More A.C. Clarke, from 2001:
“For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something.”
I always thought that was a brilliant way to end the story, with David Bowman mirroring the pre-human Moon Watcher’s thoughts after being nudged into the next step of evolution by the monolith. Fantastic!
EZ
D’oh! How could I forget these?
“‘Like a dog!’ he said; it was as if the shame of it should outlive him.”
“And it was like a confirmation of their new dreams and good intentions that at the end of their ride the daughter was the first to get up, stretching her young body.”
"I’m going now to close it.”
From Looking for Mr. Goodbar, can’t remember the exact wording, but something like “Go ahead, get it over with, do it…”
It’s what the main character is thinking just before she is murdered.
from memory -
“He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.” - To Kill a Mockingbird.
The books’s always meant a great deal to me - but the night I spent in the hospital bed at my son’s side made it resonate further.
“We must cultivate our gardens.” – Voltaire, Candide
From Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll:
A boat beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July--
Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear--
Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die.
Autumn frosts have slain July.
Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.
Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.
In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:
Ever drifting down the stream--
Lingering in the golden gleam--
Life, what is it but a dream?
It wasn’t until I was an adult that I discovered that this last poem was an acrostic, although I did know that there really was an Alice who was Carroll’s inspiration.
Not to mention the sheer jaw-dropping surprise at discovering that the French army ever invaded Ohio.
Favorite last line:
“How many experience points do I get?”
Those french people, they are very sneaky.
King Rat by James Clavell.
“And the strongest was always the King, not by strength alone, but King by cunning and luck and strength together. Among the rats.”
You have to understand This book is about British and American and Aussie POWs in Changi prison during WWII. One man, Corporal King, an American, makes a pretty decent life for himself through blackmarket trading. He has cigarettes when others have none, he eats eggs and meat when others subsist on rice. He takes care of his buddies, but they also wait on him (like a King). Then the war ends, and his power is gone. He was only king among the men because they weren’t men. They were “rats.”
**When they entered, they found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was. ** The Picture of dorian Gray, Oscar wilde
At last things grew so exciting that his dear families went off one by one in a hurry to the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, to borrow new noses from the Crocodile. When they came back nobody spanked anybody any more; and ever since that day, O Best Beloved, all the Elephants you will ever see, besides all those that you won’t, have trunks precisely like the trunk of the 'satiable Elephant’s Child. The Elephant’s child, Rudyard Kipling.
**“For me,” said Sherlock Holmes, “there still remains the cocaine-bottle.” And he stretched his long white hand up for it. ** The Sign Of Four.
Those have been some memorable last lines. I suppose it depends on your literary taste but this from John Prebble’s Colloden, Penguin Books, 1967, has always gotten me:
From the green saucer of Glenaladale, dipping down to Loch Shiel, Alexander Macdonald had taken one hundred and fifty men to serve in Clanranald’s regiment. Within a century there was nothing there but the lone shieling of the song.
Plays are literature, right? Since y’all beat me to Animal Farm, which was the first thing I thought of (although the line that made me gasp audibly was the earlier “He carried a whip in his trotter.”) I’ll do some plays.
“Listen, I want you to send a wire to the Chief of Police at La Porte, Indiana.-That’s right.-Tell him to meet the twelve-forty out of Chicago-New York Central-and arrest Hildy Johnson and bring him back here. Wire him a full description. The son of a bitch stole my watch!” - Walter Burns, The Front Page, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur
“Hmmm–eleven o’clock in Grover’s Corners. Everybody’s resting in Grover’s Corners. Tomorrow’s going to be another day. You get a good rest too. Good night.” - The Stage Manager, Our Town, Thornton Wilder
After deciding that she wants to be a nun, and being told to wait a year by the Mother Superior: “That was in the winter of my senior year. Then in the spring something happened to me. Yes, I remember. I fell in love with James Tyrone and was so happy for a time.” - Mary Tyrone, *Long Day’s Journey into Night, * Eugene O’Neill
“I learned three things in Zurich during the war. I wrote them down. Firstly, you’re either a revolutionary or you’re not, and if you’re not you might as well be an artist as anything else. Secondly, if you can’t be an artist, you might as well be a revolutionary…
I forget the third thing.” - Henry Carr, *Travesties, * Tom Stoppard
Hiding in the alternating patterns of digits,deep inside the transcendental number, was a perfect circle,its form traced out by unities in a field of noughts.
The universe was made on purpose,the circle said. In whatever galaxy you happen to find yourself,you take the circumference of a circle,divide it by its diameter,measure closely enough,and uncover a miracle–another circle,drawn kilometers downstream of the decimal point. There would be richer messages farther in. It doesn’t matter what you look like,or what you’re made of,or where you come from. As long as you live in this universe,and have a modest talent for mathematics,sooner or later you’ll find it. It’s already here. It’s inside everything. You don’t have to leave your planet to find it. In the fabric of space and in the nature of matter,as in a great work of art,there is,written small,the artist’s signature. Standing over humans,gods,and demons,subsuming Caretakers and Tunnel builders,there is an intelligence that antedates the universe.
The circle had closed.
She found what she had been looking for.
CARL SAGAN
CONTACT
The last line to “Contact” still gives me goosebumps. 
From Kim Stanley Robinson’s Blue Mars, the third and last of his Mars books: “Waves broke in swift lines on the beach, and she walked over the sand toward her friends, in the wind, on Mars, on Mars, on Mars, on Mars, on Mars.”
Someone had already used the 2001 quote that I wanted to offer(which will mess with your tear ducts,if you read the book from the beginning) so I went looking through a few boxes of books to see what might work,and happened upon “Contact”.
I haven’t read that book for a decade or more,and was surprised at the depth of emotion that washed over me when I read the last two lines.It was hard to type.I had huge goosebumps and the hair on my arms was standing up.I kept getting catches in my throat.
Christ,I miss Sagan.
“… scar” ( from Harry Potter book seven. )
Well somebody had to say it
“It is when the feet weary and hope seems vain that the heartaches and the longings arise. Know, then, that for you is neither surfeit nor content. In your rocking chair, by your window dreaming, shall you long, alone. In your rocking chair, by your window, shall you dream such happiness as you may never feel.” – Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser
Tale of Two Cities has gone, so I’ll hijack and go for a movie:
Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship…