“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”
(Also quoted as “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.”)
Peter Drucker
Great quote to throw at your boss, when he’s chewing you out for not following his instruction.
“What is the greatest sentence you have read or heard ?”
Lantern
Not the best, but pretty good:
You fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye
“To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.”
–Albus Dumbledore (J. K. Rowling)
“The building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault.” Blood Rites, number 6 in the Dresden Files, by Jim Butcher. Not an inspiration for all time, but the most perfect hook of a first sentence that I’ve ever seen.
Not a single sentence, but truly one of the most notable in all of SF:
“Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour.”
The Brits: Arrogant, pigheaded, class-bound. And yet I still get teary-eyed when I read that sentence. For all their faults, they saved Western civilization.
You left a bit off:
"I will do my best to give thanks for gifts, strangely, beautifully, painfully wrapped. "
Viviane Abbot Walker in Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
by Rebecca Wells
“I think one must finally take one’s life in one’s arms.” - Arthur Miller
I’m also fond of the opening sentence of Stephen King’s The Gunslinger: The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
Simple, yet remarkably evocative.
I guess I’m as guilty as the rest. I don’t have a copy on hand, took the sentence from an online source. Sentences of this type, decribing the world in contradictory terms seem to be common. I wonder if Dickens started it all with that line.
– Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Anthony Burgess, from Enderby Outside.
More of a headline than a sentence, but I would like to embroider it on a pillow:
I did not cut my baby’s umbilical cord for six days so we could have a natural “lotus birth” just like chimpanzees.
Close runner up:
Other animals chew the cord off shortly after birth, but as a vegan, this option did not appeal to me.
“Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starr’d the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins, carried Hats away into the brisk Wind off Delaware,-- the Sleds are brought in and their Runners carefully dried and greased, shoes deposited in the back Hall, a stocking’d-foot Descent made upon the great Kitchen, in a purposeful Dither since Morning, punctuated by the ringing Lids of Boilers and Stewing-Pots, fragrant with Pie-Spices, peel’d Fruits, Suet, heated Sugar,-- the Children, having all upon the Fly, among rhythmic slaps of Batter and Spoon, coax’d and stolen what they might, proceed, as upon each afternoon all this snowy December, to a comfortable Room at the rear of the House, years since given over to their carefree Assaults.”
Two pages and no St. Crispin’s Day?
“This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.”
“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”
Herman Melville, from Moby-Dick
I know the feeling 
Agreed - it’s a great hook.
Y’all know what I’m going to suggest, right?
How can you not read on, with some trepidation, after reading that?
I don’t remember which Discworld book it’s from, but I can’t forget this Terry Pratchett opening line:
“In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.”