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Literature's best closing lines

TheAnachronism

Critical Thinker
TheAnachronism
Joined
Jul 16, 2007
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439
We had the thread Best Opening Lines for Novels and people participated quite a bit. I thought it might be interesting to try the inverse. I have tried to be more inclusive by calling this "Literature's best closing lines," because I think just limiting it to "novels" would be too restrictive. Might be nice to add a quote and describing why you like the ending.

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray said:
Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied ?—Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out
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These are powerful closing lines to me because I interpret the question "which of us is happy in this world?" to be a sincere question asked rhetorically by the author. He has just spent 700 pages describing the "puppet play" of his many different characters, none of whom can be said to have ended up entirely happy. Is it because of some fault of their own, or is it the fault of society? or both?
 
I've always liked the last paragraph of On The Road by Jack Kerouac.
So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars’ll be out, and don’t you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.
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"And I only am escaped Alone to tell thee."

Moby Dick is one of my favorite American classics.
 
Oh, Jake." Brett said, "we could have had such a damned good time together."
Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me.
"Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?"
 
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

The entire thing is a depressing description of a single day in a Gulag sentence of Ivan, and at the end:

"There were three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days like that in his stretch. From the first clang of the rail to the last clang of the rail. Three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days. The three extra days were for leap years."

One of the biggest downers in the history literature, not a positive sentence describing the sentence of the man who was sentenced...
 
''Tomorrow is another day.'' -- Gone With the Wind


After all the crap she went through, she still manages to finish with a statement of hope for the future. Pretty cool.
 
Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you? –Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
 
I'd also note that A Tale of Two Cities had a great opening and closing line. However, I really didn't care for the book.
 
NobbyNobbs said:
''Tomorrow is another day.'' -- Gone With the Wind


After all the crap she went through, she still manages to finish with a statement of hope for the future. Pretty cool.
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I always took it as a reaffirmation of her utterly delusional belief that somehow good things were just going to come to her without her having to ever even try to be a vaguely decent human being.

I could be wrong. I just never liked Scarlett even the tiniest bit.
 
Loss Leader said:
I always took it as a reaffirmation of her utterly delusional belief that somehow good things were just going to come to her without her having to ever even try to be a vaguely decent human being.

I could be wrong. I just never liked Scarlett even the tiniest bit.
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Are we talking book or movie?


Still, whichever, I agree.
 
"Part of me remained forever at Latitude 80deg 08' South: what survived of my youth, my vanity, perhaps, and certainly my skepticism..."

Adm. Richard Evelyn Byrd, Alone.

Beanbag
 
Monkey Ghost said:
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

The entire thing is a depressing description of a single day in a Gulag sentence of Ivan, and at the end:

"There were three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days like that in his stretch. From the first clang of the rail to the last clang of the rail. Three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days. The three extra days were for leap years."

One of the biggest downers in the history literature, not a positive sentence describing the sentence of the man who was sentenced...
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Seconded.
 
LibraryLady said:
And it was still hot.


Anyone know that one?
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"The wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws but Max stepped into his private boat and waved good-bye and sailed back over a year and in and out of weeks and through a day and into the night of his very own room where he found his supper waiting for him- and it was still hot."

- Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak​


In return - an Australian twist to an older ending:

"Such is life, my fellow-mummers - just like a poor player, that bluffs and feints his hour upon the stage, and then cheapens down to mere nonentity. But let me not hear any small witticism to the further effect that its story is a tale told by a vulgarian, full of slang and blanky - signifying nothing."​
 
I'm sure to be hated for this:
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."
 
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