First Sentences
Peter Robinson ·
August 25, 2012 at 7:07am
Troy's post, below, on worthy second-tier presidents, got me to thinking about Ulysses Grant, which got me to thinking about Grant's memoirs--a really magnificent work, and if you haven't read it, then a joy awaits you--which in turn reminded me of this:
For my money, Grant and Richard Nixon got off the two finest first sentences in the whole field of American autobiographies.
My family is American, and has been for generations, in all its branches, direct and collateral.
--Ulysses S. Grant, Memoirs
I was born in the house my father built.
--Richard M. Nixon, Memoirs
Care to recommend a favorite first sentence or two of your own?
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Feb '12
Re: First Sentences
All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way - Tolstoy, Anna Karenina.
I first heard this hypothesis in fourth grade, and then spent several years evaluating its veracity. Yes, I was a nerd.
Jul '11
Re: First Sentences
James Crumley, "The Last Good Kiss"
When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.
Jul '11
Re: First Sentences
Virshu: All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way - Tolstoy,Anna Karenina.
I first heard this hypothesis in fourth grade, and then spent several years evaluating its veracity. Yes, I was a nerd. · 0 minutes ago
Who wasn't?
Apr '11
Re: First Sentences
"Power stands, authority sits".
It was the first line in the anonymous program guide to an exhibition on thrones in Versailles. It's not a fantastic work of literature in general, but it is one of the most useful phrases I've come across. Like all really good phrases, it's an insight that changes your understanding of all kinds of things, from pop culture to gossip to psychology to political philosophy to history and theology. There was a paragraph or so expanding on the thought, which unfortunately I lost, and a bunch of pages of not terribly clever writing on thrones physical and metaphorical. It gives me hope that any of us could, some day, write something beautiful and worthy.
It's possible that it's a translation of some foreign (probably French) proverb, but I have not been able to discover any antecedents. Much of its weight lies in metaphor, but it is often literally appealing. It renders, for instance, the image of Napoleon standing to seize his crown from the Pope that much more poignant to me.
Edited on August 25, 2012 at 7:57amMar '11
Re: First Sentences
As long as we're not confining this thread to Presidential biographies or memoirs--and following Virshu's example we are not--I offer these three:
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighborhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters. [Austen, Pride and Prejudice]
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse and nothing in particular of interest to me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. [Melville, Moby Dick]
I went down to the Piraeus yesterday with Glaucon, son of Ariston, to pray to the goddess; and at the same time I wanted to observe how they would put on the festival, since they were now holding it for the first time. [Plato, Republic]
May '10
Re: First Sentences
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.". One doesn't get more of an opening than that!
May '10
Re: First Sentences
"In 1937, I began, like Lazarus, the impossible return."
Whittaker Chambers, "Witness"
A must read American autobiography.
Edited on August 25, 2012 at 8:20amApr '11
Re: First Sentences
"I marmaladed a slice of toast with something of a flourish, and I don't suppose I have ever come much closer to saying 'Tra-la-la' as I did the lathering, for I was feeling in mid-season form this morning."
The great P.G. Wodehouse, Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves.
Jul '12
Re: First Sentences
Peter, I see your Richard Nixon and raise you Mick Jagger,
"I was born in a crossfire hurricane."
Re: First Sentences
Some of my favorites, but by no means exhaustive...
"Although he regarded Ulster as his homeland, Clive Staples Lewis denied being Irish. [Sayer, Jack]
"A small boy with a book, high up in a tree." [Dyson, Disturbing the Universe]
"The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was." [Adams, Life, The Universe and Everything]
"So at last they've done it." [Sharansky, Fear No Evil]
Jul '12
Re: First Sentences
Churchill, "Their Finest Hour"
"Now at last the slowly-gathered long pent up fury of the storm broke upon us."
Dec '11
Re: First Sentences
"When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere."
-Day of the Triffids. I hadn't read the story until about a year ago and fell in love with this line. Sometime after I discovered it is a rather popular "first line".
And as a SF nerd, I have to give respect to the opening narrative of War of the Worlds, which most film productions wisely include (with changes to the century):
"No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that this world was 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 various concerns they were being 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."
Mar '11
Re: First Sentences
From the novels of Peter de Vries:
“Call me, Ishmael.” (The Vale of Laughter)
“The trouble with treating people as equals is that the first thing you know they may be doing the same thing to you.” (The Prick of Noon)
“I had just been through hell and must have looked like death warmed over walking into the saloon, because when I asked the bartender whether they served zombies he said, ‘Sure, what’ll you have?’” (I Hear America Swinging)
Feb '12
Re: First Sentences
"My Dear Wormwood,
I note what you say about guiding your patient's reading and taking care that he sees a good deal of his materialist friend. But are you not being a trifle naive?"
Screwtape 'The Screwtape Letters' C.S. Lewis
Dec '11
Re: First Sentences
1) "Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong."
-Calvin Coolidge
2) "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money [to spend]."
-Margaret Thatcher
Apr '11
Re: First Sentences
"It is at once the result and security of oppression that its victims soon become incapable of resistance."
It is quoted in Coin's Financial School; I've been looking for the original author for 30-odd years. Anyone?
Apr '11
Re: First Sentences
Peter Robinson
Troy's post, below, on worthy second-tier presidents got me to thinking about Ulysses Grant, which got me to thinking about Grant's memoirs...
As an aside, until I read the joint biography of Grant & Sherman a couple weeks ago, I thought of Grant as a big, bluff, genial, drunken buffoon. Well, I was partly right about the "genial."
He was 5'8", 140, serious, sober (except when separated too long from his family), shrewd, upright, and eloquent. Excerpts from his correspondence, personal and professional, demonstrate this.
I must have read too many Confederate memoirs describing his low intellect, winning battles only through superior manpower.
Mar '11
Re: First Sentences
For best first sentence, it is tough to beat:
Aug '10
Re: First Sentences
" The last time I tried to quit my job I was turned down - on the grounds I was incompetent ."
- J. Lileks , Falling Up The Stairs
Jul '12
Re: First Sentences
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."
Jane Austen - "Pride and Prejudice"