Greatest Sentence of All Time?

[barsoomcore]

From The Gods of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

There were two men and four females in the party and their ornaments denoted them as members of different hordes, a fact which tended to puzzle me infinitely, since the various hordes of green men of Barsoom are eternally at deadly war with one another, and never, except on that single historic instance when the great Tars Tarkas of Thark gathered a hundred and fifty thousand green warriors from several hordes to march upon the doomed city of Zodanga to rescue Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, from the clutches of Than Kosis, had I seen green Martians of different hordes associated in other than mortal combat.

Huh? Huh?

Tell me that's not frickin' LITERATURE, right there, baby.

LITERATURE.

 

[jonesy]

I'm having unbelievable amounts of trouble trying to read that without having my brain explode from keeping up with what is actually being said. There should be a law against sentences that long.

 

[Berandor]

Quoth the Raven, "Literature."

Indeed.

 

[Clint]

"Pinky, I have devised a glorious sentence! Once it is crafted, it will be seen as literature! However, be still and do not hit that period."
"Yes, sir."
(type type comma type comma type comma)
"Pinky, stop shaking. Don't do it--I'm on a roll."
(type comma type type comma type comma type type period)
"Yeeeaaag! What did I tell you!"
"*crying* I am weak."

 

[diaglo]

"They drew first blood, not me," John Rambo.

 

[Tetsubo]

"Death came quietly to the Row."

A cookie if you can tell me what book it came from.

It's not a "WOW" type of sentence but it's my favorite lead into a novel.

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

It was a dark and stormy night.

 

[hong]

From The Gods of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs:


Huh? Huh?

Tell me that's not frickin' LITERATURE, right there, baby.

LITERATURE.

No way is that the greatest sentence of all time. I mean, it has to compete with these, for starters.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

"Death came quietly to the Row."

Sounds very Poe-ish. Is this from "Murders in the Rue Morgue?"

[EDIT] Never mind. Just googled it, and I was wrong.

 

[JoeBlank]

One of my favorites has always been:

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.

-Poe

This to me is perhaps the most perfect opening line in literature. Others are great (A Tale of Two Cities, or Moby Dick, for example), but this single sentence sets the tone for the story and builds some anticipation for the reader, while remaining pleasant and easily understood. I likes it.