Greatest opening lines in literature

[chevalierdelame]

I saw the thread for Greatest closing lines in literature. Couldn't find one for the Greatest opening lines. So I'm starting with

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." from Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca.

[mal4mac]

"If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it..." - Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way." - Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." —George Orwell, 1984

"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show." —Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

"Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing." —Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

"Mother died today." —Albert Camus, The Stranger

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." —William Gibson, Neuromancer

"I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man." —Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

"Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress." —George Eliot, Middlemarch

"If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog." —Saul Bellow, Herzog

"He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull." —Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

"Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space." —Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye

[sbarretth]

how about: "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins, my sin, my soul Lolita" or "In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains". Or, "Once upon a time, and a very good time it was, there was a moocow coming down the road and this moocow coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named Baby Tuckoo". Or "riverun past Eve and Adam, from swerve of shore to bend of bay brings us by a commodious viscous of recirculation to Howth Castle and environs". Or: "For a long time I used to go to bed early"

[Emil Miller]

"When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton."


Well we mustn't take ourselves too seriously.

[mona amon]

^ I'd forgotten it started like that!

Here's my contribution -

"One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin."

[Buh4Bee]

I second the opening lines to Lolita. I will never forget practically falling out of my chair when I read those opening lines.

[JHG]

I really don't like Dickens. But I can't help but respect that oft-quoted, clichéd, but very moving line: "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."

And surely someone must put in Beckett: "The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new."

[Vota]

RAGE-Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs, and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving towards its end.
Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,
Agamemnon lord of men, and brilliant Achilles.

The Iliad, Robert Fagles translation

For knowledge of Gargantua's geneology and the antiquity of his descent, I refer you to the great Pantagrueline Chronicle, from which you will learn at greater length how the giants were born into this world, and how from them by a direct line issued Gargantua, the father of Pantagruel.

Gargantua and Pantagruel, Rabelais, translation by John M. Cohen

A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas river drops in close to the hillside bank, and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool.

Of Mice and Men

I did two things on my seventy fifth birthday. I visited my wife's grave. Then I joined the army. Old Man's War

[Sir Guyon]

Bereisheeth bara Elohim et HaShamayim we'et HaAretz

That is Genesis 1:1 in Hebrew

[mal4mac]

"One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin."

That's a good one, especially because Ungeziefer has caused considerable problems for the translators

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Me...is#Translation

[kev67]

Bereisheeth bara Elohim et HaShamayim we'et HaAretz

That is Genesis 1:1 in Hebrew

That reminds me:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

John 1:1-5

[JanVanHogspeuw]

That's a good one, especially because Ungeziefer has caused considerable problems for the translators

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Me...is#Translation

Though I never knew it sometimes got translated as 'vermin'. Wouldn't later descriptions of his body contradict that?

Anyway, Philip Roth's Sabbath's Theater: 'Either forswear ****ing others or the affair is over.'

Dostoevsky's Notes From Undergound: 'I am a sick man … I am a wicked man. An unattractive man. I think my liver hurts'

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

"The Christmas of 182__ was remarkable in Guernsey. It snowed on that day. In the Channel Islands, a winter where it freezes to the point of forming ice is remarkable, and a snow is an event."
Victor Hugo Toilers of the Sea

[Kafka's Crow]

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Genesis

Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of EDEN, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing Heav'nly Muse... Paradise Lost

BERNARDO

Who's there?

FRANCISCO

Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself.

BERNARDO

Long live the king!

FRANCISCO

Bernardo?

BERNARDO

He.

FRANCISCO

You come most carefully upon your hour. Hamlet 1i

.....

[Lykren]

I always thought that the the opening lines to Hamlet are unremarkable and mundane, sort of as a quiet-before-the-storm kind of thing. I wouldn't put them on a list of 'great opening lines', despite the greatness of what follows.

Anyways how about (and those of you know me are permitted to sigh at my predictability):

"In a certain reign (whose can it have been?) someone of no very great rank, among all His Majesty's Consorts and Intimates, enjoyed exceptional favor." - The Tale of Genji

I love that "whose can it have been?"