suestaurus

Lolita

Vladimir Nabokov

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palette to tap, at three, on the teeth.

To the Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf

"Yes, of course, if it's fine tomorrow," said Mrs. Ramsay. "But you'll have to be up with the lark," she added.

Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison

"I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination—indeed, everything and anything except me."

Women in Love

D. H. Lawrence

Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen sat one morning in the window-bay of their father’s house in Beldover, working and talking. Ursula was stitching a piece of brightly-coloured embroidery, and Gudrun was drawing upon a board which she held on her knee. They were mostly silent, talking as their thoughts strayed through their minds.

Catch-22

Joseph Heller

It was love at first sight.

Neuromancer

William Gibson

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

Tropic of Cancer

Henry Miller

I am living at the Villa Borghese.

The Golden Notebook

Doris Lessing

The two women were alone in the London flat.

American Psycho

Bret Easton Ellis

ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE, is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First and is in print large enough to be seen from the backseat of the cab as it lurches forward in the traffic leaving Wall Street and just as Timothy Price notices the words a bus pulls up, the advertisement for Les Misérables on its side blocking the view, but Price who is with Pierce & Pierce and twenty-six doesn't seem to care because he tells the driver he will give him five dollars to turn up the radio, "Be My Baby" on WYNN, and the driver, black, not American, does so.

A Clockwork Orange

Anthony Burgess

'What's it going to be then, eh?'

War and Peace

Leo Tolstoy

"Well, Prince, Genoa and Lucca are now no more than private estates of the Bonaparte family."Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. (Maude/Maude)

The Brothers Karamazov

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Alexey Fyodorovich Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his tragic and obscure death, which happened just thirteen years ago, and of which I shall speak in its proper place. (Garnett, 1912)Aleksei Fyodorovich Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, a landowner of our district, extremely well known in his time (and to this day still remembered in these parts) on account of his violent and mysterious death exactly thirteen years ago, the circumstances of which I shall relate in due course. (Avsey 1994)Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place. (Garnett, Great Books, 1952)Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov was the third son of a landowner from our district, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, well known in his own day (and still remembered among us) because of his dark and tragic death, which happened exactly thirteen years ago and which I shall speak of in its proper place. (Pevear/Volokhonsky, 1990)

Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert

Nous étions à l'Etude, quand le Proviseur entra suivi d'un "nouveau" habillé en bourgeois et d'un garçon de classe qui portait un grand pupitre.We were in study hall when the headmaster walked in, followed by a new boy not wearing a school uniform, and by a janitor carrying a large desk.We were at prep, when the Head came in, followed by a new boy not in uniform and a school-servant carrying a big desk.We were at prep when the Headmaster came in, followed by a 'new boy' not wearing school uniform, and by a school servant carrying a large desk.We were in class when the head master came in, followed by a "new fellow," not wearing the school uniform, and a school servant carrying a large desk.

Middlemarch

George Eliot

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 waling forth one morning hand-in-hand with her still smaller brother, to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors? (Prelude)Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.

The Magic Mountain

Thomas Mann

Die Geschichte Hans Castorps, die wir erzählen wollen, - nicht um seinetwillen (denn der Leser wird einen einfachen, wenn auch ansprechenden jungen Mann in ihm kennenlernen), sondern um der Geschichte willen, die uns in hohem Grade erzählenswert scheint (wobei zu Hans Castorps Gunsten denn doch erinnert werden sollte, dass es seine Geschichte ist, und dass nicht jedem jede Geschichte passiert): diese Geschichte ist sehr lange her, sie ist sozusagen schon ganz mit historischem Edelrost überzogenund unbedingt in der Zeitform der tiefsten Vergangenheit vorzutragen.

The Tale of Genji

Murasaki Shikibu

In a certain reign (whose can it have been?) someone of no very great rank, among all His Magesty's Consorts and Intimates, enjoyed exceptional favor.

Emma

Jane Austen

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.

Bleak House

Charles Dickens

London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall.

Tom Jones

Henry Fielding

An author ought to consider himself, not as a gentleman who gives a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a public ordinary, at which all persons are welcome for their money.

Great Expectations

Charles Dickens

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.

Crime and Punishment

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge. (Garnett translation)Toward the end of a sultry afternoon early in July a young man came out of his little room in Stolyarny Lane and turned slowly and somewhat irresolutely in the direction of Kamenny Bridge. (Coulson translation)On a very hot evening at the beginning of July a young man left his little room at the top of a house in Carpenter Lane, went out into the street, and, as though unable to make up his mind, walked slowly in the direction of Kokushkin Bridge.At the beginning of July, during an extremely hot spell, towards evening, a young man left the closet he rented from tenants in S____y Lane, walked out to the street, and slowly, as if indecisively, headed for the K______n Bridge. (Pevear and Volokhonsky translation)

Vanity Fair

William Makepeace Thackeray

While the present century was in its teens, and on one sun-shiny morning in June, there drove up to the great iron gate of Miss Pinkerton's academy for young ladies, on Chiswick Mall, a large family coach, with two fat horses in blazing harness, driven by a fat coachman in a three-cornered hat and wig, at the rate of four miles an hour.

Old Goriot

Honoré de Balzac

Madame Vauquer (<i>nee</i> De Conflans) is an elderly person who for the past forty years has kept a lodging house in the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve, in the district that lies between the Latin Quarter and the Faubourg Saint-Marcel.

The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne

A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.

Fathers and Sons

Ivan Turgenev

"Well, Piotr, not in sight yet?" was the question asked on May the 20th, 1859, by a gentleman of a little over forty, in a dusty coat and checked trousers, who came out without his hat on to the low steps of the posting station at S-.

The Trial

Franz Kafka

Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.Jemand mußte Josef K. verleumdet haben, denn ohne daß er etwas Böses getan hätte, wurde er eines Morgens verhaftet.

The Princesse de Cleves

Madame de La Fayette

La magnificence et la galanterie n'ont jamais paru en France avec tant d'éclat que dans les dernières années du règne de Henri second.

The Age of Innocence

Edith Wharton

On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York.

The Awakening

Kate Chopin

A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside, kept repeating over and over: <br>"<i>Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi!</i> That's all right!"

Herzog

Saul Bellow

If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.

Germinal

Émile Zola

Dans la plaine rase, sous la nuit sans étoiles, d’une obscurité et d’une épaisseur d’encre, un homme suivait seul la grande route de Marchiennes à Montsou, dix kilomètres de pavé coupant tout droit, à travers les champs de betteraves.[translation by Havelock Ellis, 1894] Over the open plain, beneath a starless sky as dark and thick as ink, a man walked alone along the highway from Marchiennes to Montsou, a straight paved road ten kilometers in length, intersecting the beetroot-fields.

The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe

Daniel Defoe

Nineteen Eighty-Four

George Orwell

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

The Last of the Mohicans

James Fenimore Cooper

It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America, that the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered before the adverse hosts could meet. A wide and apparently an impervious boundary of forests severed the possessions of the hostile provinces of France and England. The hardy colonist, and the trained European who fought at his side, frequently expended months in struggling against the rapids of the streams, or in effecting the rugged passes of the mountains, in quest of an opportunity to exhibit their courage in a more martial conflict. But, emulating the patience and self-denial of the practiced native warriors, they learned to overcome every difficulty; and it would seem that, in time, there was no recess of the woods so dark, nor any secret place so lovely, that it might claim exemption from the inroads of those who had pledged their blood to satiate their vengeance, or to uphold the cold and selfish policy of the distant monarchs of Europe.

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Late in the afternoon of a chilly day in February, two gentlemen were sitting alone over their wine, in a well-furnished dining-parlor, in the town of P_______, in Kentucky.

Dracula

Bram Stoker

The Hound of the Baskervilles

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

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. I stood upon the hearth-rug and picked up the stick which our visitor had left behind him the night before. It was a fine, thick piece of wood, bulbous-headed, of the sort which is known as a “Penang lawyer.” Just under the head was a broad silver band nearly an inch across. “To James Mortimer, M.R.C.S., from his friends of the C.C.H.,” was engraved upon it, with the date “1884.” It was just such a stick as the old-fashioned family practitioner used to carry—dignified, solid, and reassuring.

