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Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
This came from an idea that had been knocking around in my head for several years. I had been collecting opening lines of famous works and thought it would be cool to see one everyday as I opened the browser. I tried different styles but landed on the simple background with the text, let the words speak for themselves. Over time i've added more quotes I believe now there are close to 60, so hopefully you can refresh a few times and get a fresh one every time. I hope you guys like it, enjoy!
- semiversus 3mo agoReally cool idea! Add a possibility to send you tips for other books. Here is mine: "As GREGOR SAMSA awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect" Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
- 1-more 3mo agoobligatory note that there's no great single translation for Ungezeifer. Vermin, pest, insect, arthropod, spider, bug, mouse, "animal unfit for sacrifice" all fit https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Ungeziefer https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Ungeziefer
- woopah 3mo agoWhat about making it a daily style game where you have to guess which book the opening is from?
- piltdownman 3mo agoFor reference, a famous Irish coffee-table (read: bathroom) book in a similar vein: https://www.abebooks.com/Said-Duchess-First-Lines-Gemma-OConnor/32420942036/bd https://www.abebooks.com/Said-Duchess-First-Lines-Gemma-OCon... And from a cursory few refreshes I didn't see the obvious one come up: "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." Orwell, 1984
- kwertyoowiyop 3mo agoIt’s there.
- zeroonetwothree 3mo agoIt would be fun if you had to guess what book it’s from
- rnd_mike 3mo agothis is nice, simple idea, but nice. I think the style of the site is also appropriate for what this is :)
- diego_moita 3mo agoAfter trying a lot, I only saw lines from books written originally in English. Therefore, I assume I'll not see my favorite: > Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo. My translation: "Many years later, in front of the firing squad, colonel Aureliano Buendía would remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."
- xnorswap 3mo agoFrustrating without a way to get to the list of works, because it's not clear when you've seen them all. You start having to guess how many there are, based on how many you have seen and how many have repeated, and the distance between seeing ones you haven't yet seen before. A problem made worse, the more quotes there are, as if you have N quotes, then you expect to see the one you see the most often approximately e.ln(N) times ( iirc, for large N ). ( Or put another way: given N items, you expect the gap between discovering the penultimate one and the last one to be N. )
- xnorswap 3mo agoI cheated and looked at the source: There are 60 quotes. So expect ~280 refreshes to collect 'em all.
- doubleorseven 3mo agoshould i do it? im looking for the "The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years" opening lines
- bookofjoe 3mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_Lasts_More_Than_a_Hundred_Years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_Lasts_More_Than_a_Hund... "The hungry vixen had to be patient as she searched for prey among the dried-out gullies and the bare ravines." https://www.amazon.com/Lasts-More-than-Hundred-Years/dp/0253204828/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2VR6C7Y7RAF2W&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.tJ_CKzNUK45f_tnaQwIijInaAd44IUWaRA5xr8Orzwq8z7aDGyuir7oCaoshbUitj58R_9JHKCshmTGjLy2KtDEb1TI8GW-LYQIxuOKUwvuyBrbiW3KDSqHVLUq6sqGxZZ2rINW-sYPE-D2CfWaHY3j6Lgvm-c2UM8UOdvWHC5wMHiL29Evf1nfs1a-90s8dmnegKllMhozhn3BYtkkMUM40OCGOBAB4cmh2InX_Hq4.6CrCeGLKLVIWqeipDev2ez3opkNaDsegLzD5TC5JAUs&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+day+lasts+more+than+a+hundred+years&nsdOptOutParam=true&qid=1784047666&sprefix=the+day+lasts+more+t%2Caps%2C143&sr=8-1&asin=0253204828&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1 https://www.amazon.com/Lasts-More-than-Hundred-Years/dp/0253...
- pfortuny 3mo agoOK, and the median?
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- stevetron 3mo agoIt was a dark and stormy night.
- preetham_rangu 3mo agoThis reminds me how much weight a great opening sentence carries. Some of them are memorable decades later because they establish the tone immediately
- tangenter 3mo agoEither that or they’ve been repeated by the audience so often as to lose all their appeal.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- olooney 3mo ago> so hopefully you can refresh a few times and get a fresh one every time If you randomly sample from only 60 quotes, then after 10 refreshes there will be a greater than 50% chance of at least one repeat, and by 20 refreshes it's up to 95%. This is an example of the birthday paradox[1]. On the flip side, if someone wants to see all 60 quotes, they will have to refresh the page an average of 281 times, mostly (~80%) seeing quotes they've already seen before. This is an example of the coupon collector's problem[2]. The way to avoid both these problems is to shuffle the quotes into a random order, just once, and remember that order. The first time a user comes to the page, start at a random index in that shuffled list, and from then on, simply move to the next item in the list. Every user will get a unique set of random quotes, but will see no repeats until the list is exhausted, and will be guaranteed to be able to see all available content in just 60 refreshes. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coupon_collector%27s_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coupon_collector%27s_problem
- alansaber 3mo agoMake sure you fingerprint every user to make sure they're using the right index value /s
- dantillberg 3mo agoIf the user doesn't know how many unique items there are, they would need to keep refreshing even longer to gauge whether the N they've seen is the full set.
