What are your favourite last lines in literature?

[ajoe]

I stole the idea from whoever started "Favorite First Sentence." http://www.addis-welt.de/smilie/smilie/banana/banana.gif
I have one in mind, but I don't remember how it exactly goes and someone currently is checking out the book, so that'd have to wait.

[IWilKikU]

I NEVER remember last lines. I always finish the last page or pages quickly and immediatly start reading something new. I'm sure there are some great last sentences out there, but the only one I can think is Sydney Carton's "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

[Basil]

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

[Koa]

E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle :D :D :D

It's just the first one that comes to my mind... Everyone of the 3 parts of the Divine Comedy ends with the word 'stelle' (stars). Maybe with the very same whole sentence, I'm not sure... I find it nice.

Argh, as I said in the other thread, I used to read last lines before buying the book, but I realise now I don't remember many of them... I think I remember beginnings better.

[trismegistus]

"Amen. And all that cal."

Not a great book but a great closing to a book.

[emily655321]

A real horrorshow closing to a really cally last chapter, too.

A couple very well known, but well loved:

"The creatures looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which." --Animal Farm (duh)

"'Well, I'm back,' he said. [Emily commences bawling.]" --Return of the King
Me bawling isn't officially in the book, but it's always part of the ending, so I thought I'd include it.

[trismegistus]

A real horrorshow closing to a really cally last chapter, too.

Ha! Great avatar!

And since I specifically mentioned this line in another thread: "Matter of fact, I think this the youngest us ever felt."

[emily655321]

Many thanks indeed. :D

And now we have a second Hermetic among us! We have a Logos, too, but he's been silent for quite some time now. (I'm assuming that's where he got his name, anyway.)

[trismegistus]

And now we have a second Hermetic among us! We have a Logos, too, but he's been silent for quite some time now. (I'm assuming that's where he got his name, anyway.)

Invasion of the gnostics. Don't sleep near pods.

[nothingman87]

"She's never found peace since she left his arms, and never will again till she's as he is now!" - Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

[amuse]

And somehow, he felt that he was headed in the right direction.
- E.B. White, Stuart Little

[GatsbyTheGreat]

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

I second that. My english teacher told us The Great Gatsby was about materialism, but he was a concieted, superficial ***, honestly. This sentence sums up one of the greater themes of Fitzgerald's novel: the desire to relive the past, though it has already gone by.

[Sancho]

On Den’s recommendation I just read Albert Camus’ novel The Plague and it contains my new favorite last sentence. The small French Algerian town of Oran had just opened the gates of the town after a year-long quarantine for the Bubonic Plague:

“He [Dr. Rieux] knew what those jubilant crowds did not know but could have learned from books: that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen-chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.”

[Diceman]

"Ah", he said, "a new option".

Luke Rhinehart, The Dice Man

[emily655321]

"Raskolnikov repeated his statement." --Crime and Punishment
(I'm not counting the epilogue. No. Bad epilogue.)

[den]

Actually I'm kind of like Kik, don't remember last lines so well as by that point I have my next book lined up.

I can never remember it, but the last paragraph of The Catcher in the Rye I always loved... about never telling anyone anything. (gave my beaten up copy away)

yes Sancho the last lines of The Plague, very profound and really can apply to a lot of eras in history; or perhaps also be analogy to the dark sides of human nature as well.

[simon]

I can't remember the last or first lines of 100 yrs of solitude exaclty, but at the time I thought they were memorable.

[Avalive]

"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do. You start missing everybody"

From My love and only love--The Catcher in The Rye"
http://xiaoqioshui.nease.net/t/cat.jpg

[Monica]

"And Darkness and Decay and the RedDdeath held illimitable dominion over all."
E.A.P. The Masque of the Red Death

[5Parker]

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

How could one possibly beat that?

[Taliesin]

One of my favourites:
"Yet even now, when the pain presses most heavily and none of the herbs can turn its deep ache, when I consider the body, that entraps my spirit, I recall my days as a wolf, and know them not as a few but a season of living. There is a comfort in their recalling, as well as a temptation. Come, hunt with me, the invitation whispers in my heart. Leave the pain behind and let your life be your own again. There is a place where all times are now and the choices are simple and always your own.
Wolves have no kings."
"Royal Assassin", Robin Hobb

[bjortan]

"there are only three things that continue: Life-Death & the lumberjacks are coming"

Bob Dylan, "Tarantula". The book is a mess of hilarious one-liners and headache-inducing freeform surrealism, but that last line is a keeper. I have no idea what he means by it, but I love it.

