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Pale Fire
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure in the windowpane.<i>Pale Fire</i>, a poem in heroic couplets, of nine hundred ninety-nine lines, divided into four cantos, was composed by John Francis Shade (born July 5, 1898, died July 21, 1959) during the last twenty days of his life, at his residence in New Wye, Appalachia, U.S.A.
Lolita
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.
Finnegans Wake
riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
To the Lighthouse
"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
"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."
Underworld
He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful.Parla la tua lingua, l'americano, e c'è una luce nel suo sguardo che è una mezza speranza.
The Great Gatsby
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
The Ambassadors
Strether's first question, when he reached the hotel, was about his friend; yet on his learning that Waymarsh was apparently not to arrive till evening he was not wholly disconcerted.
Women in Love
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.
A Passage to India
Except for the Marabar caves--and they are twenty miles off--the city of Chrandrapore presents nothing extraordinary.
Native Son
Brrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinng! An alarm clock clanged in the dark and silent room.
Dubliners
The Sisters - There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke.An encounter: It was Joe Dillon who introduced the Wild West to us.Araby: North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers' School set the boys free.Eveline: She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue.After the race: The cars came scudding in towards Dublin, running evenly like pellets in the groove of the Naas Road.Two Gallants: The grey warm evening of August had descended upon the city, and a mild warm air, a memory of summer, circulated in the streets.The boarding house: Mrs Mooney was a butcher's daughter.A little cloud: Eight years before he had seen his friend off at the North Wall and wished him God-speed.Counterparts: The bell rang furiously and, when Miss Parker went to the tube, a furious voice called out in a piercing North of Ireland accent: "Send Farrington here!"Clay: The matron had given her leave to go out as soon as the women's tea was over, and Maria looked forward to her evening out.A painful case: Mr James Duffy lived in Chapelizod because he wished to live as far as possible from the city of which he was a citizen and because he found all the other suburbs of Dublin mean, modern, and pretentious.Ivy Day in the committee room: Old Jack raked the cinders together with a piece of cardboard and spread them judiciously over the whitening dome of coals.A mother: Mr Holohan, assistant secretary of the Eire Abu Society, had been walking up and down Dublin for nearly a month, with his hands and pockets full of dirty pieces of paper, arranging about the series of concerts.Grace: Two gentlemen who were in the lavatory at the time tried to lift him up: but he was quite helpless.The dead: Lily, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run off her feet.
The French Lieutenant's Woman
An easterly is the most disagreeable wind in Lyme Bay - Lyme Bay being that largest bite from the underside of England's outstretched south-western leg - and a person of curiosity could at once have deduced several strong possibilities about the pair who began to walk down the quay at Lyme Regis, the small but ancient eponym of the inbite, one incisively sharp and blustery morning in the late March of 1867.
The Naked and the Dead
Nobody could sleep. When morning came, assult craft would be lowered and a first wave of troops would ride through the surf and charge ashore on he beach at Anopopei. All over the ship, all through the convoy, there was a knowledge that in a few hours some of them were going to be dead.
Look Homeward, Angel
A destiny that leads the English to the Dutch is strange enough; but one that leads from Epsom into Pennsylvania, and thence into the hills that shut in Altamont over the proud coral cry of the cock, and the soft stone smile of an angel, is touched by that dark miracle of chance which makes new magic in a dusty world.
War and Peace
"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
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)
Moby-Dick
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.
Madame Bovary
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
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
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.
Emma
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
London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall.
Anna Karenina
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. (C. Garnett, 1946) and (J. Carmichael, 1960)All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.All happy families resemble one another, every unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion. (N. H. Dole, 1886)All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. (Pevear, Volokhonsky, 2000)
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
You don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," but that ain't no matter.You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter.
