Which Romance Classics Have The Most Famous Opening Lines?

I love quick lists, so here’s my casual top-five of romance openings that stick in my head and why:

1) 'Pride and Prejudice' — The ironic universality of its opening is like a wink; it prepares you for a romance built on wit and social games.

2) 'Anna Karenina' — That sweeping generalization about families reads like a moral bell: love here will be dramatic and heavy.

3) 'Rebecca' — "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." It’s atmospheric and instantly makes love feel haunted by memory.

4) 'Jane Eyre' — The plain, domestic first sentence invites you into a single consciousness; love becomes intensely personal.

5) 'Love in the Time of Cholera' — The sensory, almost medicinal smell tied to unrequited love gives romance a physical echo.

These lines are short, sharp, and they do different jobs: irony, warning, mood, intimacy, and scent-memory. If you’re building a reading night, I say start with the opening line and let it decide whether you stay. Reading them aloud with tea helps, in my experience.

On a quieter afternoon I like to flip through the first pages of big-name novels and see how authors set the tone. A few opening lines are famous because they do more than introduce a scene — they announce a theme. For example, 'Wuthering Heights' opens with an immediate, journal-like note that riffs on return and observation, which makes the whole tale feel like something unearthed rather than freshly made. That archival voice makes the romance inside feel aged and stormy.

Another opener that has stuck with me across years is the first line of 'The Great Gatsby' — "In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice..." While not a straight-up romance, it frames a novel obsessed with love, longing, and the past. 'Madame Bovary' begins almost mundanely, which is the point: an ordinary opening that leads into extraordinary romantic disillusionment. 'Persuasion' offers a social portrait-snap of its heroine’s world, setting up regret and second chances from the outside in. Each of these lines works differently — some seduce you with wit, others with looming melancholy.

What I take away is that a memorable opening can be an author's sly promise: this book will make you laugh at society, cry at love, or question what love really costs. I often judge a book by the opening line these days; it’s a tiny litmus test for whether I’ll keep turning pages, and more than once I’ve been led to a beloved re-read because of it.

Hands down, the single sentence that pulls me into a love story is like a warm first page hug — and some classics are practically legendary for that opening hook. I love how 'Pride and Prejudice' hits you with, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." That line is equal parts irony and social stage-setting; every time I read it I grin and brace for matchmaking and misreadings. It’s the kind of opening that tells you exactly what the novel will be playfully poking at.

Then there are openings that flip the mood entirely. 'Anna Karenina' begins with the solemn, almost fatalistic, "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." That's not flirting with romance so much as warning you that love will be tangled with consequence. 'Rebecca' starts with a dreamlike, haunting note: "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." As a reader, that line instantly shivers and promises mystery wrapped in memory.

I also go weak for the intimacy of 'Jane Eyre' — "There was no possibility of taking a walk that day." Short, grounding, and oddly domestic, it pulls you into Jane's world and mood. And for pure poetic inevitability, Gabriel García Márquez in 'Love in the Time of Cholera' gives us, "It was inevitable: the smell of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love." That one smells of nostalgia and heartbreak. These openings show that romance isn’t only kisses and flowers; sometimes it’s irony, fate, or a memory that frames the whole story. If you want a cozy reading night, pick one and read the first line aloud — it already sets the scene for everything that follows.