Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackery

Chapter 1

Chiswick Mall

"When the present century was in its teens, and on one sun-shiny morning in

June,there drove up the great 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. A black servant, who reposed onthe box beside the

fat coachman, uncurled his bandy legs as soon as the equipage drew up

opposite Miss Pinkerton's shining brass plate, and as he pulled the bell,

at least a score of young heads were seen peering out of the narrow windows

of the stately old brick house. Nay, the acute observer might have recognized

the little red nose of good-natured Miss Jemima Pinkerton herself, rising over

some geranium-pots in the window of that lady's own drawing-room."

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Chapter 1

The Prison-Door

"A throng of bearded men, in sad-coloured garments and gray, steeple-crowned

hats, intermixed 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.

The founders of the new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness

they might originally project, have invariably recognised it among their earliest

practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and

another portion as the site of a prison. In accordance with this rule, it may

safely be assumed that the forefathers of Boston had built the first prison-house,

somewhere in the vicinity of Cornhill, almost as seasonably as they marked out

the first burial-ground, on Isaac Johnson's lot, and round about his grave, which

subsequently became the nucleus of all the congregated sepulchres in the old

churchyard of King's Chapel."

Hard Times by Charles Dickens

BOOK THE FIRST - SOWING

Chapter 1

The One Thing Needful

"Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but facts.

Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.

You can onlyform the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else

will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up

my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children.

Stick to Facts, sir!"

Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence

Chapter 1

"Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The

cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build

up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work:

there is now no smooth road into the future:but we go round, and

scramble over the obstacles. We've got to live, no matter how many
skies have fallen.

This was more or less Constance Chatterley's position. The war had

brought the roof down over her head. And she had realized that one

must live and learn."

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

PART ONE

Chapter 1

"We were in class when the headmaster came in, followed by a 'new fellow',

not wearing the school uniform, and a school servant carrying a large desk.

Those who had been asleep woke up, and everyone rose as if just surprised

at his work.

The headmaster made a sign to us to sit down. Then, turning to the class

master, he said to him in a low voice: 'Monsieur Roger, here is a pupil

whom I recommend to your care; he'll be in the second. If his work and

conduct are satisfactory, he will go into one of the upper classes, as

becomes his age.' "

The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Sallinger

Chapter 1

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want

to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and

how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that

David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you

want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in

the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece

if I told anything pretty personal about them. They're quite touchy

about anything like that, especially my father. They're nice and all -

I'm not saying that - but they're also touchy as hell. Besides, I'm not

going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything. I'll

just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around

last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come

out here and take it easy. I mean that's all I told D.B. about, and

he's my brother and all. He's in Hollywood. That isn't too far from

this crumby place, and he comes over and visits me practically every

week end. He's going to drive me home when I go home next month

maybe. He's just got a Jaguar. One of those little English jobs that

can do around two hundred miles an hour. It cost him damn near

four thousand bucks. He's got a lot of dough, now. He didn't use

to. He used to be just a regular writer, when he was home. He

wrote this terrific book of short stories, The Secret Goldfish,

in case you never heard of him. The best one in it was The Secret

Goldfish. It was about this little kid that wouldn't let anybody

look at his goldfish because he'd bought it with his own money.

It killed me. Now he's out in Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute.

If there's one thing I hate, it's the movies. Don't even mention

them to me."

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Chapter 1

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the

Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. I'm

stupid about executions. The idea of being electrocuted makes me

sick, and that's all there was to read about in the papers - goggle-eyed

headlines staring up at me from every street corner and at the

fusty, peanut-smelling mouth of every subway. It had nothing to

do with me, but I couldn't help wondering what it would be like,

being burned alive all along your nerves.

I thought it must be the worst thing in the world."

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Chapter 1

"The studio was filled with a rich odour of roses, and when the light

summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came

through the open door a heavy scent of lilac, or the more delicate

perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.

From the corner of the divan of Persian saddlebags on which he was

lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry

Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and

honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches

seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like

as theirs;and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight

flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched

in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary

Japanese effect, and making him think of pallid jade-faced painters

of Tokio who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily

immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion.

The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through

the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence

round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed

to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of

London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ."

A Room with a View by E. M. Forster

PART ONE

Chapter 1

The Bertolini

"The Signora had no business to do it, said Miss Bartlett, no business

at all. She promised us a room with a view, close together, instead

of which here are north rooms, here are north rooms, looking into

a courtyard, and a long way apart. Oh, Lucy!"

The Wings of the Dove by Henry James

BOOK FIRST

Chapter 1

"She waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in, but he kept her

unconscionably, and there were moments at which she showed herself,

in the glass over the mantel, a face positively pale with the irritation

that had brought her to the point of going away without sight of him.

It was at this point, however, that she remained; changing her place,

moving from the shabby sofa to the armchair upholstered in a glazed

cloth that gave at once_she had tried it_the sense of the slippery

and of the sticky."

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Chapter 1

Down the Rabbit-Hole

"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 was it the use of a book

thought Alice, without pictures or conversation?

So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could,

for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid) whether

the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble

of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White

Rabbit with pink ears ran close by her."

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Vengeance is mine; I will repay.

PART ONE

Chapter 1

"All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy

family is unhappy in its own way.