Tom Jones
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
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.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
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.Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo.(Bulgarian)<br>Много години по-късно, пред взвода за разстрел, полковник Аурелиано Буендия щеше да си спомни онзи далечен подиробед, когато баща му го заведе да види леда.(Croatian)<br>Mnogo će se godina kasnije, pred streljačkim vodom, pukovnik Aureliano Buendía sjetiti tog davnog poslijepodneva kada ga je otac poveo da upozna led.(Czech)<br>O mnoho let později, když stál před popravčí četou, vzpomněl si plukovník Aureliano Buendía na ono vzdálené odpoledne, kdy ho otec vzal k cikánům, aby si prohlél led.(Dutch)<br>Vele jaren later, staande voor het vuurpeloton, moest kolonel Aureliano Buendía denken aan die lang vervlogen middag, toen zijn vader hem meenam om kennis te maken met het ijs.(Finnish)<br>Vuosia myöhemmin, seistessään teloitusryhmän edessä, eversti Aureliano Buendía muisti kaukaisen illan jolloin hänen isänsä vei hänet tutustumaan jäähän.(German)<br>Viele Jahre später sollte der Oberst Aureliano Buendia sich vor dem Erschießungskommando an jenen fernen Nachmittag erinnern, an dem sein Vater ihn mitnahm, um das Eis kennen zu lernen.(Hebrew)<br>שנים רבות לאחר־כך, כשיעמוד הקולונל אַאוּרליאנוֹ בוּאֶנדִיָה מול כיתת־היורים, ייזכר באותו ערב רחוק שלקח אותו אביו לראות קרח.(Hungarian)<br>Hosszú évekkel később, a kivégzőosztag előtt, Aureliano Buendía ezredesnek eszébe jutott az a régi délután, mikor az apja elvitte jégnézőbe.(Italian)<br>Molti anni dopo, di fronte al plotone di esecuzione, il colonnello Aureliano Buendía si sarebbe ricordato di quel remoto pomeriggio in cui suo padre lo aveva condotto a conoscere il ghiaccio.(Macedonian)<br>Многу години подоцна, наспроти стрелачкот вод, полковникот Аурелијано Буендија ќе се присети на тоа далечно попладне кога неговиот татко го одведе да узнае што е тоа мраз.(Norwegian)<br>Mange år senere, foran eksekusjonspelotongen, måtte oberst Aureliano Buendía tenke på den ettermiddagen for så lenge, lenge siden, da faren tok ham med for å vise ham isen.(Polish)<br>Wiele lat później, stojąc naprzeciw plutonu egzekucyjnego, pułkownik Aurelio Buendía miał przypomnieć sobie to dalekie popołudnie, kiedy ojciec zabrał go z sobą do obozu Cyganów, żeby mu pokazać lód.(Portuguese)<br>Muitos anos depois, diante do pelotão de fuzilamento, o Coronel Aureliano Buendía havia de recordar aquela tarde remota em que seu pai o levou para conhecer o gelo.(Romanian)<br>Mulţi ani după aceea, în faţa plutonului de execuţie, colonelul Aureliano Buendía avea să-şi amintească de după-amiaza îndepărtată cînd tatăl său îl dusese să facă cunoştinţă cu gheaţa.(Slovak)<br>O veľa rokov neskôr, zoči-voči popravnej čate, plukovník Aureliano Buendía si spomenul na to dávne popoludnie, keď ho otec vzal so sebou a on po prvý raz videl ľad.(Swedish)<br>Många år senare, inför exekutionsplutonen, skulle överste Aureliano Buendía påminna sig den avlägsna eftermiddag då hans far tog honom med för att visa honom isen.(Vietnamese)<br>Rất nhiều năm sau này, trước đội hành hình đại tá Aurêlianô Buênđýa đã nhớ lại buổi chiều cha chàng đi xem nước đá.
Crime and Punishment
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
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.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
"I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing; - that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind; - and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost: ---Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly, ---I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world from that in which the reader is likely to see me."
Dead Souls
A small, rather smart, well-sprung four-wheeled carriage with a folding top drove through the gates of an inn of the provincial town of N.; it was the sort of carriage bachelors usually drive in: retired lieutenant-colonels, majors, and landowners with about a hundred serfs - in short, all those who are described as gentlemen of the 'middling' station of life.
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining Vale of Blakemore or Blackmoor.
The Tin Drum
Granted: I'm an inmate of a mental institution; my keeper watches me, scarcely lets me out of his sight; for there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can't see through blue-eyed types like me.
Pride and Prejudice
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
The Scarlet Letter
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
"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-.
Nostromo
In the time of Spanish rule, and for many years afterwards, the town of Sulaco—the luxuriant beauty of the orange gardens bears witness to its antiquity—had never been commercially anything more important than a coasting port with a fairly large local trade in ox-hides and indigo. The clumsy deep-sea galleons of the conquerors that, needing a brisk gale to move at all, would lie becalmed, where your modern ship built on clipper lines forges ahead by the mere flapping of her sails, had been barred out of Sulaco by the prevailing calms of its vast gulf. Some harbours of the earth are made difficult of access by the treachery of sunken rocks and the tempests of their shores. Sulaco had found an inviolable sanctuary from the temptations of a trading world in the solemn hush of the deep Golfo Placido as if within an enormous semi-circular and unroofed temple open to the ocean, with its walls of lofty mountains hung with the mourning draperies of cloud.
Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady
I am extremely concerned, my dearest friend, for the disturbances that have happened in your family.
The Trial
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.
Jane Eyre
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question.
The Red Badge of Courage
The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting.
My Ántonia
I first heard of Ántonia on what seemed to me an interminable journey across the great midland plain of North America. I was ten years old then; I had lost both my father and mother within a year, and my Virginia relatives were sending me out to my grandparents, who lived in Nebraska. I traveled in the care of a mountain boy, Jake Marpole, one of the “hands” on my father’s old farm under the Blue Ridge, who was now going West to work for my grandfather. Jake’s experience of the world was not much wider than mine. He had never been in a railway train until the morning when we set out together to try our fortunes in a new world.
Hunger
It was in those days when I wandered about hungry in Kristiania, that strange city which no one leaves before it has set his mark upon him. . .Det var i den tid jeg gikk omkring og sultet i Kristiania, denne forunderlige by som ingen forlater før han har fått merker av den ....
The Pickwick Papers
The first ray of light which illumines the gloom, and converts into a dazzling brilliancy that obscurity in which the earlier history of the public career of the immortal Pickwick would appear to be involved, is derived from the perusal of the following entry in the Transactions of the Pickwick Club, which the editor of these papers feels the highest pleasure in laying before his readers, as a proof of the careful attention, indefatigable assiduity, and nice discrimination, with which his search among the multifarious documents confided to him has been conducted.
Candide
There lived in Westphalia, at the country seat of Baron Thunder-ten-tronckh, a young lad blessed by Nature with the most agreeable manners.In the castle of Baron Thunder-ten-tronckh in Westphalia there lived a youth, endowed by Nature with the most gentle character.
Nineteen Eighty-Four
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
Les Misérables
In the Year 1815 Monseigneur Charles-François-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of Digne.
Frankenstein
You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.The event on which this fiction is founded has been supposed, by Dr. Darwin, and some of the physiological writers of Germany, as not of impossible occurrence. i- preface by P.B. Shelley/i
The Good Soldier Svejk
'And so they've killed our Ferdinand', said the charwoman to Mr Svejk, who had left military service years before, after having been finally certified by an army medical board as an imbecile, and now lived by selling dogs - ugly, mongrel monstrosities whose pedigrees he forged."Nii nad tapsidki meie Ferdinandi," ütles virtin härra Švejkile, kes oli aastate eest vabanenud sõjaväeteenistusest, kui kroonuarstide komisjon ta lõplikult lolliks tunnistas, ja elatas ennast nüüd sellega, et müütas mingeid jõledaid segaverelisi koerapeletisi, võltsides nende sugupuud.
The Three Musketeers
On the first Monday of April 1625, the market town of Meung, the birthplace of the author of the iRoman de la Rose/i, was in a wild state of excitement.
The Hound of the Baskervilles
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
Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm, as the Tarleton twins were.
The Heart is A Lonely Hunter
In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together.
Appointment in Samarra
Our story opens in the mind of Luther L. (L. for LeRoy) Fliegler, who is lying in his bed, not thinking of anything, but just aware of sounds, conscious of his own breathing, and sensitive to his own heartbeats.
The Wings of the Dove
She waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in, but he kept her unconscionably, and there were moments at which she showed herself, in the glass over the mantel, a face postiively pale with the irritation that had brought her to the point of going away without the sight of him.
Tender is the Night
The hotel and its bright, tan prayer rug of a beach were one.On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera, about half way between Marseilles and the Italian border, stands a large, proud, rose-colored hotel. [Sentence one, p. 3, of Scribner edition]
Animal Farm
Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the popholes.
Sister Carrie
When Caroline Meeber boarded the afternoon train for Chicago, her total outfit consisted of a small trunk, a cheap imitation alligator-skin satchel, a small lunch in a paper box, and a yellow leather snap purse, containing her ticket, a scrap of paper with her sister's address in Van Buren Street, and four dollars in money.
All the King's Men
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>
The bridge of San Luis Rey
On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travellers into the gulf below.
