51 Of The Most Beautiful Sentences In Literature (2024)

We asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us about their favorite lines from literature. Here are some of their most beautiful replies.

2. "In our village, folks say God crumbles up the old moon into stars."

—Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Suggested by Jasmin B., via Facebook

3. "She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together."

—J. D. Salinger, "A Girl I Knew"

Suggested by mollyp49cf70741

4. "I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart; I am, I am, I am."

—Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Suggested by Brooke K., via Facebook

6. "Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly."

—Khaled Hosseini, And the Mountains Echoed

Suggested by Danielle O., via Facebook

7. "Sometimes I can feel my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living."

—Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Suggested by Kellie C., via Facebook

8. "What are men to rocks and mountains?"

—Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Suggested by amandae16

10. "'Dear God,' she prayed, 'let me be something every minute of every hour of my life.'"

—Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Suggested by Shanna B., via Facebook

11. "The curves of your lips rewrite history."

—Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Suggested by Therese K., via Facebook

12. "A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it."

—Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Suggested by amykartzmanr

14. "As Estha stirred the thick jam he thought Two Thoughts and the Two Thoughts he thought were these: a) Anything can happen to anyone. and b) It is best to be prepared."

—Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

Suggested by Alyssa P., via Facebook

15. "If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me."

—W. H. Auden, "The More Loving One"

Suggested by Blake M., via Facebook

16. "And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good."

—John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Suggested by Missy W., via Facebook

18. "There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

—William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Suggested by Emily F., via Facebook

19. "America, I've given you all and now I'm nothing."

—Allen Ginsburg, "America"

Suggested by Jimmy C., via Facebook

20. "It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories."

—W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

Suggested by fireworkshurricanes

22. "At the still point, there the dance is."

—T. S. Eliot, "Four Quartets"

Suggested by vkanicka

23. "Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering."

—Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

Suggested by Sam H., via Facebook

24. "In spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at heart."

—Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank

Suggested by claires10

26. "The pieces I am, she gather them and gave them back to me in all the right order."

—Toni Morrison, Beloved

Suggested by lisah4b5176fb6

27. "How wild it was, to let it be."

—Cheryl Strayed, Wild

Suggested by Natalie P., via Facebook

28. "Do I dare / Disturb the universe?"

—T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

Suggested by Kati A., via Facebook

30. "She was lost in her longing to understand."

—Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

Suggested by melibellel

31. "She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world."

—Kate Chopin, "The Awakening"

Suggested by Madeline M., via Facebook

32. "We cross our bridges as we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and the presumption that once our eyes watered."

—Tom Stoppard, Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Suggested by Liza

34. "The half life of love is forever."

—Junot Diaz, This Is How You Lose Her

Suggested by xxx

35. "I celebrate myself, and sing myself."

—Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Suggested by Alyssa M., via Facebook

36. "There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights."

—Bram Stroker, Dracula

Suggested by Adam A., via Facebook

37. "Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it yet."

—L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

Suggested by Stacy W., via Facebook

38. "I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark."

—Raymond Carver, "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love"

Suggested by Savey S., via Facebook

39. "I would always rather be happy than dignified."

—Charlotte Brontë , Jane Eyre

Suggested by Chelsea Z., via Facebook

41. "I have spread my dreams under your feet; / Tread softly because you tread on my dreams"

—W. B. Yeats, "Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven"

Suggested by niamhmdd

42. "It frightened him to think what must have gone to the making of her eyes."

—Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

Suggested by uncnicole

43. "For poems are like rainbows; they escape you quickly."

—Langston Hughes, The Big Sea

Suggested by TonyaPenn

45. "I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night."

—Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

Suggested by Maria K., via Facebook

46. "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

–F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Suggested by carlyh3

47. "Journeys end in lovers meeting."

—William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

Suggested by foresth2

49. "It does not do well to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that."

—J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Suggested by Tatiana H., via Facebook

50. "Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt."

—Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

Suggested by Sara S., via Facebook

51. "One must be careful of books, and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us."

—Cassandra Clare, The Infernal Devices

Suggested by par0023

Did your favorite line from literature make the list? Tell us about it in the comments below! And if you'd like to be featured similar BuzzFeed posts, be sure to follow the BuzzFeed Community on Facebook and Twitter.