What are your favourite final sentences from books? Is there a book that you liked specially because of its last sentence? Or a book, perhaps that you didn’t like but still remember simply because of the last line? – BTT
Having guessed this may be the theme this week, I remembered I had a PDF file from American Book Review for the 100 Best Last Lines from Novels (pdf). Once again, here are some I like only books I have read:
“…all human wisdom is contained in two words- “wait” and “hope.”” – Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
“Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth. –Gabriel Garci?a Ma?rquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
“Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood; and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago; and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days.” –Lewis Carroll,
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
“Are there any questions?” –Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
“He knelt by the bed and bent over her, draining their last moment to its lees; and in the silence there passed between them the word which made all clear.” –Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
“But that is the beginning of a new story—the story of the gradual renewal of an, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is ended.” –Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
The following three quotations are all really similar:
“I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.” – Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
“He smiled and took her hand and pressed it. They got up and walked out of the gallery. They stood for a moment at the balustrade and looked at Trafalgar Square. Cabs and omnibuses hurried to and fro, and crowds passed, hastening in every direction, and the sun was shining.” – William Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
“The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide:
They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.”
– John Milton, Paradise Lost
I seem to have forgotten about Shakespeare last week:
“The weight of this sad time we must obey,
Speak what we feel not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most; we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.”
– William Shakespeare, King Lear
“Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant;
And my ending is despair
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardoned be,
Let your indulgence set me free.”
– William Shakespeare, The Tempest
“A great while ago the world begun,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain;
But that’s all one, our play is done,
And we’ll strive to please you every day.”
– William Shakespeare,
Twelfth Night, or, What You Will