Go Tell It on the Mountain
Everyone had always said that John would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his father.
Lord of the Flies
The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way toward the lagoon.
Deliverance
Before: It unrolled slowly, forced to show its colors, curling and snapping back whenever one of us turned loose. The whole land was very tense until we put our four steins on its corners and laid the river out to run for us through the mountains 150 miles north.
The Rainbow
The Brangwens had lived for generations on the Marsh Farm, in the meadows where the Erewash twisted sluggishly through alder trees, separating Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.
Portnoy's Complaint
She was so deeply imbedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seemed to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise.
Light in August
Sitting beside the road, watching the wagon mount the hill toward her, Lena thinks, 'I have come from Alabama: a fur piece.'
The Maltese Falcon
Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth.
Zuleika Dobson
That old bell, presage of a train, had just sounded through Oxford station; and the undergraduates who were waiting there, gay figures in tweed or flannel, moved to the margin of the platform and gazed idly up the line.
Death Comes for the Archbishop
One summer evening in the year 1848, three Cardinals and a missionary Bishop from America were dining together in the gardens of a villa in the Sabine hills, overlooking Rome.
From Here to Eternity
When he finished packing, he walked out on to the third-floor porch of the barracks brushing the dust from his hands, a very neat and deceptively slim young man in the summer khakis that were still early morning fresh.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
The boys, as they talked to the girls from Marcia Blaine School, stood on the far side of their bicycles holding the handlebars, which established a protective fence of bicycle between the sexes, and the impression that at any moment, the boys were likely to be away.
A Room with a View
"The Signora had no business to do it," said Miss Bartlett, "no business at all. She promised us south rooms with a view close together, instead of which here are north rooms, looking into a courtyard, and a long way apart. Oh, Lucy!"<br>
The Adventures of Augie March
I am an American, Chicago born–Chicago, that somber city–and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; and sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent.
Lord Jim
He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull. His voice was deep, loud, and his manner displayed a kind of dogged self-assertion which had nothing aggressive in it. It seemed a necessity, and it was directed apparently as much at himself as at anybody else. He was spotlessly neat, apparelled in immaculate white from shoes to hat, and in the various Eastern ports where he got his living as ship-chandler’s water-clerk he was very popular.
Ragtime
In 1902 Father built a house at the crest of the Broadview Avenue hill in New Rochelle.
The Call of the Wild
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.
The Magus
I was born in 1927, the only child of middle-class parents, both English, and themselves born in the grotesquely elongated shadow, which they never rose sufficiently above history to leave, of that monstrous dwarf, Queen Victoria.
Under the Net
When I saw Finn waiting for me at the corner of the street I knew at once that something had gone wrong. Finn usually waits for me in bed, or leaning up against the side of the door with his eyes closed.
Sophie's Choice
In those days cheap apartments were almost impossible to find in Manhattan, so I had to move to Brooklyn.
To Kill a Mockingbird
When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.
Of Mice and Men
A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green.
Charlotte's Web
Where's Papa going with that ax?" said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.
Song of Solomon
The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance agent promised to fly from Mercy to the other side of Lake Superior at three o'clock.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
"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.
For Whom the Bell Tolls
He lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees.
The Old Man and the Sea
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.
The World According to Garp
Garp's mother, Jenny Fields, was arrested in Boston in 1942 for wounding a man in a movie theater.
Schindler's List
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.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife.
Lady Chatterley's Lover
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
The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call 'out there'.
Franny and Zooey
Though brilliantly sunny, Saturday morning was overcoat weather again, not just topcoat weather, as it had been all week and as everyone had hoped it would stay for the big weekend - the weekend of the Yale game.The facts at hand presumably speak for themselves, but a trifle more vulgarly, I suspect, than facts even usually do.
The Bonfire of the Vanities
"And then say what?" (Prologue)At that very moment, in the very sort of Park Avenue co-op apartment that so obsessed the Mayor ... twelve-foot ceilings ... two wings, one for the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants who own the place and one for the help ... Sherman McCoy was kneeling in his front hall trying to put a leash on a dachshund.
A Separate Peace
I went back to Devon School not long ago, and found it looking oddly newer than when I was a student there fifteen years before.
This Side of Paradise
Amory Blaine inherited from his mother every trait, except the stray inexpressible few, that made him worth while.
The Beautiful and Damned
In 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him.
