The Holy Bible: King James Version

• In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

• My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.

Interview with the Vampire by Anne rice

• "I see . . ." said the vampire thoughtfully, and slowly he walked across the room towards the window.

Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

• Letter I
• To Mrs Saville, England.
• St Petersburgh, Dec. 11th, 17--.
• You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.

Harry Potter et les Reliques de la Mort de J.K. Rowling, traducteur: Jean-François Ménard

• Les deux hommes surgirent de nulle part, à quelques mètres l'un de l'autre, sur le chemin étoit éclairé par la lune.

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, translated into English by Lowell Bair

• On the first Monday of April, 1625, the market town of Meung, birthplace of the author of the Roman de la Rose, seemed to be in as great a turmoil as if the Huguenots had come to turn it into a second La Rochelle.

Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbit

• The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning.

Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

• When Farmer Oak smiled, the top 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.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

• 1801——I have just returned from a visit to my landlord—the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with.

Persuasion by Jane Austen

• Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch-hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs, changed naturally into pity and contempt.

After Hamelin by Bill Richardson

• I am Penelope. It is an easy name to remember. Even so, the people in this village seem to have entirely forgotten it. They call me "the funny old lady in the house with the harps." I speak of the grownups. Children call me "Harpy," for short. The little boys also like to call me "Scarface."

The Giver by Lois Lowry

• It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened. No. Wrong word, Jonas thought. Frightened meant that deep, sickening feeling of something terrible about to happen. Frightened was the way he had felt a year ago when an unidentified aircraft had overflown the community twice.

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

• It wasn't a very likely place for disappearances, at least at first glance. Mrs. Baird's was like a thousand other Highland bed-and-breakfast establishments in 1945; clean and quiet, with fading floral wallpaper, gleaming floors, and a coin-operated hot-water geyser in the lavatory.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

• This book is largely concerned with Hobbits, and from its pagers a reader may discover much of their character and a little of their history.

Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen

• It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

Airborn by Kenneth Oppel

• Sailing towards dawn, and I was perched atop the crow's nest, being the ship's eyes. We were two nights out of Sydney and there'd been no weather to speak of so far. I was keeping watch on a dark stack of nimbus off to the northwest, but we were leaving that far behind, and it looked to be smooth going all the way back to Lionsgate City. Like riding a cloud.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

• There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

• Jonathan Harker's Journal
• (Kept in shorthand)
• 3 May. Bistritz.——Left Munich at 8.35 p.m. on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6.46, but train was an hour late. Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got it from the train and the little I could walk through the streets.

The Hobbit, or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien

• In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or eat: it was a hobbit hole, and that means comfort.

The Fountain of Fair Fortune, a tale by Beetle the Bard (J.K. Rowling)

• High on a hill in an enchanted garden, enclosed by tall walls and protected by strong magic, flowed the fountain of Fair Fortune.

Tree Girl by T.A. Barron

• "She danced with me, she did." Anna narrowed her hazel green eyes, and nodded at the squirrel beside her on the branch. "Danced for hours—aye, even into the night."

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

• Accidents ambush the unsuspecting, often violently, just like love.

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

• Clare: It's hard being left behind. I wait for Henry, not knowing where he is, wondering if he's okay. It's hard to be the one who stays.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

• When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle, everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

• Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

• When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

• To Sherlock Holmes she is always THE woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex.
• the capitalization on the word 'the' in the first line is not included in the book. in the book, it is italicized, but the entire meaning of the first line is defunct when it goes without added emphasis in an already italicized type.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

• Call me Ishmael. Some years ago — never mind how long precisely — having little or no money in my purse, and nothing in particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

• The mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home.

The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien

• There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made.

Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan, translated from the French by Irene Ash

• A strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sorrow. The idea of sorrow has always appealed to me, but now I am almost ashamed of its complete egoism. I have known boredom, regret, and occasionally remorse, but never sorrow. Today it envelops me like a silken web, enervating and soft, and sets me apart fro everybody else.