Good opening sentence!

The 'enn - eye - gee - gee - ee - are' word

sarabande said:
AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHH ! PC gone mad.
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It is crazy, isn't it? :mad:

(Just for the record it wasn't me who substituted ****** for ******)

Why is it I can google ****** of the Narcissus and see the forbidden word ****** but nanny YBW won't allow the word ****** to be displayed?
 
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Seajet said:
Not my cup of tea I'm afraid; and I'd suggest a much better known opening line is " Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley "...:)
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Not sure - if we discount Shakespeare and the Bible there are very few opening lines to compare.

While I like "Rebecca" there is no way it has the same worldwide exposure as Paradise Lost.

The only other line I can think of that may be as famous is "It is a truth universally acknowledged.."
 
Sybarite said:
They don't write like this anymore:

Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed
In the beginning how the heavens and earth
Rose out of Chaos: or, if Sion hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God, I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th' Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.

Paradise Lost Milton

You have to get to the 6th line before you get to the principal verb.
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Well thanks, Sybarite, I`m going to get a copy on the strength of that quotation.

..."Call Me Ishmael" still has the power to send shivers down my spine as well.


Cheers Jerry.
 
My 2p worth.

"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."

and

"Take my camel, dear", said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass."
 
"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun."
 
"Then, it was as though everything was stripped away: sensation, memory, self, even the notion of existence that underlies reality — all seemed to have vanished utterly, their passing marked only by the realisation that they had disappeared, before that too ceased to have any meaning, and for an indefinite, infinite instant, there was only the awareness of something; something that possessed no mind, no purpose and no thought, except the knowledge that it was."
 
"It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me."
 
FlowerPower said:
"Then, it was as though everything was stripped away: sensation, memory, self, even the notion of existence that underlies reality — all seemed to have vanished utterly, their passing marked only by the realisation that they had disappeared, before that too ceased to have any meaning, and for an indefinite, infinite instant, there was only the awareness of something; something that possessed no mind, no purpose and no thought, except the knowledge that it was."
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Feersum that one...!
 
I have always liked this

O’er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,
Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free,
Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam,
Survey our empire, and behold our home!
-- lord Byron, from The Corsair
 
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