Rabbit, Run
Boys are playing basketball around a telephone pole with a backboard bolted to it.
Waiting for Godot
Estragon, sitting on a low mound, is trying to take off his boot. He pulls at it with both hands, panting. He gives up, exhausted, rests, tries again. As before. Enter Vladimir ESTRAGON: (giving up again) Nothing to be done.
Being and Nothingness
Modern thought has realized considerable progress by reducing the existent to the series of appearances which manifest it.
The Name of the Rose
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation
How do people get to this clandestine Archipelago?
The Diary of a Young Girl
On Friday, 12th June, I woke up at six o' clock and no wonder; it was my birthday
Four Plays
The Bald Soprano: Anti-play Scene: A middle class English interior, with English armchairs.
Bonjour Tristesse
A strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sadness.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Mrs Ferrars died on the night of the 16th-17th September—a Thursday.
A Room of One's Own
But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction -- what has that got to do with a room of one's own? I will try to explain.
The Big Sleep
It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills.
The Pilgrim's Progress
As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep; and, as I slept, I dreamed a dream.(Introduction to the Penguin edition by Roger Sharrock) -- The Pilgrim's Progress is a book which in the three hundred years of its existence has crossed most of the barriers of race and culture that usually serve to limit the communicative power of a classic.
Gulliver's travels
My father had a small estate in Nottinghamshire; I was the third of five sons.
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
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!
David Copperfield
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. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do; once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversation in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?"
The Plague
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.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
The truth is, if old Major Dover hadn't dropped dead at Taunton races Jim would never have come to Thursgood's at all.
L. A. Confidential
An abandoned auto court in the San Berdoo foothills; Buzz Meeks checked in with ninety-four thousand dollars, eighteen pounds of high-grade heroin, a 10-gauge pump, a .38 special, a .45 automatic and a switchblade he bought off a pachuco at the border -- right before he spotted the car parked across the line: Mickey Cohen goons in an LAPD unmarked, Tijuana cops standing by to bootjack a piece of his goodies, dump his body in the San Ysidro River.
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare's date of birth is not precisely known, but it probably preceded his baptism on April 26, 1564, in Stratfordon-Avon, by only a few days.
Memoirs of a Geisha
One evening in the spring of 1936, when I was a boy of fourteen, my father took me to a dance performance in Kyoto.Suppose that you and I were sitting in a quiet room overlooking a garden, chatting and sipping at our cups of green tea while we talked about something that had happened a long while ago, and I said to you, 'That afternoon when I met so-and-so ... was the very best afternoon of my life, and also the very worst afternoon.'
A Prayer for Owen Meany
I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice - not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God;- I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.
Anne of Green Gables
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.
Far from the Madding Crowd
When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were reduced to chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising sun.
Cold Comfort Farm
The education bestowed upon Flora Poste by her parents had been expensive, athletic and prolonged; and when they died within a few weeks of one another during the annual epidemic of influenza or Spanish Plague which occured in her twentieth year, she was discovered to possess every art and grace save that of earning her own living.
A Suitable Boy
'You too will marry a boy I choose' said Mrs Rupa Mehra firmly to her younger daughter.
A Tale of Two Cities
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other wayin short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
The Secret History
The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation. (Prologue)Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw," that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?
The Lovely Bones
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.
Oliver Twist
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
When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle, everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.
The Bell Jar
It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.
A Christmas Carol
Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
The Remains of the day
It seems increasingly likely that I really will undertake the expedition that has been preoccupying my imagination now for some days.
Hamlet
<B>Act 1, Scene 1</B><BR><I>Enter</I> <B>Barnardo</B> <I>and</I> <B>Francisco</B><I>, two sentinels.</I><BR><BR><B>Barnardo</B><BR>Who's there?
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
These two very old people are the father and mother of Mr Bucket.
Doctor Zhivago
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 Glass Bead Game
It is our intention to preserve in these pages what scant biographical material we have been able to collect concerning Joseph Knecht, or Ludi Magister Josephus III, as he is called in the Archives of the Glass Bead Game.
Disgrace
For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sex rather well.
Treasure Island
Squire Trelawny, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17--, and go back to the time when my father kept the "Admiral Benbow" inn, and the brown old seaman, with the sabre cut, first took up his lodging under our roof.
Black Beauty
The first place that I can well remember, was a large pleasant meadow with a pond of clear water in it.
