One Line to Rule Them All: Vote Now in the Elite 8!

And then there were eight. After three rounds of voting, you’ve eliminated 56 great opening literary lines and the eight that have survived and advanced are truly elite. We’ve got Austen and Dickens; Dante, Tolstoy, and Melville; Tolkien and Lewis. That these eight lines made it this far isn’t surprising—and now the real fun begins. Will the matchups be tighter? Will the voting be excruciating? Which Dickens will win? Which nautically themed book will prevail? You decide. Happy voting.

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Matchup #1

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

vs.

“Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself in a dark wilderness, for I had wandered from the straight and true.”
from The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

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Matchup #2

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

vs.

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”
from The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien

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Matchup #3

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

vs.

“Marley was dead, to begin with.”
from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

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Matchup #4

“Call me Ishmael.”
from Moby Dick by Herman Melville

vs.

“There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.”
from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis

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