1: Make haste, my beloved, and be thou like to a roe or to a young hart upon the mountains of spices.
Song of Solomon (around 965 BC).....The Authorised Version of the Bible
2: We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, dispossessed, had stopped.
The Turn of the Screw (1898).....Henry James
3: Reader, I married him
If you thought Jane Eyre, deduct two marks. This is not the last line, it is the first line of the last chapter.
4: They stood for a moment at the balustrade and looked at Trafalgar Square. Cabs and omnibuses hurried to and fro, and cabs passed, hastening in every direction, and the sun was shining.
Of Human Bondage (1915).....Somerset Maugham
5: Certain vegetables or substances which partake of the nature both of vegetable and animals.
Dictionary (Definition of zoophyte) (1755).....Samuel Johnson
6: Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.
The Nine Billion Names of God (1953).....Arthur C Clarke
7: He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not until they had examined the rings that they recognised who it was.
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890/91).....Oscar Wilde
8: The tomb bore the names of Tom and Maggie Tulliver, and below the names it was written—“In their death they were not divided”.
The Mill on the Floss (1860).....George Eliot
9: The gun, Bill Roach had finally convinced himself, was after all a dream.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974).....John le Carré
10: 'Tootle-oo to you,' she said. 'But you’ll be seeing me again.'
And the curlew fluted once more.
Whisky Galore (1947).....Compton Mackenzie
11: Then the schoolmaster glanced instinctively at the red ribbon which adorned the Senator’s button-hole. The latter noticed his glance.
‘Well, who knows?’ Piéchut said.
Clochemerle (1934).....Gabriel Chevallier
12: And now I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers—shrivelled now, and brown and flat and brittle—to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.
The Time Machine (1895).....H G Wells
13:…the men in bowler hats, the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, the red buses, the blue policemen—all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs.
Homage to Catalonia (1938).....George Orwell
14: The papers report more falls of snow, out-lying farms and villages in Yorkshire, East Lothian, and in the Highlands are entirely isolated by the deep snow.
The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady (1906).....Edith Holden
15: ‘Simmonds, Chiltern Street, London W1,’ she wrote, ‘Coming home’. But, after a moment, she thought that this was not entirely accurate and, crossing out the words ‘Coming home’, wrote simply ‘Returning’.
Hotel du Lac (1985).....Anita Brookner
16: I went straight to Redriff, where I arrived the same day at two in the afternoon, and found my wife and family in good health.
Gulliver’s Travels (1726/1735).....Jonathan Swift
17: The men began singing, a grave, slow song that drifted away into the night. Soon the road was empty. All that remained of the German regiment was a little cloud of dust.
Suite Française (1941/2, pub. 2004).....Irène Némirovsky
18: At first, amid the applause of the gods, he betrayed a trifle of his old self-consciousness and awkwardness. This passed away as the puppies’ antics and mauling continued, and he lay with half-shut, patient eyes, drowsing in the sun.
White Fang (1907).....Jack London
19: ...in whom alone the love, and the tenderness, and the purity, and the strength, and the courage, and the wisdom of all these dwell forever in perfect fulness.
Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857).....Thomas Hughes
20: Even the mature historian’s privilege of setting forth conversations of which he knows only the gist is one that I have availed myself of hardly at all.
I, Claudius (1934).....Robert Graves
21: I straightened the tie. I pulled down the waistcoat. I shot the cuffs. I felt absolutely all-righto.
‘Lead me to her,’ I said.
A story in Very Good, Jeeves (1930).....P G Wodehouse
22: We stared at it for a long time, trying to work it out. Martin was right. It didn’t look as though it was moving, but it must have been, I suppose.
A Long Way Down (2005).....Nick Hornby
23: But it was so far away that the four peaks looked trifling, hardly distinguishable, and different from the way they looked from the farm. The outline of the mountain was slowly smoothed and levelled out by the hand of distance.
Out of Africa (1937).....Karen Blixen
24: Though her hands were imprecise blurs, paint heaped on paint and rolled with the brush, the rest of her skin had been expertly rendered in all its variety—chalky whites and lively pinks, the underlying blueof her veins and the ever present human hint of yellow, intimation of what is to come.
On Beauty (2005).....Zadie Smith
25: Had meal with Lou at 5.30, saw the News, watched the dreary saga of murder and mayhem. By 6.30 pain in the back was pulsating as its never done before… so this, plus the stomach trouble combines to torture me – oh – what’s the bloody point?
Diaries (pub. 1993).....Kenneth Williams
Your score (out of 48)
4 or less: Your major leisure activity is probably not reading but may be fretwork, embroidery or Rugger.
between 5 and 25: 95% of all literate adults will score within this range,
between 26 and 35: You have read widely, have an excellent memory and probably have, or are reading for, a PhD in Literature. If we were to meet it is unlikely that we would become close friends.
36 or over: Oh, yeah?
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