My choice is one that never fails to produce goosebumps. It's from Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast. Technically not one line but it needs the context. The gift of bright blood. Of blood that laughs when the tenets mutter 'Weep'. Of blood that mourns when the sere laws croak 'Rejoice!' O little revolution in great shades! I'm surprised I haven't put this in my signature; I think I'll change it now. What's yours?
Of course, a war's like any good deal: hard to get going. But when it does get moving, it's a pisser, and they're all scared of peace, like a dice player who can't stop-'cause when peace comes they have to pay up. Of course, until it gets going, they're just as scared of war, it's such a novelty! From Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children. One of the best anti-war dramas ever written, if not /the/ best.
From Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles: If before going to the d’Urbervilles’ she had vigorously moved under the guidance of sundry gnomic texts and phrases known to her and to the world in general, no doubt she would never have been imposed on. But it had not been in Tess’s power—nor is it in anybody’s power—to feel the whole truth of golden opinions while it is possible to profit by them. She—and how many more—might have ironically said to God with Saint Augustine: “Thou hast counselled a better course than Thou hast permitted.”
This is my favorite opening. I think. Nothing ever begins. There is no first moment; no single word or place from which this or any other story springs. The threads can always be traced back to some earlier tale, and to the tales that preceded that: though as the narrator's voice recedes the connections will seem to grow more tenuous, for each age will want the tale told as if it were of its own making. Thus the pagan will be sanctified, the tragic become laughable; great lovers will stoop to sentiment, and demons dwindle to clockwork toys. But there's so many good ones. I'd probably change my mind tomorrow. Oh, I guess the champion line is that first one. It's so succinct. It needs that follow-up though to hit just right.
^ That’s Brill. Keeping it cheerful. The blows of the basement hammer every day grew more and more between; and each blow every day grew fainter than the last; the wife sat frozen at the window, with tearless eyes, glitteringly gazing into the weeping faces of her children; the bellows fell; the forge choked up with cinders; the house was sold; the mother dived down into the long church-yard grass; her children twice followed her thither; and the houseless, familyless old man staggered off a vagabond in crape; his every woe unreverenced; his grey head a scorn to flaxen curls!
"There once was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it." Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis.
Yep. The book also contains another of my favorite stories about a pair of pale green pants with nobody inside them.