[nome1486]

"In their death they were not divided." (words on a tombstone)

[seeker]

Then shouldering their burdens, they set off, seeking a path that would bring them over the grey hills of Emyn Muil, and down into the Land of Shadow.




Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardoned, and some punished;
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo


... I have never been told that my message was too short, the server wont let me post till I make it longer hahah!

:banana:
crazy

[_JadeRain_]

Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.

_Moby Dick_
Herman Melville

[IrishCanadian]

"Think where man's glory most beins and ends / and say my glory was I had such friends" Yeats --from the National Gallery Revisited. (was it the "national" ? I might have the title wrong).

[Charles Darnay]

"Excellently observed", answered Candide, "but we must cultivate our garden". - Voltaire's Candide.

[Geoffrey]

Two sentences but:
"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" - Nabokov 'Lolita'

And:
"The sun is setting. I feel this river flowing through me- its past, its ancient soil, the changing climate. The Hills gently girdle it about: its course is fixed" - Miller
Tropic of cancer'

I cannot recall the last sentence of 100 years of solitude either, but do vividly recall that wondrous last chapter, when everything is being swept away, and all the is happening is being read aloud on the parchments. Its really wonderful!

[Ryduce]

Soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.


That's from The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder.I didn't really dig the book that much,but there were two lines in it that were heart-stirring.

[Wild Apple]

"For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo."

[PeterL]

"Terminal"
from "The End of the Road" by John Barth

[loganrutherford]

"...yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."

-James Joyce, _Ulysses_

[Geoffrey]

now I cannot help but mention finnegans wake.

end:
Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the.....

begining:
....riverrun, past Eve and Adams, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

that has always stuck in my head. Its such a neat idea. soo I guess its both the first and last sentence of the book.

[Virgil]

She walked him away with her, however,
as if she had given him now the key to patience.

Henry James, Portrait of a Lady

[tn2743]

Does it have to be the last line of a whole book? Can it be the last line of a poem, or a chapter, or a conversation, etc? Coz there're many of those which I think are great.

[Virgil]

Does it have to be the last line of a whole book? Can it be the last line of a poem, or a chapter, or a conversation, etc? Coz there're many of those which I think are great.
TN - Do to your hearts desire. What can happen? Who's going to slap your hand?

[tn2743]

K :)

"Thus with a kiss I die." - The last words of Romeo.

[Pensive]

I don't remember last sentences usually. This time, I can remember only one and I love this one from Peter Pan:

When Margaret grows up she will have a daughter, who is to be Peter's mother in turn; and so it will go on, so long as children are gay, innocent and heartless.

[Basil]

I dont hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark: I dont. I dont! I dont hate it! I dont hate it!

Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner

[Scheherazade]

Has anyone got a copy of Grapes of Wrath at hand? I know I like its ending very much but I cannot remember the last sentence of the book.

[Taliesin]

The last sentence of "Master and Margarita"

[Geoffrey]

Has anyone got a copy of Grapes of Wrath at hand? I know I like its ending very much but I cannot remember the last sentence of the book.


"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Is that it?

[Unspar]

Geoffrey,

That's the last sentence of The Great Gatsby.

[Geoffrey]

Hahaha! It was from a memory filled with cobwebs today

[Ryduce]

Has anyone got a copy of Grapes of Wrath at hand? I know I like its ending very much but I cannot remember the last sentence of the book.

I dont have my copy on me at the moment,but I know the story quite well.
Here's the famous quote.

Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the failure hangs over the State like a great sorrow . . . . and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.(It's from chapter 25)

Heres one from the last chapter.

Whenever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Whenever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there . . . . I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’—I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build—why, I’ll be there.(Tom says this)

I dont remember the one with Rose of Sharyn at the end.Sorry!!!!!

[Ellipsis]

It was not till they examined the rings that they recognised who it was.


Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray :)

[WaxDoll]

I love the Romeo and Juliet one that a couple of you posted, even though I've never read the book.


As soon as they had strength they arose, joined hands again, and went on.
Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, that entire last chapter sent shivers up my spine.


Madame Beck prospered all the days of her life; so did Père Silas; Madame Walravens fulfilled her ninetieth year before she died. Farewell.
Villette by Charlotte Bronte, that's probably the ending I'll remember most of all because I threw a serious fit after I read it. It sucks when your favorite book doesn't end the way you wanted, or expected, it to.

[jane,Eyre,I,Lov]

THE END i cried

[Geoffrey]

Exhausted, Des Esseintes collapsed into a chair. 'In two days' time I shall be in Paris,' he exclaimed; 'it really is all over; the waters of human mediocrity, like a tidal wave, are rising up to the sky and will engulf this haven whose sea-walls I have with my own hands most unwillingly breached. Ah! My courage fails me and and I am sick at heart!'

