First line from the play The Lady’s Not For Burning by Christopher Fry:
Thomas [trying to get someone’s attention]: Soul!
…and the last line:
Thomas: Then let me wish us both
Good morning–And God have mercy on our souls.
So it starts with a singular ‘soul’ and ends with a plural. Do you think he got the girl? Spoiler: she wasn’t for burning.
Ah, my vote for the best short story ever written. Thanks for the reminder.
Call me!
I believe the last line is "Lady fingers they taste just like lady fingers . . ."
Great opening paragraph :
Last line of The Outsider, HP Lovecraft :
“For although nepenthe has calmed me, I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men. This I have known ever since I stretched out my fingers to the abomination within that great gilded frame; stretched out my fingers and touched a cold and unyielding surface of polished glass.”
“Next day it snowed, and killed off half the crops – but it was a good day.”
– Last line of “It’s a Good Life”, by Jerome Bixby.
Mickey Spillane wrote some great last lines, when taken in context, which we won’t do here. (Hope my memory serves me.) From I, the Jury:
“It was easy.”
And from (I think) The Erection Set:
“Shut up,” she said, “and fuck me like a dog.”
Forgot to add a first line (and again, my memory may be faulty:)
“If I had cared to live, I should have died.”
Silverlock?
Exactly! – sorry, I forgot to put the source. Didn’t mean to be cryptic.
Yay! Finally, someone else in the universe knows both Lem and The Cyberiad.
“How does it all begin? I suppose it never begins. It just continues. And, one…”
from Martha Graham’s Blood Memory
And the last line:
“It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.”
Also (last line):
“La commedia è finita!” (I pagliacci, Ruggero Leoncavallo. Line often misattributed to Canio, originally assigned to Tonio.)
From “Scanners Live in Vain” by Cordwainer Smith; first line:
“Martel was angry. He did not even adjust his blood away from anger.”
IMNSHO, that sentence is right up there with Orwell’s “clocks were striking thirteen” and Heinlein’s “the door dilated” as Best. Science. Fiction. Sentence. Ev-AR!
As far as I recall, the last lines are:
“Sorry your friend didn’t make it.”
“Who?”
“Your friend, Parizianski.”
There are not enough cool smileys for this story. Here’s one 
to start.
It was a pleasure to burn.
It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history.
–Farenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
Hey, you took mine.
How about
“This is the saddest story I have ever heard”
The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford
Closing line:
*And the silence was deeper that night across the face of the world, from pole to pole, deeper than it had ever been before in the life of the creatures that called themselves human.
But not as deep as it would soon become.*
– On the Slab, Harlan Ellison
Great choices. Amazon Online Reader is also available, for both Rebecca – “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” – and The Stranger (and A River Runs Through It).
My contribution, from among many great and short stories…
First line:
“My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttel,” said a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen; “in the meantime you must try and put up with me.”
Last line:
Romance at short notice was her speciality.
Yes, Saki’s “The Open Window”.
Now consider the tortoise and the eagle.
Vorbis stood up, uncertainly, and followed Brutha across the dsesert.
Death watched them walk away.
‘Small Gods’ - Terry Pratchett
“He was one hundred and seventy days dying and not yet dead.” The Stars My Destination
“Someone must have slandered Josef K., f or one morning without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.”
"Like a dog!” he said; it was as if the shame of it should outlive him.
Franz Kafka, “The Trial”
Opening:
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive…” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: “Holy Jesus!” What are these goddamn animals? - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson
These are the times that try men’s souls. - The American Crisis, Thomas Paine
Closing:
*“But why?” Simon Wagstaff shouted. “Why? Why? Why?”
Old Bingo drank a glass of beer, belched, and spoke.
“Why not?” * - Venus on the Half-Shell, Kilgore Trout (Philip Jose Farmer)