A great sentence is as refreshing as a cool cup of water.
See what I did there? That was a bad sentence riddled with a horrible cliche. That was the opposite of a good sentence. In fact, I’m probably terrible at writing good sentences–that’s why I love reading other people’s good sentences.
Today, join me as we bask in the brilliance of some of the greatest quotes from literature. I wish I could write like this.
Enjoy.
“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her like the sun, even without looking.” –Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
“What are men to rocks and mountains?” —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
“The curves of your lips rewrite history.” —Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” –F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.” —Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
“Neighbours bring food with death and flowers with sickness and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good luck pennies, and our lives.” — Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird
“Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else.” –Joseph Heller, Catch 22
“If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.” – J.K Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.” – Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.” -Jack Kerouac, On the Road
“She had waited all her life for something, and it had killed her when it found her.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Have I ever told you guys how much I love that quote from Gatsby? For my next post about great quotes, I might just type out the entire Gatsby novel here.
What did I miss?
What’s your favorite line from literature?