[Lobo]

Only then did he discover that Amaranta Ursula was not his sister but his aunt, and that Francis Drake had attacked Riohacha solely so that they could search for one another through the most intricate labyrinths of blood, until they engendered the mythological animal which could put an end to their family line. Macondo was already a fearful whirlwind of dust and rubble being spun about by the wrath of the biblical hurricane when Aureliono skipped eleven pages so as not to waste time on facts he knew only too well, and he began to decipher the moment he was living, deciphering it as he lived it, as if he were looking into a speaking mirror...But before he reached the final line he had realized that he would never leave that room, for it was ordained that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be swept away by the wind and exiled from the memory of men in the instant when Aureliano finished deciphering the parchments, and that everything that was written in them was unrepeatable for always and forever, because those races condemned to one hundred years of solitude would have no second chance on earth.

A Hundred Years of Solitude by García Márquez

[Themis]

"This story ends here." ("City of the dreaming books" by Walter Moers)

[superunknown]

The Great Gatsby and Animal Farm have already been mentioned, so here's a few others:

'Oh, Jake,' Brett said, 'we could have had such a damned good time together.'
Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me.
'Yes,' I said. 'Isn't it pretty to think so?'
Ernest Hemingway - The Sun Also Rises

"Meet Mrs. Bundren," he says.
William Faulkner - As I Lay Dying (the ultimate stab in the back)

'How do you feel, Yossarian?'
'Fine. No, I'm very frightened.'
'That's good,' said Major Danby. 'It proves you're still alive. It won't be fun.'
Yossarian started out. 'Yes it will.'
'I mean it, Yossarian. You'll have to keep on your toes every minute of every day. They'll bend heaven and earth to catch you.'
'I'll keep on my toes every minute.'
'You'll have to jump.'
'I'll jump.'
'Jump!' Major Danby cried.
Yossarian jumped. Nately's whore was hiding just outside the door. The knife came down, missing him by inches, and he took off.
Joseph Heller - Catch-22

Sin embargo, antes de llegar al verso final ya había comprendido que no saldría jamás de ese cuarto, pues estaba previsto que la ciudad de los espejos (o los espejismos) sería arrasada por el viento y desterrada de la memoria de los hombres en el instante en que Aureliano Babilonia acabara de descifrar los pergaminos, y que todo lo escrito en ellos era irrepetible desde siempre y para siempre, porque las estirpes condenadas a cien años de soledad no tenían una segunda oportunidad sobre la tierra.
Gabriel García Márquez - Cien años de soledad

[myself]

i xant remeber the name of the bok but i can rememebr the stury and the ending. a dead guy who was always hated by people is woken up by a 15 year old girl. they stay together until he has to go bakc. the last line was somethign like: " she stood infront of the batterd old stone, in the middle of the stone, with a rough handwriting was carved; R.I.P" (it was written by her).

[TEND]

For the final consummation and for me to feel less lonely, my last wish was that there should be a crowd of spectators at my execution and that they should greet me with cries of hatred.
Albert Camus - The Stranger

[RobinHood3000]

Monica posted:

"And Darkness, and Decay, and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all."

Edgar Allan Poe, "The Masque of the Red Death"

My favorite.

[facultease_dept]

yeaahhh, "Red Death" has a great last sentence

[F.Emerald]

"But you, O my brothers, remember sometimes thy little Alex that was. Amen. And all that cal."

[superunknown]

I'm afraid I don't have an English translation, so it'll have to be in Spanish.

- Todavía faltan cuarenta y cinco días para empezar a pensar en eso - dijo el coronel.
La mujer se despertó.
"Y mientras tanto qué comemos", preguntó, y agarró al coronel por el cuello de la franela. Lo sacudió con energía.
- Díme, qué comemos.
El coronel necesió setenta y cinco años - los setenta y cinco años de su vida, minuto a minuto - para llegar a ese instante. Se sintió puro, explícito, invencible, en el momento de responder.
- Mierda.
Gabriel García Márquez - El coronel no tiene quien le escriba (No One Writes to the Coronel0

[bhekti]

--....I don't want to write anymore from 'underground'.--

Notes From Underground by Dostoevsky

(this last sentence, I think, is the key to plot of the novella)

[downing]

,,After all, tomorrow is another day!'' (Scarlett O'Hara)
Gone with the wind by Margaret Mitchell

[Mary Sue]

"....He loved Big Brother."
-ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell



"He might wish and wish and never get it---the beauty and the loving in the world!"
-THE FORSYTE SAGA by John Galsworthy



"And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea."
-REBECCA by Daphne Du Maurier

[RobinHood3000]

"....He loved Big Brother."
-ANIMAL FARM by George OrwellEr...don't you mean 1984?