- gregdaniels421 3mo agoIs there a good way to determine after seeing N unique items in M trials how many items there potentially are? Would tracking the time between seeing new unique items help? Is this an already solved problem?
- clickety_clack 3mo agoThis is the “German tank problem”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem?wprov=sfti...
- smashah 3mo agowonderful project thanks for making it :)
- DataDaoDe 3mo agoI'd be interested to know what everyone's favorite opening lines of all time are. (bonus - to see how much of it you can quote without looking :) For me, its: Whann that aprill with hir shoures soote, The drought of march hath perced to the roote, And zepherus eek with his sweete breath, inspired hath in every holt and heth, the tendre cropes, and the sonne hath in the ram, hir halve cours ironne, Than preketh hem natur in hir courages, and longon folk to gon on pilgrimages. Somehow that has always stuck with me, I'm sure I'm missing parts, but from the first time I ever heard these lines the just imprinted themselves like a song to me.
- croisillon 3mo agolast night i dreamt i went to Manderley again
- adrianN 3mo agoFrom memory: The sky was the color of a TV tuned to a bad channel
- drc500free 3mo ago"The war tried to kill us in the spring" from The Yellow Birds always stuck with me, for its complete decoupling of the war from the men who had come thousands of miles to fight it. ** ETA the full opening: “The war tried to kill us in the spring. As grass greened the plains of Nineveh and the weather warmed, we patrolled the low-slung hills beyond the cities and towns. We moved over them and through the tall grass on faith, kneading paths into the windswept growth like pioneers. While we slept, the war rubbed its thousand ribs against the ground in prayer.
- alvatar 3mo agoEnglish literature heavily overrepresented
- bookofjoe 3mo agoClassic HN
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- arkensaw 3mo ago> "I was born in the City of Bombay… once upon a time." > Midnight's Children > Salman Rushdie · 1981 Ok so I guess it is literally just openings of famous literary works, and not great first lines
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- atulatul 3mo agoMay I submit these? Didn't see these after many refreshes: "Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French." - Wodehouse, The Luck of the Bodkins "When he was nearly thirteen my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow." - Harper Lee. To Kill A Mockingbird "Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were."- Margaret Mitchell. Gone With the Wind
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- jihadjihad 3mo agoFew can top the opening line of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. But there were brave souls who tried, in the now-defunct Bulwer-Lytton Contest [0]. Where else could you find gems like these? > The day I lost my tractor was the same day I found out my wife was moonlighting as a hooker when she gave me a wad of cash and told me, “It’s from a John, dear." 0: https://www.bulwer-lytton.com https://www.bulwer-lytton.com
- kej 3mo agoThe "Lyttle Lytton" contest seems to still be going strong, for what it's worth: https://adamcadre.ac/lyttle/2026.html https://adamcadre.ac/lyttle/2026.html
- Doches 3mo agoTruly evidence that we’re living in the worst timeline — the Bulwer-Lytton has been one of the highlights of my year for as long as I can remember. My parents introduced me to it before I could read; I remember them laughing and crying as they tried to explain to four-year-old me why this one inscrutable sentence was the funniest thing on earth. I’ve looked forward to it ever since, though recently I’ve only checked in to read the dishonorable mentions and winners once every few years. Knowing I’ll never again check and find a year’s crop of perfect sentences dims the light more than I would have expected. Sad times.
- qingcharles 3mo agoThat link is fantastic, thank you.
- seagram 3mo ago"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love." > Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel García Márquez
- gniv 3mo agoThis is called incipit, right? In both English and French afaik.
- lkm0 3mo agoI've always wanted to do this! I've scraped Gutenberg and tried some clever ways to get the first line, but I always got so much noise. Perhaps it's a good time to try again!
