5 Wonderfully Long Literary Sentences by Samuel Beckett, Virginia Woolf, F. Scott Fitzgerald & Other Masters of the Run-On

TheFaulknerPortable

Despite its occa­sion­al use in spo­ken mono­logue, the Very Long Lit­er­ary Sen­tence prop­er­ly exists in the mind (hence “stream-of-con­scious­ness”), since the most wordy of lit­er­ary exha­la­tions would exhaust the lungs’ capac­i­ty. Mol­ly Bloom’s 36-page, two-sen­tence run-on solil­o­quy at the close of Joyce’s Ulysses takes place entire­ly in her thoughts. Faulkner’s longest sentence—smack in the mid­dle of Absa­lom, Absa­lom! —unspools in Quentin Compson’s tor­tured, silent rumi­na­tions. Accord­ing to a 1983 Guin­ness Book of Records, this mon­ster once qual­i­fied as literature’s longest at 1,288 words, but that record has long been sur­passed, in Eng­lish at least, by Jonathan Coe’s The Rotter’s Club, which ends with a 33-page-long, 13,955 word sen­tence. Czech and Pol­ish nov­el­ists have writ­ten book-length sen­tences since the six­ties, and French writer Math­ias Énard puts them all to shame with a one-sen­tence nov­el 517 pages long, though its sta­tus is “com­pro­mised by 23 chap­ter breaks that alle­vi­ate eye strain,” writes Ed Park in the New York Times. Like Faulkner’s glo­ri­ous run-ons, Jacob Sil­ver­man describes Énard’s one-sen­tence Zone as trans­mut­ing “the hor­rif­ic into some­thing sub­lime.”

Are these lit­er­ary stunts kin to Philippe Petit’s high­wire chal­lenges—under­tak­en for the thrill and just to show they can be done? Park sees the “The Very Long Sen­tence” in more philo­soph­i­cal terms, as “a futile hedge against sep­a­ra­tion, an unwill­ing­ness to part from loved ones, the world, life itself.” Per­haps this is why the very long sen­tence seems most expres­sive of life at its fullest and most expan­sive. Below, we bring you five long lit­er­ary sen­tences culled from var­i­ous sources on the sub­ject. These are, of course, not the “5 longest,” nor the “5 best,” nor any oth­er superla­tive. They are sim­ply five fine exam­ples of The Very Long Sen­tence in lit­er­a­ture. Enjoy read­ing and re-read­ing them, and please leave your favorite Very Long Sen­tence in the com­ments.

At The New York­er’s “Book Club,” Jon Michaud points us toward this long sen­tence, from Samuel Beckett’s Watt. We find the title char­ac­ter, “an obses­sive­ly ratio­nal ser­vant,” attempt­ing to “see a pat­tern in how his mas­ter, Mr. Knott, rearranges the fur­ni­ture.”

Thus it was not rare to find, on the Sun­day, the tall­boy on its feet by the fire, and the dress­ing table on its head by the bed, and the night-stool on its face by the door, and the was­hand-stand on its back by the win­dow; and, on the Mon­day, the tall­boy on its back by the bed, and the dress­ing table on its face by the door, and the night-stool on its back by the win­dow and the was­hand-stand on its feet by the fire; and on the Tues­day…

Here, writes Michaud, the long sen­tence con­veys “a des­per­ate attempt to nail down all the pos­si­bil­i­ties in a giv­en sit­u­a­tion, to keep the world under con­trol by enu­mer­at­ing it.”

The next exam­ple, from Poyn­ter, achieves a very dif­fer­ent effect. Instead of list­ing con­crete objects, the sen­tence below from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gats­by opens up into a series of abstract phras­es.

Its van­ished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pan­dered in whis­pers to the last and great­est of all human dreams; for a tran­si­to­ry enchant­ed moment man must have held his breath in the pres­ence of this con­ti­nent, com­pelled into an aes­thet­ic con­tem­pla­tion he nei­ther under­stood nor desired, face to face for the last time in his­to­ry with some­thing com­men­su­rate to his capac­i­ty for won­der.

Cho­sen by The Amer­i­can Schol­ar edi­tors as one of the “ten best sen­tences,” the pas­sage, writes Roy Peter Clark, achieves quite a feat: “Long sen­tences don’t usu­al­ly hold togeth­er under the weight of abstrac­tions, but this one sets a clear path to the most impor­tant phrase, plant­ed firm­ly at the end, ‘his capac­i­ty for won­der.’”

Jane Wong at Tin House’s blog “The Open Bar” quotes the hyp­not­ic sen­tence below from Jamaica Kincaid’s “The Let­ter from Home.”

I milked the cows, I churned the but­ter, I stored the cheese, I baked the bread, I brewed the tea, I washed the clothes, I dressed the chil­dren; the cat meowed, the dog barked, the horse neighed, the mouse squeaked, the fly buzzed, the gold­fish liv­ing in a bowl stretched its jaws; the door banged shut, the stairs creaked, the fridge hummed, the cur­tains bil­lowed up, the pot boiled, the gas hissed through the stove, the tree branch­es heavy with snow crashed against the roof; my heart beat loud­ly thud! thud!, tiny beads of water grew folds, I shed my skin…

Kincaid’s sen­tences, Wong writes, “have the abil­i­ty to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly sus­pend and pro­pel the read­er. We trust her semi-colons and fol­low until we are sur­prised to find the peri­od. We stand on that rock of a period—with water all around us, and ask: how did we get here?”

The blog Paper­back Writer brings us the “puz­zle” below from noto­ri­ous long-sen­tence-writer Vir­ginia Woolf’s essay “On Being Ill”:

Con­sid­er­ing how com­mon ill­ness is, how tremen­dous the spir­i­tu­al change that it brings, how aston­ish­ing, when the lights of health go down, the undis­cov­ered coun­tries that are then dis­closed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influen­za brings to view, what precipices and lawns sprin­kled with bright flow­ers a lit­tle rise of tem­per­a­ture reveals, what ancient and obdu­rate oaks are uproot­ed in us by the act of sick­ness, how we go down into the pit of death and feel the water of anni­hi­la­tion close above our heads and wake think­ing to find our­selves in the pres­ence of the angels and harpers when we have a tooth out and come to the sur­face in the dentist’s arm-chair and con­fuse his “Rinse the Mouth —- rinse the mouth” with the greet­ing of the Deity stoop­ing from the floor of Heav­en to wel­come us – when we think of this, as we are fre­quent­ly forced to think of it, it becomes strange indeed that ill­ness has not tak­en its place with love and bat­tle and jeal­ousy among the prime themes of lit­er­a­ture.

Blog­ger Rebec­ca quotes Woolf as a chal­lenge to her read­ers to become bet­ter writ­ers. “This sen­tence is not some­thing to be feared,” she writes, “it is some­thing to be embraced.”

Final­ly, from The Barnes & Noble Book Blog, we have the very Mol­ly Bloom-like sen­tence below from John Updike’s Rab­bit, Run:

But then they were mar­ried (she felt awful about being preg­nant before but Har­ry had been talk­ing about mar­riage for a while and any­way laughed when she told him in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary about miss­ing her peri­od and said Great she was ter­ri­bly fright­ened and he said Great and lift­ed her put his arms around under her bot­tom and lift­ed her like you would a child he could be so won­der­ful when you didn’t expect it in a way it seemed impor­tant that you didn’t expect it there was so much nice in him she couldn’t explain to any­body she had been so fright­ened about being preg­nant and he made her be proud) they were mar­ried after her miss­ing her sec­ond peri­od in March and she was still lit­tle clum­sy dark-com­plect­ed Jan­ice Springer and her hus­band was a con­ceit­ed lunk who wasn’t good for any­thing in the world Dad­dy said and the feel­ing of being alone would melt a lit­tle with a lit­tle drink.

Sen­tences like these, writes Barnes & Noble blog­ger Han­na McGrath, “demand some­thing from the read­er: patience.” That may be so, but they reward that patience with delight for those who love lan­guage too rich for the pinched lim­i­ta­tions of worka­day gram­mar and syn­tax.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Open­ing Sen­tences From Great Nov­els, Dia­grammed: Loli­ta, 1984 & More

Lists of the Best Sen­tences — Open­ing, Clos­ing, and Oth­er­wise — in Eng­lish-Lan­guage Nov­els

Cor­mac McCarthy’s Three Punc­tu­a­tion Rules, and How They All Go Back to James Joyce

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness


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Comments (29)
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
  • AUS says:

    You for­got to men­tion the god of long sen­tences — Lazs­lo Krash­na­horkai

  • Michael Callanan says:

    And Gabriel Gar­cia Mar­quez, par­tic­u­lar­ly Autumn of the Patri­arch.

  • michel says:

    Cor­tazar, Sara­m­a­go, Proust …

  • Rain,adustbowlstory says:

    They are mak­ing us hold our breath.

    Delib­er­ate­ly.

  • Martin Cohen says:

    Semi­colons seem almost cheat­ing to me. I deduct two points for each.

  • Susan says:

    I think Proust has some good ones: ” And I should have liked to be able to sit down and spend the whole day there, read­ing and lis­ten­ing to the bells, for it was so charm­ing there and so qui­et that, when an hour struck, you would have said not that it broke in upon the calm of the day, but that it relieved the day of its super­fluity, and that the steeple, with the indo­lent, painstak­ing exac­ti­tude of a per­son who has noth­ing else to do, had sim­ply, in order to squeeze out and let fall the few gold­en drops which had slow­ly and nat­u­ral­ly accu­mu­lat­ed in the hot sun­light, pressed, at a giv­en moment, the dis­tend­ed sur­face of the silence.”

  • Alan Shaw says:

    Great blog / Vir­ginia Wolf.

  • Liz says:

    A bor­ing aca­d­e­m­ic per­spec­tive: many of these long “run-on” sen­tences are not at all run-one. Length alone does not a run-on make. Most sen­tences become run-on when inde­pen­dent claus­es are inap­pro­pri­ate­ly linked. Nuff said.

  • Michael says:

    More sen­tence writ­ten by illit­er­ates- laud­ed by dumb intel­li­gentsia.

  • who you callin pin head? says:

    Despite its occa­sion­al use in spo­ken mono­logue, the Very Long Lit­er­ary Sen­tence prop­er­ly exists in the mind (hence “stream-of-con­scious­ness”), since the most wordy of lit­er­ary exha­la­tions would exhaust the lungs’ capac­i­ty. Mol­ly Bloom’s 36-page, two-sen­tence run-on solil­o­quy at the close of Joyce’s Ulysses takes place entire­ly in her thoughts. Faulkner’s longest sentence—smack in the mid­dle of Absa­lom, Absa­lom! —unspools in Quentin Compson’s tor­tured, silent rumi­na­tions. Accord­ing to a 1983 Guin­ness Book of Records, this mon­ster once qual­i­fied as literature’s longest at 1,288 words, but that record has long been sur­passed, in Eng­lish at least, by Jonathan Coe’s The Rotter’s Club, which ends with a 33-page-long, 13,955 word sen­tence. Czech and Pol­ish nov­el­ists have writ­ten book-length sen­tences since the six­ties, and French writer Math­ias Énard puts them all to shame with a one-sen­tence nov­el 517 pages long, though its sta­tus is “com­pro­mised by 23 chap­ter breaks that alle­vi­ate eye strain,” writes Ed Park in the New York Times. Like Faulkner’s glo­ri­ous run-ons, Jacob Sil­ver­man describes Énard’s one-sen­tence Zone as trans­mut­ing “the hor­rif­ic into some­thing sub­lime.”

  • Boi says:

    Despite its occa­sion­al use in spo­ken mono­logue, the Very Long Lit­er­ary Sen­tence prop­er­ly exists in the mind (hence “stream-of-con­scious­ness”), since the most wordy of lit­er­ary exha­la­tions would exhaust the lungs’ capac­i­ty. Mol­ly Bloom’s 36-page, two-sen­tence run-on solil­o­quy at the close of Joyce’s Ulysses takes place entire­ly in her thoughts. Faulkner’s longest sentence—smack in the mid­dle of Absa­lom, Absa­lom! —unspools in Quentin Compson’s tor­tured, silent rumi­na­tions. Accord­ing to a 1983 Guin­ness Book of Records, this mon­ster once qual­i­fied as literature’s longest at 1,288 words, but that record has long been sur­passed, in Eng­lish at least, by Jonathan Coe’s The Rotter’s Club, which ends with a 33-page-long, 13,955 word sen­tence. Czech and Pol­ish nov­el­ists have writ­ten book-length sen­tences since the six­ties, and French writer Math­ias Énard puts them all to shame with a one-sen­tence nov­el 517 pages long, though its sta­tus is “com­pro­mised by 23 chap­ter breaks that alle­vi­ate eye strain,” writes Ed Park in the New York Times. Like Faulkner’s glo­ri­ous run-ons, Jacob Sil­ver­man describes Énard’s one-sen­tence Zone as trans­mut­ing “the hor­rif­ic into some­thing sub­lime.”

    Are these lit­er­ary stunts kin to Philippe Petit’s high­wire challenges—undertaken for the thrill and just to show they can be done? Park sees the “The Very Long Sen­tence” in more philo­soph­i­cal terms, as “a futile hedge against sep­a­ra­tion, an unwill­ing­ness to part from loved ones, the world, life itself.” Per­haps this is why the very long sen­tence seems most expres­sive of life at its fullest and most expan­sive. Below, we bring you five long lit­er­ary sen­tences culled from var­i­ous sources on the sub­ject. These are, of course, not the “5 longest,” nor the “5 best,” nor any oth­er superla­tive. They are sim­ply five fine exam­ples of The Very Long Sen­tence in lit­er­a­ture. Enjoy read­ing and re-read­ing them, and please leave your favorite Very Long Sen­tence in the com­ments.

    At The New York­er’s “Book Club,” Jon Michaud points us toward this long sen­tence, from Samuel Beckett’s Watt. We find the title char­ac­ter, “an obses­sive­ly ratio­nal ser­vant,” attempt­ing to “see a pat­tern in how his mas­ter, Mr. Knott, rearranges the fur­ni­ture.”

    Thus it was not rare to find, on the Sun­day, the tall­boy on its feet by the fire, and the dress­ing table on its head by the bed, and the night-stool on its face by the door, and the was­hand-stand on its back by the win­dow; and, on the Mon­day, the tall­boy on its back by the bed, and the dress­ing table on its face by the door, and the night-stool on its back by the win­dow and the was­hand-stand on its feet by the fire; and on the Tues­day…

    Here, writes Michaud, the long sen­tence con­veys “a des­per­ate attempt to nail down all the pos­si­bil­i­ties in a giv­en sit­u­a­tion, to keep the world under con­trol by enu­mer­at­ing it.”

    The next exam­ple, from Poyn­ter, achieves a very dif­fer­ent effect. Instead of list­ing con­crete objects, the sen­tence below from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gats­by opens up into a series of abstract phras­es.

    Its van­ished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pan­dered in whis­pers to the last and great­est of all human dreams; for a tran­si­to­ry enchant­ed moment man must have held his breath in the pres­ence of this con­ti­nent, com­pelled into an aes­thet­ic con­tem­pla­tion he nei­ther under­stood nor desired, face to face for the last time in his­to­ry with some­thing com­men­su­rate to his capac­i­ty for won­der.