[miss tenderness]

"but her strong sense that neither she nor any human being deserved less than was given, did not blind her to the fact that there were others receiving less who had deserved much more…whose youth had seemed to teach that happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain." Thomas Hardy, the Mayor of Casterbridge.

[Ella]

He knew that this happy crowd was unaware of something that one can read in books, which is that the plague bacillus never dies or vanishes entirely, that it can remain dormant for dozens of years in furniture or clothing, that it waits patiently in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, handkerchiefs and old papers, and that perhaps the day will come when, for the instruction or misfortune of mankind, the plague will rouse its rats and send them to die in some well-contented city.

The Plague by Camus

Oops! Oh well, Sancho already posted The Plague but it seems so relevent these days when people can barely remember what happened yesterday.

[Nayeri]

'Bambi was inspired, and said trembling, "There is Another who is over us all, over us and over Him"'

Not a last line, but I think this line is more epic. It is also one of my favorites from Bambi.

Also:

'He went on, and vanished in the forest.'

That is the last line of the book, just to make that clear.

[slipperyyoke]

They, hand in hand, with wand'ring steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way.

Paradise Lost by John Milton

The sun is but a morning star.

Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Isn't it pretty to think so?

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

And out of this worldwide festival of death, this ugly rutting fever that inflames the rainy evening sky all round--will love someday rise up out of this, too?

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

[Meechboo]

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.

James Joyce, "The Dead"

[hazelk]

And last on the deck bound for the Gold Coast, a mining engineer named Blair and his wife, whom he called Charlotte, except when he called her Rose.

The last lines from "Rose" by Marin Cruz Smith.

[Manchegan]

It's a few sentences, but:

"In the morning it was morning and I was still alive. Maybe I’ll write a novel, I thought. And then I did."
-bukowski's Post Office

[hazelk]

Last line from " Dark Places" by Kate Grenville.

There it was, Albion Gidley Singer standing hunched under the weight of his own garments, a man in the act of turning into air.

[Sine_lege]

I have only to add that, although I have searched every library in Europe for the works of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether, I have, up to the present day, utterly failed in my endeavors at procuring an edition.

-The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether by Edgar Allan Poe-

[Kyriakos]

Animal farm does indeed have a great last sentence :)

So does "The outsider" by Lovecraft.

[Razeus]

"....He loved Big Brother."
-ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell



Wrong book. But Animal Farm does have one of the best last sentences in literature.

[Kyriakos]

It should be, if i remember correctly: "Men, pigs, pigs, men, and in the end you couldn't tell the difference" :)

[Travis_R]

"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."

Is by far my favorite. The only one that comes close in my mind is the ending of Catch-22, where Yosarian dodges the knife and runs to who knows where.

[Aula Regis]

Hoc dicens ferrum aduerso sub pectore condit
feruidus; ast illi soluuntur frigore membra
uitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras.

P. Vergilius Maro, Æneis, XII.950-952.

'Saying this, boiling, he founds his sword in the facing breast;
and his limbs are dissolved in that cold
and his life flees, indignant, below the shades.'

[Honest]

Can anyone remind of the last sentence in The Count of Monte Cristo; that's my favorite!

[InquisitorBC]

I love Big Brother.
1984 George Orwell

[Patrick_Bateman]

And that's how I learned to use the big boy potty.

[Pensive]

And that's how I learned to use the big boy potty.

and may I ask which novel is it from? :)

[Emil Miller]

I have read quite a lot of books but not as many as some LitNet members. Apart from writers in English, my interest has extended to French and German authors, some of whom can justly be called great. But if asked to name the finest last lines of any novel I have read, it must be these from F.Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: it gets to me every time I read it.

And as I sat there, brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out Daisy's light at the end of his dock. He had come such a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close he could hardly fail to grasp it. But what he did not know was that it was already behind him, somewhere in the vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... And one fine morning ——
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

What are your famous last lines?

[ChicagoReader]

Interesting thread, I'm going to have to think on this one.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

From Hugo's Toilers of the Sea:

"The Cahmere had become invisible, and was now a speck mingled with the mist. One needed to know where it was in order to distinguish it.
Little by little, this speck, no longer a form, grew pale.
Then it dwindled.
Then it disappeared.
At the moment when the vessel vanished on the horizon, the head disappeared under water.
There was nothing left but the sea."

