The 30 best literary chat-up lines

Get your coat, love, you’ve pulled. Do you believe in love at first sight… or do I have to walk by again? Are you free tonight, or will it cost me? I may not be the best looking guy here, but I’m the only one talking to you. The fact that I’m missing my teeth just means that there’s more room for your tongue. Hi, my name is Pogo, want to jump on my stick?

Contrary to the these little charmers, romance isn’t dead, it just got a bad scriptwriter. If you want to impress the ladies with a few choice lines, best to resort to the classics. In this case, literature.

Learn these refined beauties and you’ll have the object of your desire making you breakfast in bed before you can say your place or mine?

The Picture Of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it."

Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak

“You and I, it’s as though we have been taught to kiss in heaven and sent down to earth together, to see if we know what we were taught.”

Pride And Prejudice - Jane Austen

"In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you."

The Complete Works - D.H. Lawrence

“Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you’ve got to say, and say it hot.”

Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller

“What holds the world together, as I have learned from bitter experience, is sexual intercourse.”

Porno - Irvine Welsh

"You can't lie to your soul."

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

“It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.”

The Enchantress of Florence - Salman Rushdie

“For a fellow who’s not to much to look at, you have the instincts of a champion.”

Where I’m Calling From - Raymond Carver

“We were so intimate once upon a time I can’t believe it now. The memory of being that intimate with somebody. We were so intimate I could puke. I can’t imagine ever being that intimate with somebody else. I haven’t been.”

Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

"You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how.”

Couples - John Updike

“The first breathe of adultery is the freest.”

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain

"I don't want no better book than what your face is."

The History of Love - Nicole Krauss

“Are you happiest and saddest right now that you’ve ever been?” “Of course I am.” “Why?” “Because nothing makes me happier and nothing makes me sadder than you.”

The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoevsky

“As for your face, Lizabetha Prokofievna, I not only think, but am perfectly SURE, that you are an absolute child — in all, in all, mind, both good and bad - and in spite of your years.”

Alien Hearts - Guy de Maupassant

“You’ll find that my coquetry is quite impartial, which allows me to keep my friends.”

Persuasion - Jane Austen

“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you."

The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler

“To say goodbye is to die a little.”

Brokeback Mountain - Annie Proulx

“I wish I knew how to quit you.”

Don Juan - Lord Byron

“A little she strove, and much repented, And whispering, ‘I will ne’er consent’ — consented.”

Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

“To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.”

Love In The Time of Cholera - Gabriel García Márquez

"I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century, to repeat to you once again my vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love."

Atonement - Ian McEwan

“I've never had a moment's doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life.”

Henry V - William Shakespeare

"If thou would have such a one, take me; and take me, take a soldier; take a soldier, take a king."

London Fields - Martin Amis

“You know how it is when two souls meet in a burst of ecstatic volubility, with hearts tickling to hear and to tell, to know everything, to reveal everything, the shared reverence for the other’s otherness, a feeling of solitude radiantly snapped by full contact — all that?”

Nicholas Nickleby - Charles Dickens

“The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.”

The Unabridged Journals - Sylvia Plath

"Kiss me, and you will see how important I am."

Far from the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

"And at home by the fire, whenever you look up there I shall be— and whenever I look up, there will be you."

La Bête Humaine - Émile Zola

"Don't go looking at me like that because you'll wear your eyes out."

William Shakespeare - A Midsummer Night's Dream

"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind."

The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh - Michael Chabon

"Never say love is "like" anything... It isn't."