There are so many good lines…but here are a couple:
From Greg Brown’s “Just By Myself”
“Love never made a fool of me…I always was one, as you can see.”
and from Shea Seger’s “Wasting the Rain”
“Come on, baby we’re wasting the rain,
Can’t we stay inside and the world go on its way,
Give me one kiss for every moment that remains…”
that’s a great song.
Crud. Somebody already cited “Lawyers, Guns, and Money”
Warren, we’re gonna miss ya. By the way, the London Hilton (home of Trader Vic’s) gets really testy when a bunch of drunk americans stagger in and demand pina coladas. 
But before Billy Joel got all wierd and unable to drive, he gave us this:
“They burned the churches up in Harlem
Like in that Spanish civil war
The flames were everywhere
But no one really cared
They’d always burned up there before”
From “Miami 2017” - a rocking little ditty about the end of the world. Or something.
And then there’s Social Distortion’s
"As the years went on I made a few mistakes
There was trouble bound for this young man.
The Police knocking at my door
Well he don’t live here no more
And he’s playing in a rock and roll band.
From “Born to Lose”
I’d cite damn near everything Social D ever did, but I’m not that hot a typist.
The New Pornographers:
“Nobody knows the wreck of the soul the way you do.”
– “Miss Teen Wordpower”
“The tune you’ll be humming forever, all the words are replaced and wrong.”
– “Letter from an Occupant”
Liz Phair:
“He said he liked to do it backwards.
I said that’s just fine with me.
That way we can fuck and watch TV.”
– “Chopsticks”
“You can take me home, but I will never be your girl
I won’t let your mystery unfurl.”
– “Headache”
"What ever happened to a boyfriend
The kind of guy who tries to win you over, and
What ever happened to a boyfriend
The kind of guy who makes love cause he’s in it, and
I want a boyfriend
I want a boyfriend
I want all that stupid old shit
Like letters and sodas."
– “Fuck and Run”
Magnetic Fields (and hell, just read the lyrics sheet to 69 Love Songs):
“I see that kiss-me pucker forming
but maybe you should plug it with a beer.”
– “Papa Was a Rodeo”
“Reno Dakota there’s not an iota
of kindness in you.
You know you enthrall me
and yet you don’t call me.
It’s making me blue.
Pantone 292.”
– “Reno Dakota”
“Cause I always say I love you
when I mean turn out the light,
and I say let’s run away
when I just mean stay the night.
But the words you want to hear
you will never hear from me.
I’ll never say ‘happy anniversary’
never stay to say ‘happy anniversary.’”
– “I Think I Need a New Heart”
Madonna:
“Beauty’s where you find it, not just where you bump and grind it.”
– “Vogue”
Incredible String Band
“Born in a house where the door is shut tight
Shadowy fingers on the curtains at night”
– Koeeoaddi There 
“And who would ride backwards on a giraffe
Stopping every so often to laugh”
– A Very Cellular Song
James McMurtry
“If you’re lookin’ for a good time you’re a little bit late
we rolled up the sidewalks at a quarter to eight.
It’s a small town, can’t sell you no beer.
It’s a small town, son
may I ask what you’re doin’ here?”
– Talkin’ at the Texaco
“I’m not from here
but people tell me
it’s not like it used to be
they say I should have been here
back about ten years
before it got ruined by folks like me”
– I’m Not From Here
‘Happy campers
are poopin’ in their pampers
when the mountain
becomes a fountain’
—Volcano
Sam: You are correct that Steve Goodman wrote it, thanks for the correction. However, I still believe the David Allen Coe version is the superior one.
When I think great lyrics I think of This Waltz by Leonard Cohen
But my favorite verse from it is probably:
There’s a concert hall in Vienna
Where your mouth had a thousand reviews
There’s a bar where the boys have stopped talking
They’ve been sentenced to death by the blues
Ah, but who is it climbs to your picture
With a garland of freshly cut tears?
Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz it’s been dying for years
and he’s had many other great lyrical moments, but this song is perhaps my favorite by him.
Also not to be not mentioned is “Suzanne” at http://www.seeklyrics.com/lyrics/Leonard-Cohen/Suzanne.html
my favorite verse is :
Now Suzanne takes your hand
And she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
From Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds the mirror
I’m also fond “Coal Tattoo” by Billy Ed Wheeler:
Somebody said that’s a strange tattoo
You have on the side of your head
I said that’s the mark of the number 9 coal
A little more and I’d be dead.
Dire Straits gave us the immortal:
“Two men say they’re Jesus, one of them must be wrong”
And some quickies:
“Let us be lovers, we’ll marry our fortunes together” Paul Simon
“Don’t shoot, I dig farmers” Bob Dylan
“How would you feel if I turned on the bath,
Ducked your head under and started to laugh?” Kieth Moon and Pete Townsend
The old rocker wore his hair too long
Wore his trouser cuffs too tight
Unfashionable to the end
Drank his ale too light
Death’s head belts buckle, yesterday dreams
The Transport Caf’ prophet of doom
Ringing no change in his double-sewn seams
In his post-war-babe gloom
-Ian Anderson -
And in her eyes, you see nothing
No sign of love behind the tears
Cried for no one
A love that should have lasted years
“The Dove has torn her wings, so no more songs of love,
We are not here to sing, we’re here to kill the Dove.”
– Jacques Brel –
and finally Dylan again:
“And I hope that you die
And your death will come soon
I’ll follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I’ll watch as you’re lowered
Down to your death bed
And I’ll stand o’er your grave
'Till I’m sure that you’re dead”
And that’s just the short list
One of the best single lines ever comes courtesy of Tom Waits…
Don’t you know there ain’t no devil, there’s just god when he’s drunk
— Heartattack and Vine
Not a single line, and not necessarily profound, but cool…
Robyn Hitchcock
thirteen men with long black heads
all came and stood around her bed
and when the morning light came in
she saw their heads had all caved in
their rotting brains fell to the floor
and crawled away towards the door
— Sleeping With Your Devil Mask
Wow, faaaarrrrrr too many great songwriters out there to pick just a line, but Jackson Browne always comes to mind as one the great wordsmiths.
“somewhere between the time you arrive and the time you go
may lie a reason you were alive, but you’ll never know.”
-from For A Dancer,
Late For the Sky album
Back to Sting:
Sink like a stone that’s been thrown in the ocean
My logic has drowned in a sea of emotion
The oft’ maligned Bernie Taupin:
There are women and women
And some hold you tight
While some leave you counting
Stars in the night
I have no feelings, I have no heart
Love always cuts out the warm and tender part
Lastly, a universally loathed bit of Duran Duran that I happen to love:
Now I’m saying this in private
If I had a car
I’d drive it insane
I always use these threads to boost the reputation of one Ben Gibbard, songwriter for Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service:
I can’t see why you’d want to live here,
Billboards reach past the tallest buildings,
You can’t swim in a town this shallow,
'Cause you will most assuredly drown tomorrow. - “Why You’d Want to Live Here”
I wish the world was flat like the old days,
when I could travel just by folding a map. - “The New Year”
I’ll be your platform shoes,
undo what heredity’s done to you;
You won’t have to strain to look into my eyes. - “Brand New Colony”
I think I’m drunk enough to drive you home now. - “Champagne from a Paper Cup”
I love this line from A Case of You that I wish on a daily basis I wrote it instead
Love is touching souls
Surely you touched mine
Because a part of you pours out of me
In these lines from time to time
From Ben Fold’s Five Evaporated
And I poured my heart out
I poured my heart out
It evaporated, see?
and later in the song
I’m sure back home they think I’ve lost my mind
From The Man Who Sold the World
Oh no. Not me, we never never lost control No real reason, I just like it.
From REM’s At My Most Beautiful
You always say your name
Like I wouldn’t know it’s you
At your most beautiful.
From Cowboy Junkie’s Crescent Moon:
“Won’t you come with me?” She said,
“There’s plenty of room in my iron bed
You’re looking cold and tired and more than a little human
I know I’m not part of the life you had planned
But I think once your body feels my hand
Your mind will change and your heart will lose its pain”
And from Seven Years on the same album:
Haven’t seen the sun in seven days;
November’s got her nails dug in deep
Haven’t seen my son in seven years;
And chances are we’ll never again meet
Hell, I could fill a thread quoting from Cowboy Junkie’s lyrics.
He likes to read books written for girls
He thinks he’s a man of the world
In the darkest of places he gets his thrills
-Camera Obscura
This is the story of the boys who loved you
Who love you now and loved you then
And some were sweet, some were cold and snuffed you
And some just laid around in bed.
Some had crumbled you straight to your knees
Did it cruel, did it tenderly
Some had crawled their way into your heart
To rend your ventricles apart
This is the story of the boys who loved you
-The Decemberists
I’m a legionnaire
Camel in disrepair
hoping for a frigidaire to come passing by
I am on reprieve
lacking my joie de vive
missing my gay paris
in this desert dry
-The Decemberists
I remember quiet evenings trembling close to you.
-Tom Waits
Well, I suppose I should get the most profound song lyric of all time out of the way first:
“I don’t have no problem with you fucking me
But I have a little problem with you not fucking me.” – Ol’ Dirty Bastard, “Baby I Got Your Money”
Runners-up (off the top of my head) include:
“Love without anger isn’t love at all.” – Devo, “Love Without Anger”
“Jane fonda on the screen today
Convinced the liberals it’s okay
So let’s get dressed and dance away the night!
While they kill kill kill kill kill the poor, kill kill kill kill kill the poor, kill kill kill kill kill the poor tonight!” – the Dead Kennedys, “Kill the Poor”
“We are forces of chaos and anarchy
Everything they say we are, we are!
And we are very proud of ourselves!
Up against the wall!
Up against the wall, motherfucker!
Tear down the wall!” – Jefferson Airplane, “We Can Be Together”
“I gave you my high school ring
At the root beer stand
We had a teenage love
I thought it was sharp, it was really so grand!” – Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, “Go Cry On Somebody Else’s Shoulder”
“Limitless, undying love, which shines around me like a million suns, and calls me on and on across the universe” – the Beatles, “Across the Universe” (the entire song has great lyrics)
And basically anything by Anal Cunt, for their marvelous use of shock value to the point of hilarious inanity.
You can mention the New Pornographers without mentioning Mass Romantic? Pass the crackpipe, brother, it’s rude not to share.
“Mass romantic fool, separated by sheets when the curtain calls you
Speaking on the themes of stolen virtue missing from the radio
Now this romantic duel’s into the streets, bon appetit
You’ve eaten me alive. Do you realise this is not the way?”
Jophiel: I’m with you on the Cowboy Junkies. Looking forward to the new album next week, too. A personal favourite:
“Everything is not enough, nothing is too much to bear
Where you’ve been is good and gone, all you keep’s the getting there.”
A few original suggestions:
“Why should I forgive you, after all that I’ve seen?
Quietly whisper, when my heart wants to scream?”
The entire of I Want The Drugs by the Supersuckers, just because it’s daft.
“If I could, you know I would
So hold my hand and understand that I’m the man who loves you.”
“Trip on fence post line, sifting through the remains
One man’s close pursuit is another man’s last chance
To make it through the divide
Last chance; suffer the weight, or get buried by this black heart
Sweeping over the land
Black heart, crawling its way to the four corners of the world.”
Dylan again, from Mr. Tambourine Man
Another Rush fan, here. Being that I was only 8 years old when they released their Moving Pictures album, I wasn’t old enough to appreciate Rush’s music, let alone the lyrics. Up until I was 16 or so, Rush was just another band my older brother liked.
The first time I listened to Subdivisions on the headphones, lyrics in hand, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I guess it’s the relief of knowing that I’m not the only one who felt trapped by the imposed boundaries of the “norm,” and yet at the same time, seeking acceptance from a world I wanted no part of.
Sprawling on the fringes of the city
In geometric order, an insulated border
In between the bright lights
And the far unlit unknown.
Growing up it all seems so one sided
Opinions all provided, the future pre decided
Detached and subdivided
In the mass production zone.
Nowhere is the dreamer
Or the misfit so alone.
Subdivisions
In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out.
Subdivisions
In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast out.
Any escape might help to smooth
The unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe
The restless dreams of youth.
Drawn like moths we drift into the city
A timeless old attraction
Cruising for the action
Lit up like a firefly
Just to feel the living night.
Some will sell their dreams for small desires
Or lose the race to rat’s, get caught in ticking traps
And start to dream of somewhere
To relax their restless flight.
Somewhere out of a memory
Of lighted streets on quiet nights.
The Stone Roses had some great lyrics.
From Made of Stone:
And from Waterfall:
Along with ddgryphon, I believe that Lenord Cohen has written some fine lyrics. I’m particularly enamored of Hallelujah
I heard there was a secret chord
That David played and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music do you
Well it goes like this:
The fourth, the fifth, the minor fall and the major lift
The baffled king composing
With the 4th on “the fourth,” the 5th on “the fifth,” the minor to major change between “minor fall” and “major lift”
Not to mention the happy/mournful tone of the whole thing and all the clever biblical references.