From Alexander Solzhenisyn One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich:

"A day without a dark cloud. Almost a happy day.
There were three thousand six hundred and fifty three days like this in his stretch.
From the first clang of the rail to the last clang of the rail.
Three thousand six hundred abd fifty three days.
The three extra days were for leap years"


.

[JuniperWoolf]

American Psycho: "This is not an exit."

[stlukesguild]

"The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space."

Italo Calvino Invisible Cities


It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities



…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 yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. –

James Joyce, Ulysses


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.

Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

[LitNetIsGreat]

Hmm, first two that come to mind are from Keats and Shelley.

There's something about the last line from Chapman's Homer that's memorable:


Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

It's quietly musical to me, strange-like.

Similarly, from P Shelley's Ozymandias:


I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".

There it is - all of life, even the colossal, come to dust. Which leads on to Cymbeline I suppose.


Fear no more the heat o' th' sun
Nor the furious winter's rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone and ta'en thy wages.
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust

Well, that's the first part of the song from Cymbeline, so it's technically cheating I suppose, but so what, it's got its own finality to it, it's brilliant either way. The ending:


No exorciser harm thee,
Nor no witchcraft charm thee.
Ghost unlaid forbear thee;
Nothing ill come near thee.
Quiet consummation have,
And renowned be thy grave.

I wonder how often the song is genuinely used in funerals? (On that note I'm going to get a cup of tea.)

[Alexander III]

I think my two favorite endings are The Great Gatsby and The Cossacks - in both novels once one reaches the final lines it seems that the entire novel, all the characters and settings and actions, were constructed for the sole purpose of giving a titanic force to those last words.

You already posted the finals lines of Gatsby, so here are the last lines of The Cossacks:

"Maryanka came out of the cowshed, glanced indifferently at the
cart, bowed and went towards the hut.
'LA FILLE!' said Vanyusha, with a wink, and burst out into a silly
laugh.
'Drive on!' shouted Olenin, angrily.
'Good-bye, my lad! Good-bye. I won't forget you!' shouted Eroshka.
Olenin turned round. Daddy Eroshka was talking to Maryanka,
evidently about his own affairs, and neither the old man nor the
girl looked at Olenin."

[MarkBastable]

“So (said the doctor) now vee may perhaps to begin. Yes?”

Portnoy's Complaint

[Rores28]

I'll second Invisible Cities and Gatsby and add

Blood Meridian

And they are dancing, the board floor slamming under the jackboots and the fiddlers grinning hideously over their canted pieces. Towering over them all is the judge and he is naked dancing, his small feet lively and quick and now in doubletime and bowing to the ladies, huge and pale and hairless, like an enormous infant. He never sleeps, he says. He says he'll never die. He bows to the fiddlers and sashays backwards and throws back his head and laughs deep in his throat and he is a great favorite, the judge. He wafts his hat and the lunar dome of his skull passes palely under the lamps and he swings about and takes possession of one of the fiddles and he pirouettes and makes a pass, two passes, dancing and fiddling all at once. His feet are light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.

The Sun Also Rises

Isn't it pretty to think so.

[ChicagoReader]

Blood Meridian

And they are dancing, the board floor slamming under the jackboots and the fiddlers grinning hideously over their canted pieces. Towering over them all is the judge and he is naked dancing, his small feet lively and quick and now in doubletime and bowing to the ladies, huge and pale and hairless, like an enormous infant. He never sleeps, he says. He says he'll never die. He bows to the fiddlers and sashays backwards and throws back his head and laughs deep in his throat and he is a great favorite, the judge. He wafts his hat and the lunar dome of his skull passes palely under the lamps and he swings about and takes possession of one of the fiddles and he pirouettes and makes a pass, two passes, dancing and fiddling all at once. His feet are light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.

Ah you beat me to it, I'll second that, Lolita, and another vote for Gatsby.

[PoeticPassions]

I also agree with The Great Gatsby-- one of those lines that constantly lives along with me... and finds its way into my writing and thoughts.
Also, will concur with Lolita. The beginning lines and ending lines are brilliant.

Also:
"He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance." –Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

"Hurrah for Karamazov!"

Does anyone recall the last line of Steppenwolf?
I do recall the last lines of Siddhartha being touching...

[Emil Miller]

Does anyone recall the last line of Steppenwolf?


I just checked it out from my copy in German. It's: 'Mozart is waiting for me.'

I haven't read Siddhartha.

[Melysnl]

American Psycho: "This is not an exit."

