My Cage "Classics" 10/28 - 29/2009
Added 2023-04-27 11:28:52 +0000 UTCWhat's the greatest opening line (including in lyrics) of all time?
Originally run Oct 28th - 29th 2009.
-Ed
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Cage
Merch: cafepress.com/mycagecomic
AT4W review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLNaownbvX0
TV Tropes: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ComicStrip/MyCage
Comments
Knew that. (From Measure for Measure, if I recall correctly). But seeing as Eliot used it in the manner that he did, it still becomes an "opening line". It totally sets up what follows, and the poem itself would suffer by its absence.
Jon Benson
2023-04-28 01:53:25 +0000 UTC"Do these napkins smell like chloroform to you..?"
Yer pal Mikey
2023-04-27 19:52:52 +0000 UTCIf “Thou hast….” is meant for Eliot, it’s not the opening, but an epigraph. If it’s meant for Shakespeare, it’s from the middle of a long speech.
John W. Kennedy
2023-04-27 19:29:23 +0000 UTC’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. OR Thou hast nor youth nor age But as it were an after dinner sleep Dreaming of both. OR Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book? It took me years to write, will you take a look? OR I thought I was a puffin, I thought I was a lark, I thought I was a blade of grass Growing in the park OR In the beginning......Amen. (Figured someone would ask for a favorite last line eventually =-} )
Jon Benson
2023-04-27 18:32:02 +0000 UTC"It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him." 'Catch-22' by Joseph Heller.
Ryan Edgar
2023-04-27 16:32:13 +0000 UTC"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." (1984 by George Orwell)
Riley Williams II
2023-04-27 14:03:35 +0000 UTCFrom William Dunlap’s “André: A Tragedy in Five Acts” (1798), generally regarded as America’s first great play. The curtain opens on Captain Melville of the Continental Army standing watch outside an encampment near Tappan, New York, midnight, October 1, 1780. The solemn hour, when night and morning meet, Mysterious time, to superstition dear, And superstition’s guides, now passes by; Deathlike in solitude. The sentinels, In drowsy tones, from post to post, send on The signal of the passing hour. All’s well, Sounds through the camp. Alas! all is not well; Else, why stand I, a man, the friend of man, At midnight’s depth, deck’d in this murderous guise, The habiliment of death, the badge of dire, Necessitous coercion. ’Tis not well. —In vain the enlighten’d friends of suffering man Point out, of war, the folly, guilt, and madness. Still, age succeeds to age, and war to war; And man, the murderer, marshalls out his hosts In all the gaiety of festive pomp, To spread around him death and desolation. How long! how long!————————
John W. Kennedy
2023-04-27 13:39:11 +0000 UTCI don't know about all time, but the literary opening line that most recently grabbed me was from "A Deadly Education" by Naomi Novik: "I decided Orion needed to die after the second time he saved my life."
Stephen Gilberg
2023-04-27 13:24:49 +0000 UTCI saw her today at the reception. In its simplicity it just screams that there's a story here. Either that or Marley was dead, to Begin With from A Christmas Carol.
Steven Sutton
2023-04-27 12:51:47 +0000 UTC
