Favorite Sentences selected by Stanley Fish

Recently, Slate ran five of Stanley Fish's favorite sentences from the history of English. Then asked readers to submit beloved lines—along with an explication of what makes them tick so beautifully.

The three sentences selected by Fish, powerful in their different ways:

"One had to forget—because one could not live with the thought that this graceful, fragile, tender young woman with those eyes, that smile, those gardens and snows in the background, had been brought in a cattle car to an extermination camp and killed by an injection of phenol into the heart, into the gentle heart one had heard beating under one's lips in the dusk of the past."
- From Vladimir Nabokov's Pnin, submitted by Brian Siano

"Then Amnon hated her with very great hatred; so that the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her."
- From 2 Samuel 13:15 (Revised Standard Version), submitted by an STURGEON

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!" "
- From Jack Kerouac's On the Road, submitted by Disa Grey

Taken from Brow Beat: Slate's Culture Blog. Read the entire article here.