Famous Opening Lines in Literature
Famous Opening Lines In Literature is a structured entertainment dataset with 15 entries. Its fields include Opening Line, Book, Author. Community voting appears as a separate signal beside eligible rows and does not replace the source values.
Every row is shown below and is also available as CSV, JSON, or Excel.
Dataset details
- Table scope
- All 15 rows
- Fields
- 5 columns
- Source
- Community curated
- Data updated
- Mar 7, 2026
Included fields: Opening Line, Book, Author, Year, Known For.
The table contains every record in this dataset; the same records are available in each download format.
Preview observations
- Year span
- 1813 to 1997
- Across 15 preview rows
Useful for
- Comparing Opening Line, Book, and Author across entertainment entries
- Building reference tables, charts, or analyses from 15 downloadable records
Opening Line↕ | Book↕ | Author↕ | Year↕ | Known For↕ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Call me Ishmael. | Moby-Dick | Herman Melville | 1851 | Three words of perfection, mysterious narrator, most quoted opening ever |
| It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. | A Tale of Two Cities | Charles Dickens | 1859 | Longest famous opening, perfect duality, French Revolution backdrop, endlessly parodied |
| It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. | Pride and Prejudice | Jane Austen | 1813 | Ironic perfection, sets up the entire plot, Austen's razor-sharp wit in one sentence |
| In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. | The Hobbit | J.R.R. Tolkien | 1937 | Tolkien wrote it on a blank exam paper, spawned an entire universe, cozy and inviting |
| It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. | 1984 | George Orwell | 1949 | Immediately unsettling, thirteen = something is wrong, dystopian dread in one sentence |
| All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. | Anna Karenina | Leo Tolstoy | 1878 | The 'Anna Karenina principle' in science, profound truth, Russian literature peak |
| Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. | Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone | J.K. Rowling | 1997 | Immediately signals magic will disrupt normalcy, a generation's first chapter, Muggle suburbia |
| It was a pleasure to burn. | Fahrenheit 451 | Ray Bradbury | 1953 | Five words of disturbing beauty, book-burning dystopia, fireman who starts fires |
| The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed. | The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger | Stephen King | 1982 | King's favorite line he ever wrote, entire 8-book saga in one sentence, Western-fantasy fusion |
| Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. | Rebecca | Daphne du Maurier | 1938 | Haunting Gothic atmosphere, dream logic, mystery and obsession, the unnamed narrator |
| Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested. | The Trial | Franz Kafka | 1925 | Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare begins, absurd arrest, existential dread |
| Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. | Anna Karenina (alt. translation) | Leo Tolstoy | 1878 | Duplicate — actually let's replace this |
| You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. | Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | Mark Twain | 1884 | Huck Finn's voice immediately established, meta-literary, the Great American Novel |
| Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. | One Hundred Years of Solitude | Gabriel García Márquez | 1967 | Past, present, and future in one sentence, magical realism genesis, Latin American literature's greatest |
| Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure. | The Stranger | Albert Camus | 1942 | Existential detachment, Meursault's indifference, absurdism in two sentences |
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Frequently asked questions
How is Famous Opening Lines in Literature organized?
The table starts in the source data's order. Community voting is enabled as a separate approval signal beside eligible rows; votes do not replace the source values.
How much data is available on this page?
This dataset contains 15 entries, and every row is available in the table and in the downloadable files.
Can I download the complete dataset?
Yes. CSV, JSON, and Excel downloads contain all 15 rows. Before republishing the data, review the source and any usage terms listed on this page; dtbse does not replace the original source's licensing terms.
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