Gone with the Wind

Margaret Mitchell

Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm, as the Tarleton twins were.

Sons and Lovers

D. H. Lawrence

"The Bottoms" succeeded to "Hell Row."

I, Claudius

Robert Graves

I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as "Claudius the Idiot", or "That Claudius", or "Claudius the Stammerer", or "Clau-Clau-Claudius" or at best as "Poor Uncle Claudius", am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the "golden predicament" from which I have never since become disentangled.

Animal Farm

George Orwell

Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the popholes.

All the King's Men

Robert Penn Warren

MASON CITY.<br> To get there you follow Highway 58, going northeast out of the city, and it is a good highway and new. Or was new, that day we went up it.</b>

Lord of the Flies

William Golding

The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way toward the lagoon.

Scoop

Evelyn Waugh

While still a young man, John Courteney Boot had, as his publisher proclaimed, 'achieved an assured and enviable position in contemporary letters'.

The Call of the Wild

Jack London

Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego.

Sophie's Choice

William Styron

In those days cheap apartments were almost impossible to find in Manhattan, so I had to move to Brooklyn.

To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee

When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.

The Color Purple

Alice Walker

You better not never tell nobody but God. It'd kill your mammy.

Of Mice and Men

John Steinbeck

A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green.

Charlotte's Web

E. B. White

Where's Papa going with that ax?" said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.

Winnie-the-Pooh

A. A. Milne

Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Ken Kesey

"They're out there. Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them."They're out there.

The Old Man and the Sea

Ernest Hemingway

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.

Schindler's List

Thomas Keneally

In Poland's deepest autumn, a tall young man in an expensive overcoat, double-breasted dinner jacket beneath it and - in the lapel of the dinner jacket - a large ornamental gold-on-black enamel <i>Hakenkreuz</i> (swastika) emerged from a fashionable apartment building in Straszewskiego Street, on the edge of the ancient center of Cracow, and saw his chauffeur waiting with fuming breath by the open door of an enormous and, even in this blackened world, lustrous Adler limousine.

Lady Chatterley's Lover

D. H. Lawrence

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.Náš věk je v podstatě tragický, a tak ho odmítáme tragicky brát.

In Cold Blood

Truman Capote

The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call 'out there'.

Rebecca

Daphne du Maurier

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

The War of the Worlds

H. G. Wells

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

The Wind in the Willows

Kenneth Grahame

The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring- cleaning his little home.

Being and Nothingness

Jean-Paul Sartre

Modern thought has realized considerable progress by reducing the existent to the series of appearances which manifest it.

The Name of the Rose

Umberto Eco

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The Diary of a Young Girl

Anne Frank

On Friday, 12th June, I woke up at six o' clock and no wonder; it was my birthday

Asterix the Gaul

René Goscinny

Life

Georges Perec

<i> Preamble</i> To begin with, the art of jigsaw puzzles seems of little substance.... PART ONE, CHAPTER ONE Yes, it could begin this way, right here, just like that, in a rather slow and ponderous way, in this neutral place that belongs to all and none, where people pass by almost without seeing each other, where the life of the building regualrly and distantly resounds.

Ficciones

Jorge Luis Borges

I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

Well, Sophie dear, as you see, I'm keeping my word and not spending all my time on bonnets and bows, I'll always have some to spare for you!

The Plague

Albert Camus

The unusual events described in this chronicle occurred in 194- at Oran.Les curieux événements qui font le sujet de cette chronique se sont produits en 194., à Oran.Le matin du 16 avril, le docteur Bernard Rieux sortit de son cabinet et buta sur un rat mort, au milieu du palier.

Oscar and Lucinda

Peter Carey

If there was a bishop, my mother would have him to tea.