- locusofself 3mo agoI tried to press space, arrow keys, enter, tab, etc to get to next quote. None of those worked
- bookofjoe 3mo agoClick on "NEXT CHAPTER" in the upper right hand corner
- entropie 3mo agoReally cool! > The Man in Black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed. I did not refresh to check if you already have that, but I really find it very strong. Its from Kings "Dark Tower - Black" (edit: its "The Gunslinger", not Black. its named "Schwarz" in the german translations) the first of 8 books in the series. If you dont know it; its not like the usual King books. It mixes fantasy elements (inspired by LoTR), western, scfi (robots, AI-trains) cyberpunk and horror. Its a great series!
- kamranjon 3mo agoI actually read the first book and it was so poorly written it made me wonder if I should continue, because I did find the general story quite engaging. I've heard it gets better/tighter in subsequent books, but it was the only King i've ever read so wasn't sure if he just had a sort of sloppy style (he did write pretty prolifically). I also read it following a Cormac McCarthy book so that might have lead me to believe it was sloppier than it deserved.
- entropie 3mo ago> I actually read the first book and it was so poorly written it made me wonder if I should continue In his defense, that was early in his career, and in one of the countless afterwords or prefaces, he also mentions that he has, of course, evolved since then. "The Gunslinger" is really a bit borderline. The next one, "The Drawing of the Three" is much more complex and better written. You could also read the last book first ("The Wind Through the Keyhole"); it’s separate from the main story and set somewhere in between, but it’s the final book. > Cormac McCarthy No country for old men? Its probably in my top 5 of all the books (and movies) that I read. A masterpiece. Edit: i realized i mixed the names up. Its not black, its "The Gunslinger". Its translated as black in the german series and confused me.
- kamranjon 3mo agoI haven't read No Country yet - I think at the time it was Suttree which is definitely in my top 5 - I also read The Road recently and was pretty blown away, really quick read and very meticulously structured, I loved it. I'll make a point to read No Country, I heard it was originally written as a screenplay and so is less descriptive than his other work.
- jorisboris 3mo agoGreat idea! I would love a tailored version based on Goodreads or Storygraph
- purpleflame1257 3mo agoI like how "A Wrinkle in Time" starts:"It was a dark and stormy night."
- fhdkweig 3mo agoI only opened this page to see if this quote was here. I know the line from Star Trek TNG. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_was_a_dark_and_stormy_night https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_was_a_dark_and_stormy_night
- sturza 3mo agoNow please please make for with the first comment of every HN front page posts ever. edit: added “please”
- amatecha 3mo agoNice. The only opening line I remember offhand is from Neuromancer (which I'm glad to see is included in the site!) "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."
- dcminter 3mo agoIt's so interesting that the intuitive meaning of this has changed - first meaning grey, then bright blue, and now... perhaps black, perhaps nothing? What does "a dead channel" mean to kids today? I recently re-read the sprawl trilogy and thought Neuromancer stood up very well, but the others not so much.
- arkensaw 3mo agoto kids today a dead channel would likely mean a youtube channel with no posts for a few years
- rhyperior 3mo agoTo me, not just grey but an ever shifting speckled rainbow colored static with a heavy bias towards grey.
- dcminter 3mo ago:) Me too, but it seemed like the people who knew would know and for the ones who didn't "grey" was going to be close enough...
- jll29 3mo agoWhoever likes this will likely also enjoy this clock announcing the time using literary quotes: https://www.amazon.com/Author-Clock-Literary-Quotes-Unique/dp/B0DR382MMJ https://www.amazon.com/Author-Clock-Literary-Quotes-Unique/d... (What I particularly enjoy is that one can contribute to the database of quotations.)
- loganintech 3mo agoThis is awesome! 9 months ago or so some coworkers and I had the idea to make a Wordle style game where you have to guess the book using some clues from a book including the first sentence. I stopped adding clues myself but your post reminded me to get it open sourced :) There's a small client-only app here to check out: https://github.com/loganintech/bookdle https://github.com/loganintech/bookdle https://loganintech.github.io/bookdle/ https://loganintech.github.io/bookdle/ Or if you want to see the source code for the "platform" where I added a database and such: https://github.com/loganintech/bookdle-platform https://github.com/loganintech/bookdle-platform
- homarp 3mo agoyou should add closing line too.
- al_borland 3mo agoThat has the possibility of being full of spoilers.
- homarp 3mo agoMake it an option then. sample: You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter.[...] I been there before. Attending Burning Man made me simultaneously one of the most photographed people on the planet and one of the least surveilled humans in the modern world.[...]I gathered Ange into a hug that started off stiff and awkward and then turned into the most familiar feeling in the world.
