Victorians! discussion

Easily the determining moment that grabs you or leaves you flat, the opening lines if a book can have enormous impact on our expectations. Some are immensely quotable. Others may resonate more individually. Do you have a particular favorite opening line that has stayed in your memory?

Adding a link to an Opening Lines Book Quiz...
https://www.thebookquiz.com/multiple-...

Of course what comes to mind is "it was the worst of times. It was the best of times." Tale of two cities was something we had to read in 7th grade. It was my first exposure to Dickens, and book became an immediate favorite. As did the other book we read that year - The Raft. A nonfiction about men involved in shipwreck who survived on an emergency raft. I proudly own copies of both books. I purchased them in my 20s because they had such meaning for me

Thanks for sharing the memory. Those books which affect us when we're young are so precious.

'IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.'- P&P

THE Curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Everyman wrote: "THE Curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me."

Ah, yes, Everyman. One more day and we'll start our discussion on Gray's magnificent poem.

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

I'm looking forward to discussing this poem that has, of late, blushed too often unseen.

It was a dark and stormy night - Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford,1830

"Marley was dead, to begin with".

(A Christmas Carol, Dickens)

A short sentence, for Dickens. Blunt and chilling, it opens up a myriad of questions. Whether you like the rest of the book or not, I think it's hard to disagree that this opening line is an absolute cracker.

Victor wrote: "It was a dark and stormy night - Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford,1830"

Snoopy's favourite!

"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."
- David Copperfield, Charles Dickens

For the Quiz Lovers out there, I've added an Ooenjng Lines Book Quiz to Message 1 at the top of the thread. Let us know how you do with your matching. :)

Perhaps I could have saved him, with only a word, two words, out of my mouth.

Paton, Too Late the Phalarope.

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. -- One Hundred Years of Solitude

One sentence, two events, three timeframes: you know you're in for a treat.

Favorite Victorian opening: Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa, has not smiled with some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking forth one morning hand-in-hand with her still smaller brother, to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors? --Middlemarch

I'm enjoying the fact that both of yours are slightly twisted, Shelly. :D Nothing like imminent death and martyrdom to set the tone of a great read! I loved both books but didn't realize how awesome their openjng lines were.

I Am Born. Great expectations

I took quiz and was surprised I got 7 out of 10

Renee wrote: "I'm enjoying the fact that both of yours are slightly twisted, Shelly. :D Nothing like imminent death and martyrdom to set the tone of a great read! I loved both books but didn't realize how awesom..."

Oh! Now that you mention it, these selections *are* a touch morbid...

The only other one I can think of is... the definition of morbid:

I am a sick man….I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. --Notes from the Underground

Hahaha! Nice!

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