The Stranger
Mother died today. (Stuart Gilbert translation)Maman died today. (Matthew Ward translation)Aujourd'hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas.
Tales of the City
Mary Ann Singleton was twenty-five years old when she saw San Francisco for the first time.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
I can see by my watch, without taking my hand from the left grip of the cycle, that it is eight-thirty in the morning.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
As usual, at five o'clock that morning reveille was sounded by the blows of a hammer on a length of rail hanging up near the staff quarters.
The Horse Whisperer
There was death at its beginning as there would be death again at its end.
The Odyssey
By now the other warriors, those that had escaped headlong ruin by sea or in battle, were safely home.Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy.
The Canterbury Tales
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
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 Prince
All the states, all the dominions under whose authority men have lived in the past and live now have been and are either republics or principalities.It is customary for those who wish to gain the favour of a prince to endeavour to do so by offering him gifts of those things which they hold most precious, or in which they know him to take especial delight.
Othello
Never tell me; I take it much unkindly That thou, Iago, who hast had my purse As if the strings were thine, shouldst know of this.
The Sonnets
From fairest creatures we desire increase,<br> That thereby beauty's rose might never die,<br>But as the riper should by time decrease,<br>His tender heir might bear his memory:<br>But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,<br>Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,<br>Making a famine where abundance lies,<br>Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
When my mother was pregnant with me, she told me later, a party of hooded Ku Klux Klan riders galloped up to our home in Omaha, Nebraska, one night.
Angela's Ashes
My father and mother should have stayed in New York where they met and married and where I was born.
The Shipping News
Here is an account of a few years in the life of Quoyle, born in Brooklyn and raised in a shuffle of dreary upstate towns.
Snow Falling on Cedars
The accused man, Kabuo Miyamoto, sat proudly upright with a rigid grace, his palms placed softly on the defendant's table - the posture of a man who has detached himself insofar as this is possible at his own trial.
The House of the Spirits
Barrabás came to us by sea, the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy.
A Thousand Acres
At sixty miles per hour, you could pass our farm in a minute, on County Road 686, which ran due north into the T intersection at Cabot Street Road.
The Joy Luck Club
The old woman remembered a swan she had bought many years ago in Shanghai for a foolish sum.
War and Remembrance
A liberty boat full of sleep hung-over sailors came clanging alongside the U.S.S. Northhampton, and a stocky captain in dress whites jumped out to the accommodation ladder.
Centennial
Only another writer, someone who had worked his heart out on a good book which sold three thousand copies, could appreciate the thrill that overcame me one April morning in 1973 when Dean Rivers of our small college in Georgia appeared at my classroom door.
Breakfast of Champions
This is the tale of a meeting of two lonely, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
In later years, holding forth to an interviewer or to an audience of aging fans at a comic book convention, Sam Clay liked to declare, apropos of his and Joe Kavalier's greatest creation, that back when he was a boy, sealed and hog-tied inside the airtight vessel known as Brooklyn, New York, he had been haunted by dreams of Harry Houdini.
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
This is a story about love and death in the golden land, and begins with the country.
Cannery Row
Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.
The Sound and the Fury
Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting.
Nine Stories
There were ninety-seven New York advertising men in the hotel, and, the way they were monopolizing the long-distance lines, the girl in 507 had to wait from noon till almost two-thirty to get her call through.
Sometimes a Great Notion
Along the wester slopes of the Oregon Coastal Range ... come look: the hysterical crashing of tributaries as they merge into the Wakonda Auga River ...
Don Quixote
Idle reader, you can believe without any oath of mine that I would wish this book, as the child of my brain, to be the most beautiful, the liveliest and the cleverest imaginable.Prologue: Idle reader: I don't have to swear any oaths to persuade you that I should like this book, since it is the son of my brain, to be the most beautiful and elegant and intelligent book imaginable.Chapter 1: In a village in La Mancha, the name of which I cannot quite recall, there lived not long ago one of those country gentlemen or hidalgos who keep a lance in a rack, an ancient leather shield, a scrawny hack and a greyhound for coursing.
Ulysses
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
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.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo....
Beloved
124 was spiteful. Full of baby's venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children.
The Portrait of a Lady
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.
Absalom, Absalom!
From a little after two o'clock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it that---
Little Women
“Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
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.
The Catcher in the Rye
"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
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
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.
Love in The Time of Cholera
It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.
A Farewell to Arms
In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.
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