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#inanutshell
Sentences first and last
#65
Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Brothers Karamazov
Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a land owner 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. Kolya cried once more rapturously, and once more the boys took up his exclamation: “Hurrah for Karamazov!”
Henry James
Washington Square
#64
During a portion of the first half of the present century, and more particularly during the latter part of it, there flourished and practised in the city of New York a physician who enjoyed perhaps an exceptional share of the consideration which, in the United States, has always been bestowed upon distinguished members of the medical profession. Catherine, meanwhile, in the parlour, picking up her morsel of fancy work, had seated herself with it again – for life, as it were.
#63
Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina
All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Levin listened to the monotonous drip from the lime trees in the garden, and looked at the triangle of stars he knew so well.
Thomas Hardy
Far From the Madding Crowd
#62
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. Then Oak laughed, and Bathsheba smiled (for she never laughed readily now), and their friends turned to go.
#61
Jules Verne
Around the World in 80 Days
Mr. Phileas Fogg lived, in 1872, at No. 7, Saville Row, Burlington Gardens, the house in which Sheridan died in 1814. Mr. Fogg quietly shut the door.
Samuel Butler
Erewhon
#60
If the reader will excuse me, I will say nothing of my antecedents, nor of the circumstances which led me to leave my native country; the narrative would be tedious to him and painful to myself. A cry for help – loud and clear and shrill – broke forth from both of us at once; and in another five minutes we were carried by kind and tender hands on to the deck of an Italian vessel.
#59
George Eliot
Middlemarch
Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress. “Fred and Mary! are you ever coming in? – or may I eat your cake?”
#58
Jules Verne
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
The year 1866 was signalised by a remarkable incident, a mysterious and puzzling phenomenon, which doubtless no one has yet forgotten. “That which is far off and exceeding deep, who can find it out?" Two men alone of all now living have the right to give an answer – CAPTAIN NEMO AND MYSELF.
#57
The Idiot
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Towards the end of November, during a thaw, at nine o’clock one morning, a train on the Warsaw and Petersburg railway was approaching the latter city at full speed. So spoke the good lady, almost angrily, as she took leave of Evgenie Pavlovitch.
War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy
#56
“Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes.” “You love him?” “Yes,” whispered Natasha.
#55
Wilkie Collins
The Moonstone
I address these lines – written in India – to my relatives in England. So the years pass, and repeat each other; so the same events revolve in the cycles of time. What will be the next adventures of the Moonstone? Who can tell?
Louisa May Alcott
Little Women
#54
“Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug. March could only stretch out her arms, as if to gather children and grandchildren to herself, and say, with face and voice full of motherly love, gratitude, and humility... “Oh, my girls, however long you may live, I never can wish you a greater happiness than this!”
#53
Thérèse Raquin
Émile Zola
At the end of the Rue Guénégaud, coming from the quays, you find the Arcade of the Pont Neuf, a sort of narrow, dark corridor running from the Rue Mazarine to the Rue de Seine. And for nearly twelve hours, in fact until the following day at about noon, Madame Raquin, rigid and mute, contemplated the corpses at her feet, overwhelming them with her heavy gaze, and unable to sufficiently gorge her eyes with the hideous sight.
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#52
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. That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is ended.
#51
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll
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 conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice “without pictures or
conversation?” “Wake up, Alice dear!” said her sister; “Why, what a long sleep you’ve had!”
Vanity Fair
William Makepeace Thackeray
#50
While the present century was in its teens, and on one sunshiny 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. Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied? – come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.
#49
Fathers and Sons
Ivan Turgenev
“Well, Pyotr, still not in sight?” was the question asked on 20th May, 1859, by a gentleman of about forty, wearing a dusty overcoat and checked trousers, who came out hatless into the low porch of the posting station at X. Oh, no! However passionate, sinful or rebellious the heart hidden in the tomb, the flowers growing over it peep at us serenely with their innocent eyes; they tell us not only of eternal peace, of that great peace of “indifferent” nature; they tell us also of eternal reconciliation and of life without end.