Atonement

Ian McEwan

The play – for which Briony had designed posters, programs and tickets, constructed the sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on its side, and lined the collection box in red crepe paper – was written by her in a two-day tempest of composition, causing her to miss a breakfast and a lunch.

His Dark Materials

Philip Pullman

Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen. (Northern lights)Will tugged at his mother's hand and said, "Come on, come on..." (The subtle knife)In a valley shaded with rhododendrons, close to the snow line, where a stream milky with melt-water splashed and where doves and linnets flew among the immense pines, lay a cave, half-hidden by the crag above and the stiff heavy leaves that clustered below. (The amber spyglass)

Austerlitz

W.G. Sebald

In the second half of the 1960s I traveled repeatedly from England to Belgium, partly for study purposes, partly for other reasons which were never entirely clear to me, staying sometimes for just one or two days, sometimes for several weeks.

The Time Traveler's Wife

Audrey Niffenegger

<b>PROLOGUE - Clare:</b> It's hard being left behind.<b>FIRST DATE, ONE<BR></b><i>Saturday, October 26, 1991 (Henry is 28, Clare is 20)</i><BR><BR><b>Clare:</b> The library is cool and smells like carpet cleaner, although all I can see is marble.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin

Louis de Bernières

Dr. Iannis had enjoyed a satisfactory day in which none of his patients had died or got any worse.

Anne of Green Gables

L. M. Montgomery

Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies' eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde's Hollow it was a quiet well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde's door without due regard for decency and decorum; it probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.

The Handmaid’s Tale

Margaret Atwood

We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.

A Suitable Boy

Vikram Seth

'You too will marry a boy I choose' said Mrs Rupa Mehra firmly to her younger daughter.

The Lovely Bones

Alice Sebold

My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie.Inside the snow globe on my father's desk, there was a penguin wearing a red-and-white-striped scarf.

Bridget Jones's Diary

Helen Fielding

<b>I WILL NOT</b><br> Drink more than fourteen alcohol units a week.

Oliver Twist

Charles Dickens

Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all events; the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter.

The Secret Garden

Frances Hodgson Burnett

When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle, everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.

Swallows and Amazons

Arthur Ransome

Roger, aged seven, and no longer the youngest of the family, ran in wide zigzags, to and fro, across the steep field that sloped up from the lake to Holly Howe, the farm where they were staying for part of the summer holidays.

Possession

A.S. Byatt

The book was thick and black and covered with dust.

Cloud Atlas

David Mitchell

Beyond the Indian hamlet, upon a forlorn strand, I happened on a trail of recent footprints.

The Remains of the day

Kazuo Ishiguro

It seems increasingly likely that I really will undertake the expedition that has been preoccupying my imagination now for some days.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

To Sherlock Holmes she is always ithe/i woman.

The Wasp Factory

Iain Banks

I had been making the rounds of the Sacrifice Poles the day we heard my brother had escaped.

Watership Down

Richard Adams

The primroses were over.

A Confederacy of Dunces

John Kennedy Toole

A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals indicating two directions at once. Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled with disapproval and potato chip crumbs.Perhaps the best way to introduce this novel-which on my third reading of it astounds me even more than the first-is to tell of my first encounter with it. (Foreword)

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Roald Dahl

These two very old people are the father and mother of Mr Bucket.

The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights

Richard Burton

All Quiet on the Western Front

Erich Maria Remarque

We are at rest five miles behind the front.

Doctor Zhivago

Boris Pasternak

On they went, singing "Rest Eternal," and whenever they stopped, their feet, the horses, and the gusts of wind seemed to carry on their singing.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Milan Kundera

La idea del eterno retorno es misteriosa y con ella Nietzsche dejó perplejo a los demás filósofos...The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify?Die Ewige Wiederkehr ist ein geheimnisvoller Gedanke, und Nietzsche hat damit manchen Philosophen in Verlegenheit gebracht: alles wird sich irgendwann so wiederholen, wie man es schon einmal erlebt hat, und auch diese Wiederholung wird sich unendlich wiederholen!

