Fave one liner from a book?

[judgejudyandexecutioner]

"It's lipless mouth quivered and slathered"
War of the Worlds - H G Wells

I love Pride and Prejudice can't decide who I like more Mr Bennett or Darcy
"An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do." (Mr Bennet, Ch. 20)

"In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you."(Mr Darcy)

So many to choose from! Haven't read the whole thread so apologies if someone has beaten me to it but .....

"If we had a keen vision and feel of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar that lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity."

Middlemarch - George Eliot

For whoever it was said "Started Early, Took My Dog" was a title - it comes from a poem by Emily Dickinson:

I started Early ? Took my Dog ?
And visited the Sea ?
The Mermaids in the Basement
Came out to look at me ?

etc

?And the English army, wheeling, started south at a gallop over the hill pass into Ettrick, followed by twenty men and eight hundred sheep in steel helmets.?
― Dorothy Dunnett, The Disorderly Knights

"crikey" Mr Knightley ejaculated into Emma's ear.

Or something similar. Had us all in stitches during English 'O' level, and still makes me titter today !

Crikey?

I think you may mean this: "Ah!" said Mr Woodhouse, shaking his head and fixing his eyes on her with tender concern. -The ejaculation in Emma's ear expressed, "Ah! there is no end of the sad consequences of your going to South End. It does not bear talking of".

"The year began with lunch"

Peter Mayle - a Year in Provence

"Squirrel!"

Long Dark Teatime of the Soul is the title of a Dirk Gently book, but the original (brilliant) passage is about Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged in Life, the Universe and Everything.

"I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers, for the sleepers in that quiet earth."

-Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.

And agree with Mrscog the final lines of George Elliot's Middlemarch.

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: 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.

'Diana said nothing: she had a considerable experience and she knew that if men were to be at all tolerable they must be fed.'

Patrick O'Brian - The Fortune of War

"the doctor looked even crosser when Angel just swept Bibi up in his arms and walked out of the hospital, banging on the door of the Impotency Support Group as he went and yelling 'keep eet up, two, three, four'." Polo, Jilly Cooper

"What a pity Bilbo did not stab that foul creature when he had the chance!"
"Pity? It was pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy, not to strike without need. Many that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then be not too hasty to deal out death to the living. Even the Wise cannot see all ends." Gandalf, LOTR.

"It wasn't a boy that won the Avery scholarship. It was a girl. My girl, that I'm proud of." Matthew in Anne of Green Gables

I love Arundhati Roy's 'God of small things', so many distinctive lines, but here's a couple:

"They all crossed into forbidden territory. They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved, and how. And how much."

"Thirty-one. Not old. Not young. But a viable die-able age."

I love 'God of small things too', Beehatch. I think she writes beautifully.

Also loads from Life of Pi, but particularly,

'This Son, on the other hand, who goes hungry, who suffers from thirst, who gets tired, who is sad, who is anxious, who is heckled and harassed, who has to put up with followers who don't get it and opponents who don't respect Him - what kind of a god is that? It's a god on too human a scale, that's what.'

and

'If there's only one nation in the sky, shouldn't all passports be valid for it?'

"My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression"

Philip K Dick, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep

Following on from the ejaculation in Emma's ear:

"The girls had reached the age when they began to long for balls."

I'm sure that's in Pride & Prejudice somewhere.

Not quite finished the thread but I love this from Flaubert

Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity

I should say Austen has Fanny ejaculating at one point.

"I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths
fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth."

Last bit in Wuthering Heights

Another beautiful line from Beloved,

"She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind."

"'And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms my beamish boy!
Oh frabjou day, callooh callay!'
He chortled in his joy"

Not wishing to derail, but I started a thread about lyrics yesterday...so far, no posts on it though

Link it, mrsC!

Just done my song lyrics

Love this thread! Too many to choose from, but two that spring instantly to mind :

"Reality. So banal, so foolish, so incoherent - such a baffling and disappointing nuisance. Not like being in that study in Connecticut, where the only thing thats real is you" Operation Shylock by Phillip Roth

"I don't know. And there is nothing to guide us. And if everything is so nebulous about a matter so elementary as the morals of sex, what is there to guide us in the more subtle morality of all other personal contacts, associations, and activities? Or are we meant to act on impulse alone? It is all a darkness." The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford