What is your favorite line in fiction?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Viki63
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Okay, nobody’s included these and they have to appear here or all others are inconsequential

“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she has to walk into mine…” - Casablanca

“Louis, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship” - Casablanca

“Play it Sam, play As Time Goes By.” - Casablanca

And one last one of my favorites

“Wow, anything that goes that far that fast ought to have a damn stewardess on it” Crash Davis to Nuke Laloosh after a batter hit a gargantuan home run off Nuke in the movie “Bull Durham.”
 
Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love. Why Bilbo Baggins? Perhaps because I am afraid, and he gives me courage

–Gandalf
J.R.R Tolkien’s The Hobbit
 
Then, instead of expensive mouthwash, he had breathed on Hogg-Enderby, bafflingly (for no banquet would serve, because of the known redolence of onions, onions) onions. ‘Onions,’ said Hogg.
Click to expand...
Anthony Burgess, Enderby Outside.
 
On a more serious note -
I said a prayer, an ancient, newly learned form of words, and left, turning towards the camp; and as I walked back, and the cookhouse bugle sounded ahead of me, I thought. . .
Click to expand...
Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited.
 
Exiled_Child said:
Actually a few lines, but my favorite:

“Hail, O most valiant and illustrious drinkers! Your health, my precious pox-ridden comrades! To you alone, I dedicate my writings.”
Click to expand...
And:

“Let me explain to you only, O my beloved disciples, and to such other idlers and idiots as read my works.”
 
One single line.

“To love another person is to see the face of God”

Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
 
Viki63 said:
Not favorite scripture, because there are so many, but favorite in fiction.

My favorite has always been:
“But Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail had bread and milk and blackberries for supper.”
Click to expand...
Awesome thread Viki! 🙂 I wanted to say thanks, because that quote of yours made me smile. Before my dad passed away I remember him telling me that I loved that book as a child, and apparently I very often took that book down off the shelf and asked them to read it to me. I don’t remember it at all though. My mom and I talk on the phone all the time, and so I’m going to ask her to fill me in. I can see now why I apparently loved it; the poetry of it is just charming, judging by that one line alone.

When I saw the thread’s title, several dozen lines from Francois Rabelais immediately popped into my head. A priest I was friends with, and particularly fond of, gave me Rabelais’ collected works as a confirmation present, and I’ve been into his voice ever since. Looking back, I can see why he made a gift of it to me, and actually I’m not entirely sure that he even gave anyone else in my confirmation class a present. I’m convinced he knew me better than I knew myself at that time. Yep, I think so. 😃 So the book has some serious sentimental value to me for that reason. And it’s funny, because whenever anyone sees the name “Rabelais” it’s sort of synonomous in their minds with inappropriate, raunchy, ribald, entirely earthy humor. I’m pretty sure that people tend to forget that he was actually a Catholic monk for his entire life, and that he was as much a deep thinker and philosopher as he was an over-the-top mischievious wisecracker. He reads kind of like if St. John of the Cross wrote a series of South Park episodes. But gosh, that book had such a wild impact on me! I can’t even explain. It was like a whole other world opened up to me. I’d be reading it and guffawing so loudly that my jaw actually hurt, and then suddenly he’d intersperse the most poetic and striking Catholic insight, just these beautiful and holy ideas. It was the weirdest, most lively thing I’d ever encountered in all my life; completely juvenile and ridiculously hilarious, and then suddenly this majestic, sage-like Christian wisdom. Anyway, thank you so much for the thread, it’s brought back some especially great memories. 🙂 These beautiful memories flooding back to me…
 
‘It isn’t a quite dead garden,’ she cried out softly to herself.

From The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
 
“So. You get handed a holy sword by an archangel, told to go fight the forces of evil, and you somehow remain an atheist. Is that what you are saying?”

Jim Butcher, Death Mask (Dresden Files #5)
 
I have two off the top of my head. Both are from an Inkling.

“Don’t you remember on earth–there were things too hot to touch with your finger but you could drink them all right? Shame is like that. If you will accept it–if you will drink the cup to the bottom–you will find it very nourishing; but try to do anything else with it and it scalds.” C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

“Suddenly the king cried to Snowmane and the horse sprang away. Behind him his banner blew in the wind, white horse upon a field of green, but he outpaced it. After him thundered the knights of his house, but he was ever before them. Eomer rode there, the white horsetail on his helm floating in his speed, and the front of the first eored roared like a breaker foaming to the shore, but Theoden could not be overtaken.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

I don’t think there is anything as epic as this paragraph on the Ride of the Rohirrim. I cannot read it without shivers running down my spine.
 
“You are … dead. The term is over; the holidays have begun. The dream is ended; this is the morning.”

CS Lewis, The Last Battle
 
“For where all the love is, the speaking is unnecessary”

-Outlander.
 
Exiled_Child said:
Awesome thread Viki! 🙂 I wanted to say thanks, because that quote of yours made me smile.
Click to expand...
Yes, Peter Rabbit is like comfort food for the soul. Such a cozy world.

Here’s my other favorite:

"My brothers.
I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of Men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship. But it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the Age of Men comes crashing down.

But it is not this day! This day we fight!

By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!"

from the Return of the King.

.
 
"Karate here [points to head]; karate here [points to chest]; karate not here [points to his belt].

Miyagi in Karate Kid
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top