Fave one liner from a book?

[judgejudyandexecutioner]

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

Merguez, love it.

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.

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".

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

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

"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...

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?

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?"

"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.

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.

"Ordinary life goes on - that has saved many a man's reason."

Graham Greene 'The Quiet American'

Only halfway through reading this thread but absolutely to any of those mentioned by Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett (two of my favourite authors). I crashed in halfway through to offer this, from a play...

ALGERNON: Did you hear what I was playing, Lane?
LANE: I didn't think it polite to listen, sir.

"Some thoughts have glue on them", from Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, by Peter Hoeg.

I LOVE that line!

?I?m not saying she was very silly, but one of us was very silly and it wasn?t me.? (Elizabeth Gaskell - Wives and Daughters)

"All happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way". Anna Karenina.

Not a book but tis Hardy's " blithely breakfasting[...] ...down their carved names the rain drop ploughs"

"The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there". The Go Between, LP Hartley.

I wait. I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born.

The Handmaid's tale... Not quite one line though, but I love it.

"When we are born we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools" - Mr S, King Lear.

"Cotton was the fabric of virtue, I wore silk"

One amongst many from The Woman in White

Oh my Goodness, Mergues - I never realised. Sorry!

And I prefer Marlowes' one . . .

guggenheim thank you for your Scrooge quotes. I was watching Dr Who the other week and someone said to the monster "What do you want with me?" and it replied "Much!" - I said to DH, now that's taken from something, and I couldn't remember what; now I remember it was Marley's Ghhost. Thank you.

Lolita. Light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-li-ta.

Perfect synopsis of moral dilemma, internal strife, human (hetero)sexuality, humility and arrogance, the differences between men and women, ecstasy and humiliation.... I often hear myself saying these words out loud when I'm thinking about stuff, people must think I'm crazy.

"But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest a little boy and his Bear will always be playing."

The last line of the Winnie-the-Pooh stories. Makes me howl, every time (including this one).