Fave one liner from a book?

I can't believe no one's put this yet:

'for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.'

Middlemarch - last paragraph.

"There they are, like flies held in the amber of that moment, click goes the camera and on goes life, the minutes, the days, the years, the decades, taking them further and further from the happiness and promise of youth..."
The Pursuit of Love, Nancy Mitford. Just perfection.

From the play A Man for All Seasons: Sir Thomas More's response to son-in-law Roper, who has just said he would cut down all the laws in England to get to the devil:

"This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast? man's laws, not God's? and if you cut them down?and you're just the man to do it?do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?"

Oooh I love this thread

I like the lines from The Christmas Carol:

"Mankind is your business"- said by Marley to Scrooge, when Scrooge praises Marley's dishonest business practices.

And: " Every fool who goes about with a merry christmas on his lips should be buried with a stake of holly through his heart,he should!" Scrooge again.

Also the part when the Spirit shows Scrooge the phantom children named Ignorance and Want. ooh powerful and spooky stuff.And also quite relevant for today, did I mention that at all?

"We be of one blood, ye and I" -jungle book

?Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.? -Mark Twain, I think in one of his lectures...

Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

I can't remember which one but a line from a Jackie Collins book was

"I apologise, sometimes I say things I should only think".

I would second all the Austen, and all the Pratchett, and all the Adams, and, especially, the scene where Harriet falls in love with Peter in Gaudy Night, not a one liner, but devastatingly effective.

I adore the simplicity of "I, Frodo son of Drogo will take the ring, though I do not know the way".

And although it is in no way a one-liner, I was always cracked up by
.
"We shall build an even stronger house," they said, because they were very determined. Just then they saw a lorry coming along the road carrying barbed wire, iron bars, armour plates and heavy metal padlocks.
"Please, will you give us some of your barbed wire, a few iron bars and armour plates, and some heavy metal padlocks?" they said to the rhinoceros who was driving the lorry.
"Sure," said the rhinoceros, and gave them plenty of barbed wire, iron bars, armour plates and heavy metal padlocks. He also gave them some plexiglass and some reinforced steel chains because he was a generous and kind-hearted rhinoceros. "

From The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig by Eugene Trivizas.

Merguez, love it.

Well I never!

There are two versions Balloonslayer

John Donne's www.artofeurope.com/donne/don3.htm

And Marlowe's: www.bartleby.com/106/5.html

John Donne did a piss take. The original was Marlow.

On the theme of Donne I've always liked his one line letter to his wife after he lost his job - "John Donne, Anne Donne, undone"

from a book :

"they were afraid of nothing, together they could face Satan and all his Demons" wuthering heights

Yes yes yes to all the Harriet Vane/Peter Wimsey ones. Can I add 'Placetne, Magistra? Placet.' - love that line.

Also 'Do not weep, little dog. At the resurrection, thou too shall have a golden tail' - which I got from Pandora by Jilly Cooper but is from somewhere else.

Um Merguez, isn't that John Donne?

I luvz John Donne, me.

Not a one liner but a two-liner from David Nobbs' The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. I can never get over how he can make you want to cry with one sentence, in what is a very funny novel.

He is writing about old ladies alone on a hospital ward.

"They had retired to Sussex, to bungalows by the sea. Now their husbands had died, they knew nobody, their bungalows were two miles from the sea, their sons were in New Zealand, they couldn't manage the hill up from the shops, they were ill."

Also, rather more contemporary:

Philip Larkin:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

As for poems ...

"Come live with me and be my love. And we will all the pleasures prove"

Christopher Marlowe. We had it as a reading at our wedding

I love that poem, Groupie.

Tumbletumble :) It's one of my all time favourites - the other being A Town Like Alice .

My favourites are mostly poems. "Better by far that you should forget and smile/ Than you should remember and be sad." From 'Remember' by Christina Rossetti.

We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

Prospero, The Tempest

"My dear, you have delighted us long enough"

Jane Austen, maybe P&P? Not sure.

Say it to the dc all the time.

""Why me?" was his constant refrain, and the question was a good one."

The doctor in Catch 22

I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.
Wuthering Heights

hackmum what incredible sense you speak!