Going over this with my juniors in class today and revisted how elaborate this sentence is both in structure and meaning: "When, in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." ~T. Jefferson What's interesting is that that if you remove the extra reasoning, the sentence is actually just saying, "When one group wants to separate from another, it should explain why."
First one is from Dylan Thomas, "Fern Hill." Fifth one is Wallace Stevens, "Idea of Order at Key West," which is one of my all-time favorite poems. Fifth one is also Wallace Stevens, "Sunday Morning."
I first encountered this at the age of 11 or 12, and it has been indelibly stamped in my memory all the years since. let me know if you have seen it or heard it. Bonus points to anyone who knows who wrote it, or what it comes from. "To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, in a pestilential prison, with a life-long lock. Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock, from a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!"
You are correct sir. I only recently learned that it came from the poetry that Gilbert and Sullivan crafted into one of their many outstanding songs and plays.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Hunter S Thompson "The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't."
"The moon, like a testicle, hung low in the sky." That opening line has stayed with me for decades I just can't remember where I read it.
Google says it's Robin Williams. And by posting, I may have bumped Bigsoccer.com up to first from second on the results list for <"The moon, like a testicle, hung low in the sky">
I love when I'm randomly searching for something and a BigSoccer search result pops up when I'm not expecting it.
a great opener and here's an interesting article i think will interest you. the pitfalls of dodgy translations came home to me shockingly a while ago when i wanted to share a passage of lévi-strauss' tristes tropiques (here on BS i believe). pressed for time i found an english translation on gutenberg or somewhere but it was so dreadful... nothing came through, neither substance nor style... a crime. here's a sentence from that that's pretty good: "the world began without man, and it will end without him". i was tempted to give a certain sentence from proust as well, but instead will simply inform you that it is 243 words long!
“I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other.” This from the first book I read for myself, back in the Jurassic age. I still keep a copy on my bookshelf. Along with the reputed first fictional novel, "Robinson Crusoe"