Everything was upset in the Oblonskys' house. The wife had

discovered an intrigue between her husband and their former

French governess, and declared that she would not continue to

live under the same roof as him. This state of things had now

lasted for three days, and not only the husband and wife but

the rest of the family and the whole household suffered

from it. They all felt that there was no sense in their living

together, and that any group of people that had met together

by chance at an inn would have had more in common than

they. The wife kept to her own rooms, the husband stopped

away from home all day; the children ran about all over the

house uneasily, the English governess quarrelled with the

housekeeper and wrote to a friend asking if she could find

her another situation; the cook had gone out just at

dinner-time the day before and had not returned; and

the kitchen-maid and coachman had given notice."

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Chapter 1

"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice

that I have been turning in my mind ever since.

Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, he told me, just remember

that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that

you've had.

He didn't say any more but we've always been unusually communicative

in a reserved way and I understood that he meant a great deal more

than that. In consequence I'm inclined to reserve all judgements, a

habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made

me victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to

detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal

person, so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of

being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild,

unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought_frequently

I have feigned sleep, preoccupation or a hostile levity when I

realized by some unmistakeably sign that an intimate revelation

was quivering on the horizon_for the intimate revelations of

young men or at least the terms in which they express them are

usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving

judgements is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid

of missing something if I forgot that, as my father snobbishly

suggested and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental

decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth."

To Kill a Mokingbird by Harper Lee

PART ONE

Chapter 1

"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly

broken at the elbow. When it healed, and Jem's fears of never

being able to play football were assuaged, he was seldom

self-conscious about his injury. His left arm was somewhat

shorter than his right; when he stood or walked, the back of

his hand was at right angles to his body, his thumb parallel

to his thigh. He couldn't have cared less, so long as he could

pass and punt."

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

PART FIRST

At Marygreen

Chapter 1

"The schoolmaster was leaving the village, and everybody seemed

sorry. The miller at Cresscombe lent him the small white tilted

cart and horse to carry his goods to the city of his destination,

about twenty miles off, such a vehicle proving of quite sufficient

size for the departing teacher's effects. For the schoolhouse

had been partly furnished by the managers, and the only

cumbersome article possessed by the master, in addition to the

packing case of books, was a cottage piano he had bought at

an auction during the year in which he thought of learning

instrumental music. But the enthusiasm having waned he

had never acquired any skill in playing, and the purchased

article had been perpetual trouble to him ever since in

moving house."

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

VOLUME ONE

Part One

Chapter 1

"Eh bien, mon prince, Genes et Lucques ne sont plus que des apanages,

des estates, de la famille Buonaparte. Non, je vous previens, que si vous

ne me dites pas que nous avons le guerre, si vous vous permettez encore

de pallier toutes les infamies, toutes les atrocites de cet Antichrist (ma

parole, i'y crois)-je ne vous connais plus, vous en'etes plus mon ami, vous

en'etes plus my faithful slave, comme vous dites. Well, good evening,

good evening. Je vois que je vous fais peur, sit down and tell me about it."

Ulysses by James Joyce

PART ONE

Telemachus

Chapter 1

"Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a

bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow

dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the

mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned;

-Introibo ad altare Dei.

Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called out

coarsely:

-Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit!"

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Story of the Door

"Mr Utterson the lawyer was a man of rugged countenance, that was

never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse;

back ward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary, and yet somehow

lovable. At friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste,

something eminently human beaconed from his eye; something

indeed which never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not

only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner face, but more often

and loudly in the acts of his life. He was austere with himself; and

thought he enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed the doors of one

for twenty years. But he had an approved tolerance for others;

sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high pressure of

spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity inclined

to help rather than to reprove. 'I incline to Cain's hersey,' he

used to say quaintly: 'I let my brother go to the devil in his own

way.' In this character, it was frequently his fortune to be the

last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in the

lives of down-going men. And to such as these, as long as they

came about his chambers, he never marked a shade of change

in his demeanour."

Howard's End by E. M. Forster

Chapter 1

"One may as well begin with Helen's letters to her sister.

HOWARD'S END.

Tuesday.

DEAREST MEG,

It isn't going to be what we expected. It is old and little, and

altogether delightful-red brick. We can scarcely pack in as it

is, and the dear knows what will happen when Paul (younger

son) arrives tomorrow. From hall you go right or left into

dining-room or drawing-room. Hall itself is practically a

room. You open another door in it, and there are the

stairs going up in a sort of tunnel to the first-floor. Three

bed-rooms in a row there, and three attics in a row above.

That isn't all the house really, but it's all that one notices-

nine windows as you look up from the front garden."

Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

Chapter 1

Description of Farmer Oak: An incident.

" When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread, till they

were within an unimportant distance to his ears, his eyes were reduced

to mere chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending

upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the

rising sun.

His Christian name was Gabriel, and on working days he was a young man

of sound judgement, easy motions, proper dress and general good character.

On Sundays he was a man of misty views, rather given to a postponing

treatment of things, whose best clothes and seven-and-six-penny

umbrella were always hampering him: up in the whole one who felt

himself to occupy morally the vast middle space of Laodicean neutrality

which lay between the Sacrament people of the parish and the drunken

divisions of its inhabitants - that is, he went to church, but yawned

privately by the time the congregation reached the Nicene creed,

and thought of what there was for dinner when he meant to be listening

to the sermon. Or, to state his character as it stood in the scale of public

opinion, when his friends and critics were in tantrums he was considered

rather a bad man; when they were pleased he was rather a good man;

when they were neither he was a man whose moral colour was a kind

of pepper and salt mixture."