No. 1
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice (1813)
简-奥斯汀《傲慢与偏见》
No. 2
"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina (1878)
托尔斯泰《安娜-卡列尼娜》
No. 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, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way."
Charles Dickens: A Tale Of Two Cities (1859)
狄更斯《双城记》
No. 4
"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
乔治-奥威尔，《1984》
No. 5
"It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York."
Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar (1963)
西尔维娅-普拉斯，《钟型罩》
No. 6
“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. That book was made by a Mr Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.”
Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
马克-吐温，《顽童历险记》、或《哈克历险记》
No. 7
"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."
J.D Salinger: The Catcher In The Rye (1951)
J.D. 塞林格，《麦田里的守望者》
No. 8
"They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did."
Jean Rhys: Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)
《藻海茫茫》、又译名《梦回藻海》
No. 9
"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. Whenever you feel like criticising any one, he told me, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby (1925)
F. 斯科特-菲兹杰拉德，《了不起的盖兹比》
No. 10
"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."
L. P. Hartley: The Go-Between (1953)
L.P.哈特利，《送信人》。暂无中译本，《送信人》为同名电影中译名。
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本文选译自：The Telegraph《电讯报》官网文章：“ 30 Great Opening Lines in Literature“。点击”阅读原文“可见原文。
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