more than were their own hearts alien in them, whatever wilderness contained there and whatever beasts.

[CoNnOc]

48. Nietzsche

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." -Beyond Good and Evil

I never liked the Great Gadsby, I dont really know why...

Paradise Lost is great though.

[markses]

49. "I would prefer not to." - Herman Melville

Or, why not

"A way a lone a lost a loved a long the....riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

[Nevernose]

50. "What is REAL," asked the Velveteen Rabbit

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

[Nevernose]

53. Capturing Saddam, or, what * SHOULD have said today:

The opening lines of Richard III (my favorite play), and what The Shrub should have been saying this morning:

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

[mitchum]

54. "Come live with me and be my love..."

Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"

[tishaLA]

55. Three choices

"Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour"

"Call me Ishmael"

"yes I said yes I will yes"

[FloridaJudy]

57. Turning and Turning

In the widening gyre,
the falcon cannot hear
the falconer..

Do not go gentle into that good night..

jesus! but he was a man..

I sing the body electric..

What can I say? I'm a poetry junkie;-)

[johnnie]

59. not the greatest......

But some of the best known lines of all time...
"I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them Sam I am"
Simple, but more widely known than almost all words of literature.

[Hand]

61. Stately, plump...

Buck Mulligan .

That settles that.

[Cheswick2.0]

62. what a piece of ....................

What a piece of work is man
How noble in reason
How infinite in faculties
In form and moving
How express and admirable
In action how like an angel
In apprehension how like a god
The beauty of the world
The paragon of animals

I have of late
But wherefore I know not
Lost all my mirth
This goodly frame
The earth
Seems to me a sterile promontory
This most excellent canopy
The air-- look you!
This brave o'erhanging firmament
This majestical roof
Fretted with golden fire
Why it appears no other thing to me
Than a foul and pestilent congregation
Of vapors

[Cheswick2.0]

63. another

I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be there in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be there in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they built - I'll be there, too.

[WillyBrandt]

64. The end of Joyce's Ulysses

... O that awful deepdown torrest O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume and yes his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.