Can You Match the Classic Book to Its Most Famous Line?

By: Torrance Grey
Estimated Completion Time
5 min
Can You Match the Classic Book to Its Most Famous Line?
Image: Alicia Llop/Moment/GettyImages

About This Quiz

Mark Twain called a classic "a book everyone wants to have read, but nobody wants to read." And what better way to fake it than to be able to quote a classic book's most famous line? Consider: 
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times;" "It was a pleasure to burn," and "Reader, I married him." Undoubtedly, these famous quotes ring a bell. But can you actually match them to their books? (We can't tell you the answers here; you'll run across all three in the quiz). 

With some books, pretty much everyone agrees on what its most famous line is - this is true of the opening line of "Pride and Prejudice," which you'll find on everything from dishtowels to bookmarks. But with others, there isn't one clear winner. For this quiz, we've picked what we feel is the best-known, most-quoted line. Often it's a first line or the last line, but not always. Here's a helpful hint: though you might see a book used more than once in the answer options (there are choices for each quote), no book will be the right answer more than once. In other words, each question is about a unique book.

You might disagree with one or two of our picks; if so, tell us your choice in the comments. And good luck!

"Stay gold, Ponyboy."
Catch-22
Franny and Zooey
The Outsiders
The Return of the Native
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."
Madame Bovary
Sense and Sensibility
Neuromancher
A Tale of Two Cities
"So we beat on, boats against the tide... borne ceaselessly back into the past."
Beloved
The Great Gatsby
The Last Six Million Seconds
The Shadow Over Innsmouth

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"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a gentleman in possession of a fortune, must be in want of a wife."
Clarissa
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Pride and Prejudice
Persuasion
"There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the thing you were after."
Anne of Green Gables
The Hobbit
The Paris Wife
Robinson Crusoe
"It was a pleasure to burn."
Catch-22
Fahrenheit 451
A Farewell to Arms
The Sun Also Rises

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"Call me Ishmael."
Catcher in the Rye
Emma
Moby Dick
The Scarlet Letter
"War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."
1984
A Confederacy of Dunces
October Road
To Kill a Mockingbird
"We've got to have rules and to obey them. After all, we're not savages."
The Mayor of Casterbridge
The Hunger Games
Lord of the Flies
War and Peace

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"Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt."
Little Women
Looking for Alaska
A Farewell to Arms
Slaughterhouse-Five
"I will live in the past, the present and the future!"
A Christmas Carol
Fat City
A Pair of Blue Eyes
The Catcher in the Rye
"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."
This Side of Paradise
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Moby-Dick
Eat, Pray, Love

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"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
Anna Karenina
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The Love of the Last Tycoon
Don Quixote
"This is the story of America. Everybody's doing what they think they're supposed to do."
The Beautiful and Damned
Northanger Abbey
On the Road
Franny and Zooey
"I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be."
Great Expectations
Franny and Zooey
Persuasion
The Return of the Native

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"One man's life or death were a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge I sought."
Pride and Prejudice
Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus
All Creatures Great and Small
The Road to Wigan Pier
"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand."
The Handmaid's Tale
Infinite Jest
To Kill a Mockingbird
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
"Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined."
Beloved
The Fault in Our Stars
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
The House on Mango Street

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"Why didn't you tell me there was danger in men-folk? Why didn't you warn me?"
The Bluest Eye
The Dunwich Horror
Sense and Sensibility
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
"Dead men are heavier than broken hearts."
The Big Sleep
Dracula
At the Mountains of Madness
A Series of Unfortunate Events
"I'd known plenty of dead people, of course, but I'd never dated one."
Catcher in the Rye
The Fault in Our Stars
Anne of Green Gables
Rebecca

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"Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley."
Jane Eyre
Anno Dracula
Rebecca
The Remains of the Day
"Reader, I married him."
Jane Eyre
The Mayor of Casterbridge
Northanger Abbey
Pamela
"High school isn't a very important place. When you're going you think it's a big deal, but when it's over, nobody really thinks it's great unless they're beered up."
Carrie
Sister Carrie
Eat, Pray, Love
On the Road

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"But his dreams were as gigantic as his surroundings were small."
All Quiet on the Western Front
Jude the Obscure
Seabiscuit
This Side of Paradise
"What is essential is invisible to the eye."
All Creatures Great and Small
The Little Prince
The Alchemist
Shane
"For the dead travel fast."
Dracula
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
To the Lighthouse

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"I am not afraid of storms, because I am learning how to sail my ship."
The Road to Wigan Pier
The Hunger Games
Little Women
The Return of the Native
"Surely it was a good way to die, in the place of someone else, someone I loved."
Catch-22
Dracula
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Twilight
"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you."
Catch-22
The Corrections
Less Than Zero
White Noise

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"He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same."
The Scarlet Letter
The Hunger Games
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
Wuthering Heights
"A man can be destroyed but not defeated."
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Guards
The Shining
The Old Man and the Sea
"I am always saying 'Glad to've met you' to someone I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, though, you've got to say that stuff."
Catcher in the Rye
Looking for Alaska
The Red Badge of Courage
A Confederacy of Dunces

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"When you want something, the whole universe conspires to help you get it."
The Alchemist
For Whom the Bell Tolls
All Creatures Great and Small
Sense and Sensibility
"A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct."
Dune
The Handmaid's Tale
The Corrections
Little Dorrit