Nausea

Jean-Paul Sartre

These notebooks were found among the papers of Antoine Roquentin. (<i>"Editors' Note"</i>)The best thing would be to write down events from day to day.

The Moonstone

Wilkie Collins

In the first part of Robinson Crusoe, at page one hundred and twenty-nine, you will find it thus written: 'Now I saw, though too late, The Folly of beginning a Work before we count the Cost, and before we judge rightly of our own Strength to go through with it.'

The Godfather

Mario Puzo

Amerigo Bonasera sat in New York Criminal Court No. 3 and waited for justice; vengeance on the men who had so cruelly hurt his daughter, who had tried to dishonor her.

In Search of Lost Time

Marcel Proust

For a long time, I would go to bed early. [Fr., Longtemps, je me suis couche de bonne heure.]

It

Stephen King

The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years - if it ever did end - began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made out of a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.

A Brief History of Time

Stephen Hawking

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy.

2001: A Space Odyssey

Arthur C. Clarke

The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended. Here on the Equator, in the continent which would one day be known as Africa, the battle for existence had reached a new climax of ferocity, and the victor was not yet in sight.

Jurassic Park

Michael Crichton

The late twentieth century has witnessed a scientific gold rush of astonishing proportions: the headlong and furious haste to commercialize genetic engineering.

High Fidelity

Nick Hornby

My desert-island, all-time, top five most memorable split-ups, in chronological order:<br>1) Alison Ashworth<br>2) Penny Hardwick<br>3) Jackie Allen<br>4) Charlie Nicholson<br>5) Sarah Kendrew.

Commedia

Dante Alighieri

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita/mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,/chè la diritta via era smarrita.Mildway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

The Canterbury Tales

Geoffrey Chaucer

When the sweet showers of April have pierced/<br>The drought of March, and pierced it to the root,/<br>And every vein is bathed in that moisture/<br>Whose quickening force will engender the flower;/<br>And when the west wind too with its sweet breath/<br>Has given life in every wood and field/<br>To tender shoots, and when the stripling sun/<br>Has run his half-course in Aries, the Ram,/<br>And when small birds are making melodies,/<br>That sleep all the night long with open eyes,/<br>(Nature so prompts them, and encourages);/<br>Then people long to go on pilgrimages,/<br>And palmers to take ship for foreign shores,/<br>And distant shrines, famous in different lands;/<br>And most especially, from all the shires/<br>Of England, to Canterbury they come,/<br>The holy blessed martyr there to seek,/<br>Who gave his help to them when they were sick.When in April the sweet showers fall<br>And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all<br>The veins are bathed in liquor of such power<br>As brings about the engendering of the flower,<br>When also Zephyrus with his sweet breath<br>Exhales an air in every grove and heath<br>Upon the tender shoots, and the young sun<br>His half-course in the sign of the <i>Ram</i> has run,<br>And the small fowl are making melody<br>That sleep away the night with open eye<br>(So nature pricks them and their heart engages)<br>Then people long to go on pilgrimages<br>And palmers long to seek the stranger strands<br>Of far-off saints, hallowed in sundry lands,<br>And specially, from every shire's end<br>Of England, down to Canterbury they wend<br>To seek the holy blissful martyr, quick<br>To give his help to them when they were sick.<br><br><b>(translated by Nevill Coghill, 1951)</b>Once upon a time, as old stories tell us, there was a duke named Theseus;  Of Athens he was a lord and governor, And in his time such a conqueror, That greater was there none under the sum.

On the Origin of Species

Charles Darwin

When on board HMS <i>Beagle</i>, as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent.

The Histories

Herodotus

This is the showing forth of the Inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassos so that neither the deeds of men may be forgotten by lapse of time, nor the works great and marvellous, which have been produced some by Hellenes and some by Barbarians, may lose their renown; and especially that the causes may be remembered for which these waged war with one another.

On the Social Contract

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

My purpose is to consider if, in political society, there can be any legitimate and sure principle of government, taking men as they are and laws as they might be.

Das Kapital

Karl Marx

Confessions

Saint Augustine

You are great, O Lord, and greatly to be praised: great is your power and to your wisdom there is no limit.You are great, O Lord, and very worthy of praise; mighty is your power and your wisdom isimmeasurable.'Vast are you, Lord, and vast should be your praise' - 'vast what you do; what you know beyond assaying.'

Leviathan

Thomas Hobbes

Nature (the ary whereby God hath made and governs the world) is by the art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an artificial animal.

History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

Thucydides the Athenian wrote the history of the war fought between Athens and Sparta, beginning the account at the very outbreak of the war, in the belief that it was going to be a great war and more worth writing about than any of those which had taken place in the past.

King Lear

William Shakespeare

I thought the king had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall.

Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury

It was a pleasure to burn.

The House of the Spirits

Isabel Allende

Barrabás came to us by sea, the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy.

The Prince of Tides

Pat Conroy

My wound is geography.

A Wrinkle in Time

Madeleine L'Engle

It was a dark and stormy night.<br> In her attic bedroom Meg Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind.

Half of a Yellow Sun

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Master was a little crazy; he had spent too many years reading books overseas, talked to himself in his office, did not always return greetings, and had too much hair.

Popol Vuh

Anonymous

The Sound and the Fury

William Faulkner

Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting.

Ulysses

James Joyce

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.

Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad

The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.

The Portrait of a Lady

Henry James

Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. There are circumstances in which, whether you partake of the tea or not—some people of course never do,—the situation is in itself delightful. Those that I have in mind in beginning to unfold this simple history offered an admirable setting to an innocent pastime. The implements of the little feast had been disposed upon the lawn of an old English country-house, in what I should call the perfect middle of a splendid summer afternoon. Part of the afternoon had waned, but much of it was left, and what was left was of the finest and rarest quality. Real dusk would not arrive for many hours; but the flood of summer light had begun to ebb, the air had grown mellow, the shadows were long upon the smooth, dense turf. They lengthened slowly, however, and the scene expressed that sense of leisure still to come which is perhaps the chief source of one’s enjoyment of such a scene at such an hour. From five o’clock to eight is on certain occasions a little eternity; but on such an occasion as this the interval could be only an eternity of pleasure. The persons concerned in it were taking their pleasure quietly, and they were not of the sex which is supposed to furnish the regular votaries of the ceremony I have mentioned. The shadows on the perfect lawn were straight and angular; they were the shadows of an old man sitting in a deep wicker-chair near the low table on which the tea had been served, and of two younger men strolling to and fro, in desultory talk, in front of him. The old man had his cup in his hand; it was an unusually large cup, of a different pattern from the rest of the set and painted in brilliant colours. He disposed of its contents with much circumspection, holding it for a long time close to his chin, with his face turned to the house. His companions had either finished their tea or were indifferent to their privilege; they smoked cigarettes as they continued to stroll. One of them, from time to time, as he passed, looked with a certain attention at the elder man, who, unconscious of observation, rested his eyes upon the rich red front of his dwelling. The house that rose beyond the lawn was a structure to repay such consideration and was the most characteristic object in the peculiarly English picture I have attempted to sketch.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde

The studio was filled with the rich odor of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amid the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink flowering thorn.La fragancia de las rosas llenaba el estudio y, al soplar entre los árboles del jardín la suave brisa estival, entraba por la puerta abierta el fuerte olor de las lilas o el perfume más sutil del rosado espino en flor.

Jude the Obscure

Thomas Hardy

The schoolmaster was leaving the village, and everybody seemed sorry.

The Catcher in the Rye

J. D. Salinger

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want the truth."

The Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck

To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth.

Persuasion

Jane Austen

Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch-hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs, changed naturally into pity and contempt.

Midnight's Children

Salman Rushdie

I was born in the city of Bombay . . . once upon a time.

The Chronicles of Narnia

C. S. Lewis

There is a story about something that happened long ago when your grandfather was a child. (From <i>The Magician's Nephew</i>, first in chronological order)Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. (From <i>The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe</i>, first in publication order)