Famous First Lines
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Famous first lines from novels, speeches and poems. One point for the title of the book. One point for the author.
- 1."Call me Ishmael."
- A.
Moby Dick
- B.
Herman Mellville
- 2."These are the times that try men's souls."
- A.
The Crisis
- B.
Thomas Paine
- 3."'Tom!' No Answer. 'Tom!' No Answer"
- A.
He Adventures of Tom Sawyer
- B.
Mark Twain
- 4."The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville nine that day, the score stood four to two with but one inning left to play."
- A.
Casey At the Bat
- B.
Ernest Lawrence Thayer
- 5."In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing."
- A.
A River Runs Through It
- B.
Norman MacLean
- 6."It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."
- A.
Pride and Prejudice
- B.
Jane Austen
- 7."The man in black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed."
- A.
The Gunslinger
- B.
Stephen King
- 8."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 to know the truth."
- A.
The Catcher in the Rye
- B.
J.D. Salinger
- 9."Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense."
- A.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
- B.
J.K. Rowling
- 10."Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."
- A.
The Gettysburg Address
- B.
Abraham Lincoln
- 11."As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."
- A.
The Metamorphosis
- B.
Franz Kafka
- 12."The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the house, all that cold, cold wet day."
- A.
The Cat in the Hat
- B.
Dr. Seuss
- 13."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."
- A.
Lord Jim
- B.
Joseph Conrad
- 14.Listen my children and you shall hear, of the midnight ride of Paul Revere."
- A.
Paul Revere's Ride
- B.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- 15."It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…"
- A.
A Tale of Two Cities
- B.
Charles Dickens
- 16."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."
- A.
The Old Man and the Sea
- B.
Ernest Hemingway
- 17."Two households, both alike in dignity,/In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,/From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,/Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean."
- A.
Romeo and Juliet
- B.
William Shakespeare
- 18."All children, except one, grow up."
- A.
Peter Pan
- B.
J.M. Barrie
- 19."There is no lake at Camp Green Lake."
- A.
Holes
- B.
Louis Sachar
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