I thought about this one without hesitation. It's unforgettable.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Blood Meridian

And they are dancing, the board floor slamming under the jackboots and the fiddlers grinning hideously over their canted pieces. Towering over them all is the judge and he is naked dancing, his small feet lively and quick and now in doubletime and bowing to the ladies, huge and pale and hairless, like an enormous infant. He never sleeps, he says. He says he'll never die. He bows to the fiddlers and sashays backwards and throws back his head and laughs deep in his throat and he is a great favorite, the judge. He wafts his hat and the lunar dome of his skull passes palely under the lamps and he swings about and takes possession of one of the fiddles and he pirouettes and makes a pass, two passes, dancing and fiddling all at once. His feet are light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.



Ah you beat me to it, I'll second that, Lolita, and another vote for Gatsby.
You both beat me to thinking of this one. So chilling.

Still, this tops my list:

Moby Dick

But as the last whelmings intermixingly poured themselves over the sunken head of the Indian at the mainmast, leaving a few inches of the erect spar yet visible, together with long streaming yards of the flag, which calmly undulated, with ironical coincidings, over the destroying billows they almost touched; - at that instant, a red arm and a hammer hovered backwardly uplifted in the open air, in the act of nailing the flag faster and yet faster to the subsiding spar. A sky-hawk that tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from its natural home among the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego there; this bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing between the hammer and the wood; and simultaneously feeling that etherial thrill, the submerged savage beneath, in his death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen there; and so the bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it.

Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.

[Intuition]

As many great novels have already been mentioned, I will resort to naming a different one. All of these I believe are of great merit-- it is impossible (for myself) to think of a personal favorite. Hopefully I haven't omitted too many.

Madame Bovary:
"He has just been awarded the cross of the Legion of Honor."

The Unnamable:
"Perhaps it's done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on."

Molloy:
"Then I went back into the house and wrote, It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining."

Finnegans Wake
"A way a lone a last a loved a long the –" (Famous in the sense that it connects to the beginning).

Middlemarch
"But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
"Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead."

Under the Volcano
"Somebody threw a dead dog after him down the ravine."

Swan's Way
"They were only a thin slice, held between the contiguous impressions that
composed our life at that time; the memory of a particular image is but regret for
a particular moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the years."


Not necessarily a last line, but a notable last three lines for a short story.

A Dreary Story or A Boring Story
"No, she did not look back. I've seen her black dress for the last time: her steps have died away. Farewell, my treasure!"

[breathtest]

The wasp factory - Poor Eric came home to see his brother, only to find (Zap! Pow! Dams burst! Bombs go off! Wasps fry: ttsss!) he's got a sister.

This sentence of course only so great because of the character you get to know through the book. The book itself for me was confusing because it was so close to being atrociously bad and yet so close to being brilliant. I just cannot really work it out. Maybe it is just the most mediocre middle of the pile novel ever.

Also the final sentence of Ulysses

[lawpark]

Goethe's Faust comes to mind ... why the hell did he talk about erection at the end of both Faust I and II? That is not by favorite, but clearly the most puzzling to me ...

[Ecurb]

When I was a child I thought the last sentence below was the saddest in literature:


"The stars are thin," said Gray Brother, snuffing at the dawn wind. "Where shall we lair to-day? for from now, we follow new trails."

And this is the last of the Mowgli stories.

[Lokasenna]

I've always enjoyed the last words of The Tempest, and thus quite likely the last words of Shakespeare:


Now my charms are all o'erthrown,
And what strength I have's mine own;
Which is most faint; now 'tis true,
I must be here confin'd by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got,
And pardon'd the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell:
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands.
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant;
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be reliev'd by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself, and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardon'd be,
Let your indulgence set me free.

[Vonny]

I've always enjoyed the last words of The Tempest, and thus quite likely the last words of Shakespeare:


Wasn't Shakespeare 23 when he wrote this?

[AjaxAscendant]

But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.


THAT needs no intro.


O, I die, Horatio;
The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit:
I cannot live to hear the news from England;
But I do prophesy the election lights
On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice;
So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less,
Which have solicited. The rest is silence.

Quite possibly the greatest lines in literature.


I�m so glad to be at home again.

From The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

[Lokasenna]

Wasn't Shakespeare 23 when he wrote this?

Um, no. The Tempest is usually dated to 1610-11, and is usually considered Shakespeare's last play, or at least the last one that he worked on unaccompanied. He would be in his late 40s at that point...

[Vonny]

Um, no. The Tempest is usually dated to 1610-11, and is usually considered Shakespeare's last play, or at least the last one that he worked on unaccompanied. He would be in his late 40s at that point...

Oh, it sounds to me like a babe wrote it.

