Great opening Lines Challenge

peapod

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Jun 26, 2004
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I have played this at a blog..

All readers are challenged to identify any of the unidentified opening lines. Also, you are welcome to issue opening line challenges of your own. I will go first.

"No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their affairs they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water."
 

peapod

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hehehehe you guys are right of course H.G. Wells that story about orsen wells radio broadcast of it was 8O but ehm..you are suppose to post one for us to guess.. I will take your turn :p

"During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy
***** of *****" I had to blank out those words it would have given it away.
 

Reverend Blair

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Apr 3, 2004
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RE: Great opening Lines C

I need a clue on that one. It's familiar though. Did I hear it on CBC radio? Is it the Englishman's Son? No that isn't it.
 

peapod

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Well ehm..hear is a clue..think about a black raven :p
associate the black raven with the author....I will be back later to check up on your answer :p
 

Vanni Fucci

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Dec 26, 2004
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the-brights.net
Edgar Allen Poe...Fall of the House of Usher

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him."
 

Reverend Blair

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Apr 3, 2004
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RE: Great opening Lines C

Poe, then. House of Usher?

Ilsebill put on more salt. Before the impregnation there was shoulder of mutton with string beans and pears, the season being early October, Still at the table, still with her mouth full, she asked, "Should we go to bed right away, or do you first want to tell me how when our story began?"
 

Vanni Fucci

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Dec 26, 2004
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Gunter Grass -- The Flounder

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him."
 

Vanni Fucci

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Dec 26, 2004
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the-brights.net
8)

Dante Alighieri, A Divine Comedy

"In the country of Westphalia, in the castle of the most noble Baron of Thunder-ten-tronckh, lived a youth whom Nature had endowed with a most sweet disposition. His face was the true index of his mind. He had a solid judgment joined to the most unaffected simplicity; and hence, I presume, he had his name of WITHHELD. The old servants of the house suspected him to have been the son of the Baron's sister, by a very good sort of a gentleman of the neighborhood, whom that young lady refused to marry, because he could produce no more than threescore and eleven quarterings in his arms; the rest of the genealogical tree belonging to the family having been lost through the injuries of time."
 

peapod

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Candide raised in a nice castle

The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended. Here on the equator, in the continent which would one day be known as Africa, the battle for existence had reached a new climax of ferocity, and the victor was not yet in sight. In this barren and desiccated land, only the small or the swift or the fierce could flourish, or even hope to survive.
 

peapod

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I had to call someone and ask them that one :p The godfather.

When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were reduced to chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising sun.
 

peapod

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Yes it was a call :lol:

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.
 

peapod

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ehm..no it was about a teenage slacker..mostly about phonies, and thinking for yourself. :p How are you getting these answers :p


My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973."