Fiction's Famous Last Lines

"...Now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before."

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"I lingered round them, under the benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers, for the sleepers in that quiet earth."

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"He sprang from the cabin-window, as he said this, upon the ice-raft which lay close to the vessel. He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance."

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"Thus to that question asked three thousand years ago in the Book of Ecclesiastes - 'Who can fathom the soundless depths?' - two men out of all humanity have now earned the right to reply. Captain Nemo and I."

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"So they performed the funeral rites of Hector, tamer of horses."

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"On high, the succulent leaves whispered in peace and joy, and the boughs of the living trees slowly stirred themselves, looking down in majesty on the dead tree that lay flat out on the ground."

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"When they tried to detach the skeleton which he held in his embrace, he fell to dust."

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"...That each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one."

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"I should hope, then, that by the time of my employer's return, I shall be in a position to pleasantly surprise him."

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"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 the shadow of no parting from her."

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