[Snowqueen]

MICHAEL HENCHARD'S WILL

"That Elizabeth-Jane Farfrae be not told of my death, or
made to grieve on account of me.
"& that I be not bury'd in consecrated ground.
"& that no sexton be asked to toll the bell.
"& that nobody is wished to see my dead body.
"& that no murners walk behind me at my funeral.
"& that no flours be planted on my grave,
"& that no man remember me.
"To this I put my name.

MICHAEL HENCHARD


These are great lines, and this will shows how bitter Hanchard had felt while dying.

[Lokasenna]

I just realised, I've forgotten the absolutely peerless last stanza of Dryden's A Song for St Cecilia's Day. The whole poem is a masterpiece, but those last nine lines are amongst the finest in existence.


As from the pow'r of sacred lays
The spheres began to move,
And sung the great Creator's praise
To all the bless'd above;
So when the last and dreadful hour
This crumbling pageant shall devour,
The trumpet shall be heard on high,
The dead shall live, the living die,
And music shall untune the sky.

[mayneverhave]

A few of my favorites.

Proust, In Search of Lost Time:

"So, if I were given long enough to accomplish my work, I should not fail, even if the effect were to make them resemble monsters, to describe men as occupying so considerable a place, compared with the restricted place which is reserved for them in space, a place on the contrary prolonged past measure, for simultaneously, like giants plunged into the years, they touch the distance epochs through which they have lived, between which so many days have come to range themselves -- in Time."

Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude:

"Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth."

V. S. Naipaul, An Area of Darkness: [last paragraph]

"The world is illusion, the Hindus say. We talk of despair, but true despair lies too deep for formulation. It was only now, as my experience of India defined itself more properly against my own homelessness, that I saw how close in the past year I had been to the total Indian negation, how much it had become the basis of thought and feeling. And already, with this awareness, in a world where illusion could only be a concept and not something felt in the bones, it was slipping away from me. I felt it as something true which I could never adequately express and never seize again."

Faulkner, As I Lay Dying:

"'It's Cash and Jewel and Vardaman and Dewey Dell,' pa says, kind of hangdog and proud too, with his teeth and all, even if he wouldn't look at us. 'Meet Mrs Bundren,' he says."

[Vonny]

I just realised, I've forgotten the absolutely peerless last stanza of Dryden's A Song for St Cecilia's Day. The whole poem is a masterpiece, but those last nine lines are amongst the finest in existence.

beautiful :sad:

[stlukesguild]

Then there's the last lines of Edmund Spenser's Epithalamion... his wedding poem to his wife:


And ye high heavens, the temple of the gods,
In which a thousand torches flaming bright
Doe burne, that to us wretched earthly clods
In dreadful darknesse lend desired light
And all ye powers which in the same remayne,
More then we men can fayne!
Poure out your blessing on us plentiously,
And happy influence upon us raine,
That we may raise a large posterity,
Which from the earth, which they may long possesse
With lasting happinesse,
Up to your haughty pallaces may mount;
And, for the guerdon of theyr glorious merit,
May heavenly tabernacles there inherit,
Of blessed Saints for to increase the count.
So let us rest, sweet love, in hope of this,
And cease till then our tymely joyes to sing:
The woods no more us answer, nor our eccho ring!

[Intuition]

Samuel Beckett – “Waiting for Godot”
VLADIMIR: Well? Shall we go?

ESTRAGON: Yes, let’s go.

[They do not move.]



Leo Tolstoy – “Hadji Murat”
Karganov, Hadji-Aha, Aklmlet-Khan and the militiamen gathered over the bodies of Hadji Murad and his men (Khanefi, Kurban and Gamzalo were bound) like hunters over a dead beast, standing among the bushes in the gunsmoke, gaily chatting and celebrating their victory.

The nightingales, which were silent while the shooting lasted, again burst into Song, first one near by, then others in the distance.

This was the death that was brought to my mind by the crushed thistle in the ploughed field.

[iamnobody]

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

If I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for my pillow; and I would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who.

[soniat]

actually now am comparing these.............

[Snowqueen]

These are my favourite lines.

When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou sayst,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know

Ode on a Grecian Urn

[joelavine]

Sonja: We shall hear the angels, we shall see the whole sky all diamonds, we shall see how all earthly evil, all our sufferings, are drowned in the mercy that will fill the whole world. And our life will grow peaceful, tender, sweet as a caress. . . . In your life you haven’t known what joy was; but wait, Uncle Vanya, wait. . . . We shall rest.

[kinesj]

"I don't hate it," Quentin said, quickly, at once, immediately; "I dont hate it," he said. I don't hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark: I dont. I dont! I dont hate it! I dont hate it!


William Faulkner
Absalom, Absalom!

[kinesj]

I dont hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark: I dont. I dont! I dont hate it! I dont hate it!

Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner

Ok I don't know how I missed that you had already posted my choice but apologies for unintentional spam in the process. :cheers2:

[Snowqueen]

Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,
That time may cease, and midnight never come;
Fair Nature's eye, rise, rise again, and make
Perpetual day; or let this hour be but
A year, a month, a week, a natural day,
That Faustus may repent and save his soul


My God, my god, look not so fierce on me!
Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while!
Ugly hell, gape not! come not, Lucifer!
I'll burn my books!--Ah, Mephistophilis!

Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe

[Bastable]

"I looked up at the mass of signs and stars and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world. And finding it so much like myself, in fact so fraternal, I realised that i'd been happy, and that i was still happy. For the final consummation and for me to feel less lonely, my last wish was that there should be a crowd of spectators at my execution and that they should greet me with cries of hatred." The outsider - Albert Camus

the last few lines I know, but whatevs.

And a recent one i quite enjoyed:

"There is accumulation. There is responsibility. And beyond these there is unrest. There is great unrest." - Julian Barnes The sense of an ending

Although reading it now I realise it's probably not as powerful out of context.

[metal134]

Now, everybody...

[dysfunctional-h]

I dont hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark: I dont. I dont! I dont hate it! I dont hate it!

Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner

Could not agree more. I love Absalom, Absalom! and it is the perfect ending for such a dark novel. But the end of the Sound and the Fury is even more poignant:

"The broken flower drooped over Ben's fist and his eyes were empty and blue and serene again as cornice and facade flowed smoothly one more from left to right, post and tree, window and doorway and signboard each in its ordered place."

[FranzS]

Only then did he discover that Amaranta Ursula was not his sister but his aunt, and that Francis Drake had attacked Riohacha solely so that they could search for one another through the most intricate labyrinths of blood, until they engendered the mythological animal which could put an end to their family line. Macondo was already a fearful whirlwind of dust and rubble being spun about by the wrath of the biblical hurricane when Aureliono skipped eleven pages so as not to waste time on facts he knew only too well, and he began to decipher the moment he was living, deciphering it as he lived it, as if he were looking into a speaking mirror...But before he reached the final line he had realized that he would never leave that room, for it was ordained that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be swept away by the wind and exiled from the memory of men in the instant when Aureliano finished deciphering the parchments, and that everything that was written in them was unrepeatable for always and forever, because those races condemned to one hundred years of solitude would have no second chance on earth.

A Hundred Years of Solitude by García Márquez

+1. One of the longest last lines in literature, but the final phrase blew my head off.

[Gregory Samsa]

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

[Jason Cardona]

Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east. …

--Aldous Huxley, "Brave New World"

[RicMisc]

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Came here just to say that, I finished the book and was already sold on it but after reading that final sentence I just slow-clapped..

[KCurtis]

Came here just to say that, I finished the book and was already sold on it but after reading that final sentence I just slow-clapped..

My favorite book, I'm glad you liked it. I've read it twice, and can't wait to do a re-read- but not too soon!

[hellsapoppin]

In 1969 I read in Spanish El coronel no tiene quien le escriba or No one writes to the Colonel by Gabriel García Márquez. It had a startling one word last line: "Miěrdā!'' A word which shall go untranslated here.

[Svidrigailov]

"Only rarely, at the end of our century, does life offer up a vision as pure and peaceful as this one: a solitary man on a bucket, fishing through eighteen inches of ice in a lake that's constantly turning over its water atop an arcadian mountain in America."

-Philip Roth, The Human Stain

As a standalone sentence, it's not much, but there's some cutting irony in there for those who've read the whole book.

[Alexander III]

Last 2 stanzas of Child harolds pilgrimage are rather good


CLXXXV.

My task is done - my song hath ceased - my theme
Has died into an echo; it is fit
The spell should break of this protracted dream.
The torch shall be extinguished which hath lit
My midnight lamp - and what is writ, is writ -
Would it were worthier! but I am not now
That which I have been - and my visions flit
Less palpably before me - and the glow
Which in my spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low.

CLXXXVI.

Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been -
A sound which makes us linger; yet, farewell!
Ye, who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene
Which is his last, if in your memories dwell
A thought which once was his, if on ye swell
A single recollection, not in vain
He wore his sandal-shoon and scallop shell;
Farewell! with him alone may rest the pain,
If such there were - with you, the moral of his strain.