- temilson 3mo agoLove the aesthetics ... the fonts ... sizes ... colors ... nicely done!
- burnt-resistor 3mo agoCool beans. It was a dark and stormy night... /s
- vishal_ch 3mo ago[dead]
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- reader9274 3mo ago"Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know." - The Stranger, Camus
- plicerin 3mo agoThank you for all the good feedback guys, i've already started implementing some of your suggestions, including some of your favorite quotes!
- martymarkenson 3mo ago[dead]
- sizzzzlerz 3mo ago"In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing" A River Runs Through It Norman Maclean
- jambalaya8 3mo agoI am guessing you are looking for good/inspiring ones and picking and choosing which you want to see? Otherwise, why not just scrape sections of project gutenberg's text versions into a csv so you have more variety?
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- veraxapp 3mo agoThe minimal style works, the words really do speak for themselves. Have you thought about a movie section? Famous opening lines from films could fit the same format.
- magarnicle 3mo agoFilm is a visual medium, so this is more appropriate: https://www.rogerebert.com/category/opening-shots https://www.rogerebert.com/category/opening-shots
- mkrecny 3mo agoThis points in the direction of a "what book should I read next?" tool. Inspired me to chase down rabbit holes about J.M Barrie (Peter Pan) and Slaughterhouse-Five (Vonnegut)
- mrenzo 3mo ago[flagged]
- maxbendick 3mo agoYou've found the right market. There's an awful lot of tech folk who don't read but want to feel like they do. I gotta rep my favorite though, even if it's typical. "Call me Ishmael." It's not the narrator's actual name - he just feels like an outcast. It sets the pace for the mythic and worldly talk throughout the book. A high bar with complete follow-through. I'm a total sucker for it.
- gabriel666smith 3mo agoI'm with the pedants on this one, in that I'd argue the prologue is inseparable from the novel, and the first line would be either be: "(Supplied by a late consumptive usher..." or: "The pale Usher-threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now." But straight fire either way. And, when it comes down to it, that "Call me Ishmael" is considered so consistently as the novel's opening line makes it the opening line. A testament to its power :-)
- maxbendick 3mo agoCan't argue with that! And what a prologue it is.
- whall6 3mo agoThere’s something so beautiful and heavy about the how frank and pithy the opening line of Anna Karenina is: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
- mrmarket 3mo ago"First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys." - this line always makes me settle back in my chair. 'Something Wicked This Way Comes', Ray Bradbury. It's mysterious and nostalgic and sets the tone for the book right away, like any good first line should.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- banderberg 3mo agothirty seconds and now I have three new books to read. Thanks! Great idea.
- emmanueloga_ 3mo agoWould it be hard to translate to Spanish? I'd love to share with some friends that love books but don't speak English!
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 3mo agoNo Pride and Prejudice?
- noirchen 3mo agoActually I think it is better to show a random poem. Novels are long, and opening lines can easily trick you to think that you "know" the works. But poems, on the other hand, can be short (and long), with more vivid language in just a few lines. You can have short poems (The fog comes / on little cat feet./ It sits looking / over harbor and city / on silent haunches /and then moves on.) or a passage of long poems (I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,/ dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix).
- Sentino_API 3mo ago[flagged]
- iammjm 3mo agoNice idea and execution! I’d like to submit one: “I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies.” - David Foster Wallace, “Infinite Jest”
- alejohausner 3mo agoMy favorite is "Brother Francis Gerard of Utah might never have discovered the blessed documents, had it not been for the pilgrim with girded loins who appeared during that young novice's Lenten fast in the desert." Walter Miller's "A Canticle for Liebovitz"
- nwarner0 3mo agoThe Go-Between: The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.
- nwarner0 3mo agoJust clicked through a few and it was there all the time! Nice idea
- gelu_contiu 3mo ago[dead]
- scomag232 3mo agoIt's not a famous literary work, and you don't need to post this, but my favorite opening sentence is "The smallmouth bass can be considered the gentleman of the warm water stream". Harry Murray's book on fly fishing for small mouth in the Shenendoah valley. Thanks for the opportunity to share :-)
- YoshiRulz 3mo agoThis same idea as a Wikidata query: https://w.wiki/SV9k https://w.wiki/SV9k (something something everything is a nail)
- andsoitis 3mo ago"Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond" (Things Fall Apart). It's a line that does character, culture, and foreshadowing all at once without straining any of them.
- plicerin 3mo agoI implemented a lot of your suggestions, thanks for the feedback and enjoy the new version!