Les Misérables
Victor Hugo
#48
In 1815, Monseigneur Charles-Francois-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D – . He lay back with his head turned to the sky, and the light from the two candles fell upon his face.
#47
The Mill on the Floss
George Eliot
A wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace. The boat reappeared, but brother and sister had gone down in an embrace never to be parted; living through again in one supreme moment the days when they had clasped their little hands in love, and roamed the daisied fields together.
The Woman in White
Wilkie Collins
#46
This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve. The long, happy labour of many months is over. Marian was the good angel of our lives – let Marian end our Story.
#45
On the Origin of Species
Charles Darwin
When on board H.M.S. Beagle, 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. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows.
Madame Bovary
Gustave Flaubert
#44
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. He has just received the cross of the Legion of Honour.
#43
The Warden
Anthony Trollope
The Rev Septimus Harding was, a few years since, a beneficed clergyman residing in the cathedral town of – ; let us call it Barchester. And so the old man went out, and then Mr Harding gave way to his grief and he too wept aloud.
Westward Ho!
Charles Kingsley
#42
All who have travelled through the delicious scenery of North Devon must needs know the little white town of Bideford, which slopes upwards from its broad tide-river paved with yellow sands, and many-arched old bridge where salmon wait for autumn floods, toward the pleasant upland on the west. From that hour Ayacanora's power of song returned to her; and day by day, year after year, her voice rose up within that happy home, and soared, as on a skylark's wings, into the highest heaven, bearing with it the peaceful thoughts of the blind giant back to the Paradises of the West, in the wake of the heroes who from that time forth sailed out to colonise another and a vaster England, to the heaven-prospered cry of Westward-Ho!
#41
Cranford
Elizabeth Gaskell
In the first place, Cranford is in possession of the Amazons; all the holders of houses above a certain rent are women. We all love Miss Matty, and I somehow think we are all of us better when she is near us.
Bleak House
Charles Dickens
#40
London. I know that my dearest little pets are very pretty, and that my darling is very beautiful, and that my husband is very handsome, and that my guardian has the brightest and most benevolent face that ever was seen, and that they can very well do without much beauty in me – even supposing – .
#39
The Stones of Venice
John Ruskin
Since the first dominion of men was asserted over the ocean, three thrones, of mark beyond all others, have been set upon its sands: the thrones of Tyre, Venice, and England. By the inner burning of her own passions, as fatal as the fiery reign of Gomorrah, Venice was consumed from her place among the nations; and her ashes are choking the channels of the dead salt sea.
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe
#38
Late in the afternoon of a chilly day in February, two gentlemen were sitting alone over their wine, in a well-furnished dining parlor, in the town of P—, in Kentucky. Not by combining together, to protect injustice and cruelty, and making a common capital of sin, is this Union to be saved, — but by repentance, justice and mercy; for, not surer is the eternal law by which the millstone sinks in the ocean, than that stronger law, by which injustice and cruelty shall bring on nations the wrath of Almighty God!
#37
Moby Dick
Herman Melville
Call me Ishmael. Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.
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The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne
#36
A throng of bearded men, in sad-coloured garments and grey steeple-crowned hats, inter-mixed 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. It bore a device, a herald’s wording of which may serve for a motto and brief description of our now concluded legend; so sombre is it, and relieved only by one ever-glowing point of light gloomier than the shadow: — “ON A FIELD, SABLE, THE LETTER A, GULES”
#35
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. O Agnes, O my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life indeed; so may I, when realities are melting from me, like the shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee near me, pointing upward!
Wuthering Heights
#34
I have just returned from a visit to my landlord - the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. I lingered round… under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, 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.
#33
Jane Eyre
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. Daily He announces more distinctly, “Surely I come quickly!” and hourly I more eagerly respond, “Amen; even so, come, Lord Jesus!”
