A Famous First Line @afamousfirstline - Tumblr Blog

A bright spring day was fading into evening. High overhead in the clear heavens small rosy clouds seemed hardly to move across the sky but to be sinking into its depths of blue.

Ivan Turgenev, A House of Gentlefolk (1859)

#Ivan Turgenev #A House of Gentlefolk #1859 #lit #literature #first lines

A wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace. On this mighty tide the black ships—laden with the fresh-scented fir-planks, with rounded sacks of oil-bearing seed, or with the dark glitter of coal—are borne along to the town of St Ogg’s, which shows its aged, fluted red roofs and the broad gables of its wharves between the low wooded hill and the river-brink, tingeing the water with a soft purple hue under the transient glance of this February sun.

George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (1860)

#George Eliot #The Mill on the Floss #1860 #lit #literature #first lines

The difference between the mathematical and the intuitive mind. —In the one the principles are palpable, but removed from ordinary use; so that for want of habit it is difficult to turn one's mind in that direction: but if one turns it thither ever so little, one sees the principles fully, and one must have a quite inaccurate mind who reasons wrongly from principles so plain that it is almost impossible they should escape notice.

Blaise Pascal, Pascal's Pensées (1670)

#Blaise Pascal #Pascal's Pensees #1670 #lit #literature #first lines

We Americans devour eagerly any piece of writing that purports to tell us the secret of success in life; yet how often we are disappointed to find nothing but commonplace statements, or receipts that we know by heart but never follow.

Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1791)

#Benjamin Franklin #The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin #1791 #lit #literature #first lines

I sing of arms and the man who of old from the coasts of Troy came, an exile of fate, to Italy and the shore of Lavinium; hard driven on land and on the deep by the violence of heaven, for cruel Juno's unforgetful anger, and hard bestead in war also, ere he might found a city and carry his gods into Latium; from whom is the Latin race, the lords of Alba, and the stately city Rome.

Virgil, The Aeneid of Virgil (19 BC)

#Virgil #The Aeneid of Virgil #19 BC #lit #literature #first lines

In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town.

Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820)

#Washington Irving #The Legend of Sleepy Hollow #1820 #lit #literature #first lines

"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (1868)

#Louisa May Alcott #Little Women #1868 #lit #literature #first lines

Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table.

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of Baskervilles (1901)

#Arthur Conan Doyle #The Hound of Baskervilles #1901 #lit #literature #first lines

My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1860)

#Charles Dickens #Great Expectations #1860 #lit #literature #first lines

3 May. Bistritz.—Left Munich at 8:35 P. M., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late.

Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897)

#Bram Stoker #Dracula #1897 #lit #literature #first lines

When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)

#Henry David Thoreau #Walden #1854 #literarture #lit #first lines

The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.

Oscar Wilde, A Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)

#Oscar Wilde #A Picture of Dorian Gray #1890 #literature #lit #first lines

It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer. A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity—but that would be asking too much of fate! Still I would proudly declare that there is something queer about it.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892)

#Charlotte Perkins Gilman #The Yellow Wallpaper #1892 #lit #literature #first lines

It is well known that there are four kinds of monks.

Abbot of Monte Cassino Saint Benedict, St. Benedict’s Rule for Monasteries (516)

#Abbot of Monte Cassino Saint Benedict #St. Benedict's Rule for Monasteries #516 #lit #literature #first lines

We were seated at breakfast one morning, my wife and I, when the maid brought in a telegram. It was from Sherlock Holmes and ran in this way:

Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Boscombe Valley Mystery” The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)

#Arthur Conan Doyle #The Boscombe Valley Mystery #The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes #1892 #lit #literature #first lines

“My dear fellow,” said Sherlock Holmes as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, “life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent...

Arthur Conan Doyle, “A Case of Identity” The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)

#Arthur Conan Doyle #A Case of Identity #The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes #1892 #lit #literature #first lines

Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable.

Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)

#Robert Louis Stevenson #The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde #1886 #lit #literature #first lines

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