I think I will have to revive this wonderful topic once again! :D
"Fanny was too much surprised to do more than repeat her aunt's words, 'Going to leave you?'"
Mansfield Park, 1814
I think I will have to revive this wonderful topic once again! :D
"Fanny was too much surprised to do more than repeat her aunt's words, 'Going to leave you?'"
Mansfield Park, 1814
"What do you suppose I have to wear to such a thing as that?"
The Diamond Necklace by Maupassant
But that's what you risk when you leave here.
Christ she would crack up!
And suddenly, standing there among the fruit barrows and corn-bins, in the middle of the street, it had seemed the most important thing she could do, to use some of the money left from Godmother Fry's gift, spend it extravagantly, like the woman who had poured out the jar of precious ointments.
"His whole power was in his numbers."
The Prostrate State: South Carolina under Negro Government by James S. Pike
Philip, not averse to such assistance, got his own face into shadow.
"In the company of the poet and the scholar he felt himself in a new position, almost, indeed in possession of a new legitimacy."
The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy
"When we landed we watched the discharging of the graceful three-master which we have observed from the other quay."
- An Encounter by Joyce
Wax doll!
- The Golem (Meyrink)
True, there were winters when three or four of her two dozen little boarders died.
On the morning of the 23rd I took the train from Zurich to Lausanne.
The daring amphibious landing at Incheon of forty thousand US troops under the command of General Douglas MacArthur in September reversed the Communist gains.
"Did you not think, Mr. Darcy, that I expressed myself uncommonly well just now, when I was teasing Colonel Forster to give us a ball at Meryton?"
- Pride and Prejudice
That was true too; but kings who personify an idea should not, cannot, fall below a certain level for generations; if they do, my dear brother-in-law, the idea suffers too.
Female slaves, the wives of metics and foreigners, concubines, and courtesans were all excluded from the festival.
I almost forgot about this topic! :eek: My book took so long this time...
Anyway...
'He was a swimmer, and during the competitive season, he shaved every hair off his his body so he was smooth as plastic.'
(The Jane Austen Book Club, 2004)
Prooving a very funny read now I have read all of Austen.
"Figure 1.14 Complex search terms in a search engine." - How to pass Standard Grade Computing
Technicaly this was the second book because the first didn't have a fourth sentence.
In the slanting beams that streamed through the open doorway the dust danced and was golden.
Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray
I lay in my basket, and my mother lay in her bed; but Betsey Trotwood Copperfield was forever in the land of dreams and shadows, the tremendous region whence I had so lately travelled; and the light upon the window of our room shone out upon the earthly bourne of all such travellers, and the mound above the ashes and the dust that once was he, without whom I had never been.
Wow, I have to grudgingly admit that that sentence from Dickens struck me as singularly masterful. I might just check and see whether that novel could pull me onto the Dickens fence and maybe off the other side...
That line happened to be the last line of the first chapter! I'm halfway through the novel and I know Dickens has given me characters I will find hard to forget.
What if one sentence takes up the whole page?
"The necessary arrangements were made, and Lewinski and his wife were taken by Major Gidson and two other men to Paris, travelling on British diplomatic lassez-passez through Gdynia and Stockholm to avoid Germany." - Anthony Cave Brown Bodyguard of Lies Volume I
Compose an Evening Sky-
"'Lie down, lie down,' said Krug, 'it is getting very late. I must go now. Come, lie down. Quick.'" Bend Sinister, Vladimir Nabokov (I know this is more than one sentence, but it made more sense to write the entire line down)
Maybe not a book, but a magazine...
"Den Fuss in dieser Einteilung weiterarb[eiten], 21 (22,5) cm Fusslänge erreicht sind."
(Sabrina, Socken)
"Carry on working the foot, until you have reached 21 (22.5) cm in length."
From the German knitting magazine Sabrina, the socks booklet with a comprehensive explanation how to do so. I had tried with two books, but could make head nor tale from it... And then came Sabrina...
"Feet pushing hard into the sand,intent on keeping my progresssteady and sure, choosing walking over flying since, in my experience anyway, flying in the fog isn't near as much fun as it might seem at first."
("Shimmer" the second book in the Riley Bloom Trology)
'The Gaint Wistaria' is alive with suggestive implications about unjust patriarchal dogmatism, rebellious and fatally suppressed female sexuality, and the return into the present of what has been culturally repressed in the past.
'Then he said I hadn't any guts.' - The Stranger by Camus
Christianity was, from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life's nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind, masked by, dressed up as, faith in "another" or "better" life.
-- The Basic Writings of Nietzsche
I could hardly bear for them to look upon herat all; worse still, I thought I couldn't endure to have them look upon me, as I watched her.
Tipping the Velvet, Sarah Waters
Lots of looking...
"The joylessness of the color scheme was matched only by the joylessness of their faces." ~ Fear of Flying, Erica Jong
"He'll show you the way, sir, and I'se warrant ye'll be weel put up; for they never turn awa naebody frae the door; and ye'll be come in the canny moment, I'm thinking, for the Laird's servant- that's not to say his body servant, but the helper like-rade express by this e'en to fetch the houdie and he just staid the drinking o'twa pints o' tippenny, to tell us how my leddy was ta'en wi' her pains."
Walter Scott Guy Mannering
"There were no more internal doors, but one led out to what looked like a lean-to greenhouse, filled with herbs and green."
- "The Amulet of Samarkand", Jonathan Stroud
"She thought the time had come to get to know Fay a little better"
- Eudora Welty, "The Optimists Daughter"
Many rumors like this about Enishte Effendi had begun to fly due to the secrecy of the book he was making and the money he was willing to pay - and because Master Osman, the Head Illuminator, despised him.
Banks later discovered that this dramatic way of expressing grief was universal amongst the Tahitian women, and he saw many who had permanent 'grief scars' on their heads.
The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes
"Not far from me squatted one of the tankmen, a native of Rostov, a tall, melancholy senior lieutenant." Alexander Solzhenitsyn The Gulag Archipelago
.
"They quarreled over it each time, not because she didn't want you baptized, but because she didn't want you baptized catholic." -Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card