In Pride and Prejudice Mr Bennet tells the hapless Mary, "You have delighted us long enough."

I wish I had taken the time to write down all the great lines I have loved. But alas they are lost forever, at least to me.

Obviously there are zillions.
Quite a few can be found in Larry McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove". One only need watch the miniseries to hear them. The fact that every one was written in the book first shows what a great book LD is.

An advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force. Dorothy L. Sayers

I don't know if it's great, but it's certainly fun:
"... and a downtown stuffed to bursting with rickety old buildings, steel and glass new ones that shine obnoxiously like a made-it-big uncle at a family reunion;..."

from Jon Fasman's The Geographer's Library

PAM

Sarah, that is a delighful line by Quindlen. Thanks for bringing to our attention.

I'm reading In Cold Blood by Truman Capote at the moment and came across this piece:

...she said, 'I wanted so much to tell you.' Bobby began to cry. Larry lingered at the end of the Teacherage yard, hunched against a tree. He couldn't remember ever seeing Bobby cry, and he didn't want to, so he lowered his eyes.' (p 71).

I think that's beautiful writing, and for me it had an emotional impact. I just had to write it down.

Adam

I still think that the first line of Nerve by Dick Francis takes some beating.

Art Matthews shot himself, loudly and messily, in the parade ring before the third race at Dunstable racecourse.

How can you not read on after that?

(I may not have it precisely right - it's a while since I read it!)

Some of these great lines have been written by writers who have also been active in writing screenplays for the film industry. It takes a certain knack for dialogue to write a screenplay, and I often wonder if that contributes to the ability to come up with a really great or memorable line (I'm thinking of McMurtry in particular, here).

Out of books I've read this year, I made special note of this line in KJ Bishop's The Etched City:

"Evil flourishes in the world because the good aren't good enough." Standing alone here, it may sound over-the-top, but within the context of the novel, it was a great line spoken by Raule, a very jaded character living in a decadent world. If the old spaghetti westerns had featured a strong, female lead you'll get a feel for the character Raule. I rather liked her.

Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby":

(I won't quote the entire last page, which to me is beautiful writing, just the highlights).

...."Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us them, but that's no matter -- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning --
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Some favorites from Life of Pi:

"The individual soul touches upon the world soul like a well reaches for the water table."

"If thereÂs only one nation in the sky, shouldnÂt all passports be valid for it?"

"To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation."

From Lonesome Dove, mentioned above:

"If you only come face to face with your own mistakes once or twice in your life itÂs bound to be extra painful. I face mine every day  that way they ainÂt usually much worse than a dry shave."  Gus (Agustus)

Oh these lines are great! I have enjoyed reading them all!

Here's one from Moondust by Andrew Smith about all the men who have walked on the moon.
After their return to earth and while they were in quarantine, the three astronauts were catching up on all the news coverage, print reports, and general hoopla of their historic adventure when Buzz Aldrin says to Neil Armstrong, "Neil, we missed the whole thing."

"So I'm finally going mad," she thought, "like everybody else. What a nuisance. Though I suppose it will be a change."

from The Edible Woman, Margaret Atwood

Great opening line:

"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."

ÂGabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

From M. Ondaaje's "The English Patient":

...'We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden as if caves. I wish for all this to be marked on my body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography -- to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience. All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps.'

"Make my happiness, I will make yours" (pretty close) quote from Mr. Rochester to Jane in Jane Eyre.

Of course spoken by Timothy Dalton in the movie makes my legs crumble

One of my favorite lines is from Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief, although I'm not sure it qualifies for this thread, since it doesn't really stand on its own. It's the final sentence in the passage where the queen of Attolia appears in Gen's prison cell. She is described as beautiful, dressed in embroidered red velvet, with a voice that is 'quiet and lovely.' When she leaves the room, her robe brushes against Gen's hand, and the passage concludes: The velvet was soft, but the embroidery scratched.

What craft! Although ostensibly describing her clothes, that one concise sentence sums up the queen's personality.

cheryl

Some more of my favorites - from my favorite book...Sarah Canary by Karen Joy Fowler:

Sometimes a sentence or phrase is great because it makes us stop and think or feel...

"He allowed himself to occupy the narrow ledge of belieflessness."

Other times it simply suprpises us into a laugh...

"No woman had been hanged yet in California, although Laura D. Fair had come pretty close. There simply werenÂt enough women on the West Coast to be wasting them in this way."

and

"I shouldnÂt tell you this," Purdy said, which, of all the ways to begin a sentence, was B.J.Âs absolute favoriteÂ

The beginning of Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen is one of my favorites:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

Sarah Canary, I like those! Might just have to read that one day...

I'm currently reading a fairly unusual young adult book by Meg Rosoff, How I Live Now, and came across this sentence yesterday:
"We were quiet for the longest time just listening to the rain on the window with his leg resting against mine and a feeling flying between us in a crazy jagged way like a bird caught in a room."

I was at the subway station wating for the train to arrive and was my wont and custom I was reading a book, waiting for the train to arrive. This time I was reading "Enterprise by the Board" by Smith and Rovich. And when I came to the line: "'Shoot low, sheriff.' Mayweather said. 'The Martians are riding ponies.'" The visualization of that line sent me into gales of laughter. It is a good thing, that no trains were coming, because I was laughing so hard, I almost fell of the station platform and onto the tracks. It is also good that I was the only one waiting for the train, because no one else would have understood.

Other then that, I have a couple of aphorisms, I like.

"When results are too grim for contemplation, people escape into fantasy." "Young Sherlock Holmes" Alan Arnold

and

"Ye-es! It conveys langour, grandeur, and incipient obsequousness." "Dark Angel" Sally Beauman

The opening line to The Wooden Sea by Jonathan Carroll definitely makes me laugh out loud--
"Never wear yellow pants or cheap leather."

"Kind hearts are more than coronets,
and simple faith than Norman blood...."

Alfred Lord Tennyson.