In a hole in the ground, there lived a Hobbit.

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." Maybe not considered a classic novel but I love that first line.

Have to add;

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
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One Hundred Years of Solitude ..... Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I was hoping for... "I am Sam... Sam I am.."... I knew I could nail that one.

"Call me Fishmeal."  That was the great Mad Magazine's satirical opening to Everybody Knows What Book.

"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents." Little Women

This makes me want to run to the book store.

Tiny bit sad that there was no “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again.”

These are first lines of great novels.  However, only some were great first lines.

It's amazing that so many had such banal opening lines. Maybe why "It was the best of times..." is such a stellar beginning.

The first "first line" I committed to memory was "The first place that I can well remember was a large pleasant meadow with a pond of clear water in it." --Black Beauty (I was 8).

I was surprised at how many of them I'd read and yet didn't recognize. Of course, we're talking books I read fifty or sixty years ago.

I haven’t read Catcher in the Rye since 1980, but Holden Caufield’s voice is so distinctive, I recognized it instantly.

Seems there's classics and classics. Mine are mostly different ones ... 😇😇😇

I got 49, when informed there were only 48, I was even more impressed

"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."

My very favorite first line" The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."  from The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley

Oh man, I did so much better the second time I watched the video!

"Scarlett O'Hara  was not beautiful but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were." - Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell

"Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." but “You cannot find peace by avoiding life, Leonard,” is from the movie "The hours".