The Three Musketeers
#32
On the first Monday of the month of April, 1625, the market town of Meung, in which the author of ROMANCE OF THE ROSE was born, appeared to be in as perfect a state of revolution as if the Huguenots had just made a second La Rochelle of it. M. Bonacieux, having left his house at seven o’clock in the evening to go to the Louvre, never appeared again in the Rue des Fossoyeurs.
#31
Dead Souls
To the door of an inn in the provincial town of N. there drew up a smart britchka – a light spring-carriage of the sort affected by bachelors, retired lieutenant-colonels, staff-captains, land-owners possessed of about a hundred souls, and, in short, all persons who rank as gentlemen of the intermediate category. I invite those men to remember the duty which confronts us, whatsoever our respective stations; I invite them to observe more closely their duty, and to keep more constantly in mind their obligations of holding true to their country, in that before us the future looms dark.
The Pickwick Papers
#30
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. Every year he repairs to a large family merry-making at Mr. Wardle's; on this, as on all other occasions, he is invariably attended by the faithful Sam, between whom and his master there exists a steady and reciprocal attachment which nothing but death will terminate.
#29
Old Goriot
Mme. Vauquer is an elderly person, who for the past forty years has kept a lodging-house in the Rue Nueve-Sainte-Genevieve, in the district that lies between the Latin Quarter and the Faubourg Saint-Marcel. And by way of throwing down the glove to Society, Rastignac went to dine with Mme. de Nucingen.
The Red and the Black
#28
The little town of Verrières might be one of the prettiest in all Franche-Comté. Madame de Rênal was faithful to her promise. She did not try in any way to shorten her life, but three days after Julien, she died while hugging her children.
#27
The Last of the Mohicans
It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America, that the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered before the adverse hosts could meet. In the morning I saw the sons of Unamis happy and strong; and yet, before the night has come, have I lived to see the last warrior of the wise race of the Mohicans.
Frankenstein
#26
You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. He sprang from the cabin-window as he said this, upon the ice raft which lay close to the vessel. He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.
#25
Rip Van Winkle
Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the Kaatskill mountains. Even to this day they never hear a thunder-storm of a summer afternoon about the Kaatskill, but they say Hendrick Hudson and his crew are at their game of ninepins; and it is a common wish of all hen-pecked husbands in the neighbourhood, when life hangs heavy on their hands, that they might have a quieting draught out of Rip Van Winkle’s flagon.
Nightmare Abbey
#24
Nightmare Abbey, a venerable family-mansion, in a highly picturesque state of semi-dilapidation, pleasantly situated on a strip of dry land between the sea and the fens, at the verge of the county of Lincoln, had the honour to be the seat of Christopher Glowry, Esquire. Raven appeared. Scythrop looked at him very fiercely two or three minutes; and Raven, still remembering the pistol, stood quaking in mute apprehension, till Scythrop, pointing significantly towards the dining-room, said, “Bring some Madeira.”
#23
Waverley
It is, then, sixty years since Edward Waverley, the hero of the following pages, took leave of his family, to join the regiment of dragoons in which he had lately obtained a commission. It only remains for me to say, that as no wish was ever uttered with more affectionate sincerity, there are few which, allowing for the necessary mutability of human events, have been, upon the whole, more happily fulfilled.
Pride And Prejudice
#22
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. Darcy, as well as Elizabeth, really loved them; and they were both ever sensible of the warmest gratitude towards the persons who, by bringing her into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them.
#21
Justine
O thou my friend! May you be convinced, with her, that true happiness is to be found nowhere but in Virtue's womb, and that if, in keeping with designs it is not for us to fathom, God permits that it be persecuted on Earth, it is so that Virtue may be compensated by Heaven's most dazzling rewards.
The Sorrows of Young Werther
#20
How happy I am that I am gone! The body was carried by labourers. No priest attended.
#19
Tristram Shandy
Laurence Sterne
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. Lord, said my mother, what is this story about? A COCK and a BULL, said Yorick - and one of the best of its kind I ever heard.
Candide
Voltaire
#18
In the country of Westphalia, in the castle of the most noble Baron of Thunder–ten–tronckh, lived a youth whom Nature had endowed with a most sweet disposition. “Excellently observed,” replied Candide, “but let us cultivate our garden.”
#17
Tom Jones
Henry Fielding
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. And such is their condescension, their indulgence, and their beneficence to those below them, that there is not a neighbour, a tenant, or a servant, who doth not most gratefully bless the day when Mr Jones was married to his Sophia.
Roderick Random
Tobias Smollett
#16
I was born in the northern part of this United Kingdom, in the house of my grandfather, a gentleman of considerable fortune and influence, who had on many occasions signalised himself in behalf of his country; and was remarkable for his abilities in the law, which he exercised with great success in the station of a judge, particularly against beggars, for whom he had a singular aversion. If there be such a thing as true happiness on earth, I enjoy it.
#15
A Treatise of Human Nature
David Hume
All the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds, which I shall call Impressions and Ideas. And thus the most abstract speculations concerning human nature, however cold and unentertaining, become subservient to practical morality; and may render this latter science more correct in its precepts, and more persuasive in its exhortations.
Gulliver's Travels
Jonathan Swift
#14
My father had a small estate in Nottinghamshire. Thus, gentle reader, I have given thee a faithful history.
#13
Robinson Crusoe
Daniel Defoe
I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York. I may perhaps give a farther acount of hereafter.
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
John Locke
#12
It is the UNDERSTANDING that sets man above the rest of sensible beings. Still, he may be ignorant of either or all of these truths – certain and clear as they are – if he doesn’t take the trouble to employ his faculties, as he should, to inform himself about them.
#11
The Pilgrim's Progress
John Bunyan
As I slept, I dreamed a dream. Meantime, I bid my reader FAREWELL.
Don Quixote
Miguel de Cervantes
#10
In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind, there lived not long since one of those old-fashioned gentlemen who are never without a lance upon a rack, an old target, a lean horse, and a greyhound for
coursing. The notary was there at the time, and he said that in no book of chivalry had he ever read of any knight-errant dying in his bed so calmly and so like a Christian as Don Quixote, who amid the tears and lamentations of all present yielded up his spirit, that is to say died.
#9
Hamlet
William Shakespeare
Barnardo: Who's there?
Fortinbras: Go, bid the soldiers shoot.
Gargantua and Pantagruel
Francois Rabelais
#8
Most noble boozers, and you my very esteemed and poxy friends. At last we found our ships in the harbour.
#7
Confessions
St Augustine
Grant me, Lord, to know and understand. Only then will the door be opened to us.
On the Art of Poetry
Aristotle
#6
Some artists, whether by theoretical knowledge or by long practice, can represent things by imitating their shapes and colours, and others do so by the use of the voice. This is all I have to say.
#5
The Republic
Plato
I went down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon, son of Ariston. So we shall be at peace with the gods and with ourselves, both in our life here and when, like the victors in the games collecting their prizes, we receive our reward; and both in this life and the thousand year journey I have described, all will be well with us.
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The Decameron
Giovanni Boccaccio
#4
Whenever, fairest ladies, I pause to consider how compassionate you are by nature, I invariably become aware that the present work will seem to you to possess an irksome and ponderous opening. Having taken their leave of the seven young ladies in Santa Maria Novella, whence they had all set out together, the three young men went off in search of other diversions; and in due course the ladies returned to their homes.
#3
The Fables
Aesop
A Lion was awakened from sleep by a mouse running over his face. One of them said, "The Sun, even now when he is single, parches up the marsh, and compels us to die miserably in our arid homes; what will be our future condition if he should beget other suns?"
The Bible
Various
#2
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen
#1
The Illiad
Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring
Of woes unnumber'd, heavenly goddess sing!
Such honours Ilion to her hero paid,
And peaceful slept the mighty Hector's shade.