TulaneLSU's Top 10 book opening lines

Dear Friends,

Happy Pentecost Sunday. I have been quite neglectful in reading this past week. As penance I began to consider after church today what my favorite opening lines in books are. I have not considered every book I've read, but this list is the best I could do now. I encourage you to make a similar list and share it here.

TulaneLSU's Top 10 book opening lines

10. All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Anna Karenina, Tolstoy

9. Now in these dread latter days of the old violent beloved U.S.A. and of the Christ-forgetting Christ-haunted death-dealing Western world I came to myself in a grove of young pines and the question came to me: has it happened at last?
Love in the Ruins, Walker Percy

8. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
Tale of Two Cities, Dickens

7. Though hundreds of thousands had done their very best to disfigure the small piece of land on which they were crowded together, by paving the ground with stones, scraping away every vestige of vegetation, cutting down the trees, turning away birds and beasts, and filling the air with the smoke of naphtha and coal, still spring was spring, even in the town.
Resurrection, Tolstoy

6. Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Thy power, and Thy wisdom infinite.
The Confessions, St. Augustine

5. If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the foundation of all there lay only a wildly seething power which writhing with obscure passions produced everything that is great and everything that is insignificant, if a bottomless void never satiated lay hidden beneath all -- what then would life be but despair?
Fear and Trembling, Soren Kierkegaard

4. In our family there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.
A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean

3. I am a sick man; I am a spiteful man; I am an unattractive man; I believe my liver is diseased; However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me.
Notes from the Underground, Dostoevsky

2. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The Gospel of St. John

1. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Genesis

Yours,
TulaneLSU