Thread: Great Opening Sentences

TYRANNY, BROADLY DEFINED, is the use of power to dehumanize the individual and delegitimize his nature. Political utopianism is tyranny disguised as a desirable, workable, and even paradisiacal governing ideology. There are, of course, unlimited utopian constructs, for the mind is capable of infinite fantasies. But there are common themes. The fantasies take the form of grand social plans or experiments, the impracticability and impossibility of which, in small ways and large, lead to the individual’s subjugation. Mark Levin- Ameritopia

"Who is John Galt?"

- Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand

Originally Posted by 1OldGI

"When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again." Henry David Thoreau- Walden

PERHAPS the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not YET sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason. Thomas Paine-Common Sense

I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instill is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius. Ralph Waldo Emerson- Self Reliance

In a semester full of Marxist, Left Wing Indoctrination and Post-Modernist, nihilist panther piss, these guys (along with John Locke, Adam Smith, Nietzsche and Mark Levin) literally talked me off the ledge. Without the brief respite of rational thought I would have most certainly turned into a tower sniper. There's probably guys that spent 7 years in the Hanoi Hilton that got less Communist propaganda than I've received this semester. Damn hippies are taking over the world! No worries though, Summer semester is a teaching class and a creative writing-poetry class so the fun stuff is on the way.

Amazing Revalation: I just referred to Nietzsche as a respite in rational thought. Just goes to show how absolutely off the chain the rest of this garbage I've been reading is. Anyway, Freddy is a cool cat and he had a boomin moustache too.
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I like Walden, but it gets a bit boring when he goes on about the accounting stuff...

I think maybe I'm becoming a Socialist or whatever bees are, these days...

There's some excellent stuff here, I'm really glad I posted this. I think I'll have to read The Catcher in the Rye again...

Originally Posted by carlmaloschneider

There's some excellent stuff here, I'm really glad I posted this. I think I'll have to read The Catcher in the Rye again...

Hmm, that book has shown up in to many murder cases for my liking...hehe!

Originally Posted by Lemur

Hmm, that book has shown up in to many murder cases for my liking...hehe!

Yeah, one I think...or maybe two?

I could name TWO books involved with a LOT of other murder cases. I think the titles both start with 'The'. Not against the books, against the people who may have been misrepresenting the books and the messages therein. Sorry for posting that, couldn't resist...

I'm cheating. It's two sentences, but what sentences they are...

When you seem to have finally made up your mind to stay home for the evening, have slipped into your smoking jacket, are sitting at the illuminated table after dinner, and have gotten down to the work or the game which you habitually follow by going to bed, when the weather outside is disagreeable, causing you to stay at home as a matter of course, when you have remained quietly at the table for so long that going out would be bound to provoke general astonishment, when, moreover, the staircase is already dark and the front door is locked, and when you now, despite everything, stand up in a sudden fit of uneasiness, change your jacket, instantly appear dressed for the street, declare that you have to go out, and indeed do so after a brief goodbye, depending on how fast you slam the apartment door, believing you have annoyed someone more or less, when you find yourself on the street, with both limbs that respond so flexibly to this unexpected freedom obtained for them, when you feel that all ability to decide is concentrated in this decision, when you realize with greater significance than usual that you have more strength than you need to easily prompted and endure the speediest change, and when you thus hurry down the long streets--- then for this evening you have fully withdrawn from your family, which fades off into nonexistence, while you yourself, a sharply define black silhouette, slapping the backs of you thigh, rise to your true stature.

And everything is intensified when you drop in on a friend this late in the evening to see how he is getting on.

Franz Kafka, The Sudden Stroll...

The introduction to The Great Short Works of Kafka, translated by Joachim Neugroschel, states:

"...like Kleist, Kafka piles on the prepositional phrases to increase the tension; but in English (as opposed to German or French), a sequence of even two prepositions can sound clumsy - and adverbs tend to be discarded in favor of adjectives. All of which make for syntactical headaches in a literary translation..."

Originally Posted by Matt69

"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold."

- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson.

Sorry Matt - I completely missed your post and didn't mean to steal your opening line! So in an effort to make amends, here is the first line of what is still my favourite novel. Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird"

When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.

It must be thirty years since I first read that book, and I still love it.

I am sorry for straying a bit but given the number if Kafka readers here, I can't resist linking to this:

https://soundcloud.com/alishahnovin/...s-meets-kafkas

Featuring the late, great David Rakoff and Jonathan Goldstein.

I have a friend who's an artist, and he sometimes takes a view which I don't agree with.

Richard Feynman, from The Making of a Scientist