"‘Battlefield Earth’ is like taking a bus trip with someone who has needed a bath for a long time. " Roger Ebert
“This space intentionally left blank.”
I love this sentence for its absurdity.
A couple of political gems…
“We are prepared to vote against any earmarks proposed by us.” US Senator (R-TX) Jon Cornyn.
“How does somebody get a rebate who hasn’t put in any bate?!” US Rep. (R-TX) Louie Gohmert.
The beauty of this sentence is how it’s changed. When it was written, a television tuned to a dead channel was black and white static, and it starts the book with a stormy, chaotic feel. Now a television tuned to a dead channel is bright blue, and it starts the book with an ominously artificial, hyper-ordered feel. The interpretations are very different, but both completely work.
My favorite start to a story was by one of my third graders, thus:
Bing! the volcano exploded.
My favorite Tom Waits lyric qualifies:
When the moon is a cold, chiseled dagger,
and it’s sharp enough to draw blood from a stone,
He rides through your dreams on a coach and horses,
and the fenceposts in the moonlight look like bones.
“We all have our flaws, and mine is being wicked.” (Thurber, The 13 Clocks)
For a few decades I carried around in my wallet a small piece of paper with my favorite sentences on it. It’s lost now . . . the only one I remember is a quote from a dear friend who died young, “If you were really tiny you could have a very good time.”
Oh, I remember another one on that paper. “Paradise is exactly like where you are right now . . . only much, much better.” (Laurie Anderson. I think people read this as ironic, but I don’t)
However, the sentence that came to my mind immediately upon reading the OP was
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Sorry if either of these have been mentioned . . .
If song lyrics count, then one of the verses in Paul Simon’s “America”:
Kathy, I’m lost, I said, though I knew she was sleeping
I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why.
Counting the cars on the New Jersey turnpike
They’ve all come to look for America.
Second, in The Grapes of Wrath, Tom and Al are in the junkyard/secondhand car parts shop trying to get a certain part, and they meet the One-Eyed Man, who blames all his misfortunes on the loss of his eye. Tom and him have a conversation, with Tom telling him he shouldn’t just wallow in self pity but go out there and do something about it. The One-Eyed Man seems inspired and truly happy, but has a change of heart when they leave:
The one-eyed man watched them go, and then he went through the iron shed to his shack behind. It was dark inside. He felt his way to the mattress on the floor, and he
stretched out and cried in his bed, and the cars whizzing by on the highway only strengthened the walls of his loneliness.
Something about that last line - the cars whizzing by on the highway only strengthened the walls of his loneliness - is just so powerful.
ETA: Oh, and another Paul Simon one - the last line of “I Am a Rock.” And a rock feels no pain/And an island never cries.
“Because that’s where the money was.”
– Willy Sutton, when asked by cops why he robbed banks for a living.
I can’t recall which of CJ Box’s books began with something like: “From all accounts they were a very happy married couple right up to when the cow exploded.”
They, were eco-terrorists.
Oh, and if I can add a song lyric: “On a morning from a Bogart movie, In a country where they turn back time, you go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre, contemplating a crime.”
From “Year of the Cat” by Al Stewart
There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates’ loot on Treasure Island and at the bottom of the Spanish Main … and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life.
~Walt Disney
From The Charge Of The Light Brigade.
My wife likes this one:
From The Odyssey.
“We started out like Romeo and Juliet but it ended up in tragedy” --Milhouse Van Houten
"We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender… "
I’m always remined of the MAD magazine quote that follows this with:
“I say Winston, shouldn’t we fight them in Germany?”
I’ll never be allowed in Great Britian again 
I once persuaded a manual writer at a software company where I used to work to change “This page intentionally left blank” to “This page intentionally left almost blank.”
Well, not the first couple of days. I hadn’t learned to read by then.
The opening of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall:
In the second century of the Christian era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind. The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valor. The gentle but powerful influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantages of wealth and luxury. The image of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence: the Roman senate appeared to possess the sovereign authority, and devolved on the emperors all the executive powers of government. During a happy period of more than fourscore years, the public administration was conducted by the virtue and abilities of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines. It is the design of this, and of the two succeeding chapters, to describe the prosperous condition of their empire; and after wards, from the death of Marcus Antoninus, to deduce the most important circumstances of its decline and fall; a revolution which will ever be remembered, and is still felt by the nations of the earth
“And all the dark and all the lies were all the empty things disguised as me”… from the Goo Goo Dolls song Sympathy,
and
“I am haunted by waters.” from Maclean’s A River Runs Through It
While not one sentence, from The Guns of August on the start of WWI:
SO GORGEOUS WAS THE SPECTACLE ON THE MAY morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back the gasps of admiration. In scarlet and blue and green and purple, three by three the sovereigns rode through the palace gates, with plumed helmets, gold braid, crimson sashes, and jeweled orders flashing in the sun. After them came five heirs apparent, forty more imperial or royal high-nesses, seven queens-four dowager and three regnant-and a scattering of special ambassadors from uncrowned countries. Together they represented seventy nations in the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place and, of its kind, the last. ** The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortage left the palace, but on history’s clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.**
“Someday, somewhere - anywhere, unfailingly, you’ll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.” - Pablo Neruda
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Outstanding!
Madame, that is by far the ugliest nose I have ever seen and I compliment you on it, it suits you.