Please post some great prose. It can be anything- extracts from novels, works of non fiction, even newspaper articles.
Evelyn Waugh's prose is often beautiful. Others may have had greater intellectual depth or been more groundbreaking and innovative, but if you want simple, perfect prose he is a pretty good place to start. This is one of my favourite pieces (we are in Crete during the allied retreat in WW2):
"Suddenly quite near him there was a rifle shot. He heard the crack and smack and whistling ricochet among the rocks behind him. He dropped his torch and began feebly to trot. He lost the path and stumbled from boulder to boulder until treading on something which seemed smooth and round and solid in the star light he found himself in the top of a tree which grew twenty feet below. Scattering Greek currency among the leaves, he subsided quite gently from branch to branch and when he reached ground continued to roll over and over, down and down, caressed and momentarily stayed by bushes until at length he came to rest as though borne there by a benevolent Zephyr of classical myth, in a soft, dark, sweet-smelling, empty place where the only sound was the music of falling water. And there for a time the descent ended. Out of sight, out of hearing, the crowded boats put out from the beach; the men-o' war sailed away and Fido slept
Perfect.
This next passage is from C S Lewis' masterpiece 'The Discarded Image':
"Whatever else a modern feels when he looks at the night sky, he certainly feels that he is looking OUT- like one looking out from the saloon entrance onto the dark Atlantic or from the ligted porch upon dark and lonely moors. But if you accepted the medieval model you would feel like one looking IN. The Earth is 'outside the city wall'. When the sun is up he dazzles us and we cannot see inside. Darkness, our own darkness, draws the veil and we catch a glimpse of the high pomps within; the vast, lighted concavity filled with music and life."
Not many writers can make me long to be a medieval christian.
This is another piece by Lewis:
"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers of love is Hell."
Isn't that beautiful?
The last bit is by Orwell, describing what it was like to be hit by a bullet in the Spanish Civil War:
"...it was the sensation of being at the centre of an explosion. There seemed to be a loud bang and a blinding flash of light all round me, and I felt a tremendous shock- no pain, only violent shock, such as you get from an electric terminal; with it a sense of utter weakness, a feeling of being stricken and shrivelled up to nothing. The sand bags in front of me receded into immense distance."
gimme some good prose- even if it is only a single line.