    Cho­sen by The Amer­i­can Schol­ar edi­tors as one of the “ten best sen­tences,” the pas­sage, writes Roy Peter Clark, achieves quite a feat: “Long sen­tences don’t usu­al­ly hold togeth­er under the weight of abstrac­tions, but this one sets a clear path to the most impor­tant phrase, plant­ed firm­ly at the end, ‘his capac­i­ty for won­der.’”

    Jane Wong at Tin House’s blog “The Open Bar” quotes the hyp­not­ic sen­tence below from Jamaica Kincaid’s “The Let­ter from Home.”

    I milked the cows, I churned the but­ter, I stored the cheese, I baked the bread, I brewed the tea, I washed the clothes, I dressed the chil­dren; the cat meowed, the dog barked, the horse neighed, the mouse squeaked, the fly buzzed, the gold­fish liv­ing in a bowl stretched its jaws; the door banged shut, the stairs creaked, the fridge hummed, the cur­tains bil­lowed up, the pot boiled, the gas hissed through the stove, the tree branch­es heavy with snow crashed against the roof; my heart beat loud­ly thud! thud!, tiny beads of water grew folds, I shed my skin…

    Kincaid’s sen­tences, Wong writes, “have the abil­i­ty to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly sus­pend and pro­pel the read­er. We trust her semi-colons and fol­low until we are sur­prised to find the peri­od. We stand on that rock of a period—with water all around us, and ask: how did we get here?”

    The blog Paper­back Writer brings us the “puz­zle” below from noto­ri­ous long-sen­tence-writer Vir­ginia Woolf’s essay “On Being Ill”:

    Con­sid­er­ing how com­mon ill­ness is, how tremen­dous the spir­i­tu­al change that it brings, how aston­ish­ing, when the lights of health go down, the undis­cov­ered coun­tries that are then dis­closed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influen­za brings to view, what precipices and lawns sprin­kled with bright flow­ers a lit­tle rise of tem­per­a­ture reveals, what ancient and obdu­rate oaks are uproot­ed in us by the act of sick­ness, how we go down into the pit of death and feel the water of anni­hi­la­tion close above our heads and wake think­ing to find our­selves in the pres­ence of the angels and harpers when we have a tooth out and come to the sur­face in the dentist’s arm-chair and con­fuse his “Rinse the Mouth —- rinse the mouth” with the greet­ing of the Deity stoop­ing from the floor of Heav­en to wel­come us – when we think of this, as we are fre­quent­ly forced to think of it, it becomes strange indeed that ill­ness has not tak­en its place with love and bat­tle and jeal­ousy among the prime themes of lit­er­a­ture.

    Blog­ger Rebec­ca quotes Woolf as a chal­lenge to her read­ers to become bet­ter writ­ers. “This sen­tence is not some­thing to be feared,” she writes, “it is some­thing to be embraced.”

    Final­ly, from The Barnes & Noble Book Blog, we have the very Mol­ly Bloom-like sen­tence below from John Updike’s Rab­bit, Run:

    But then they were mar­ried (she felt awful about being preg­nant before but Har­ry had been talk­ing about mar­riage for a while and any­way laughed when she told him in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary about miss­ing her peri­od and said Great she was ter­ri­bly fright­ened and he said Great and lift­ed her put his arms around under her bot­tom and lift­ed her like you would a child he could be so won­der­ful when you didn’t expect it in a way it seemed impor­tant that you didn’t expect it there was so much nice in him she couldn’t explain to any­body she had been so fright­ened about being preg­nant and he made her be proud) they were mar­ried after her miss­ing her sec­ond peri­od in March and she was still lit­tle clum­sy dark-com­plect­ed Jan­ice Springer and her hus­band was a con­ceit­ed lunk who wasn’t good for any­thing in the world Dad­dy said and the feel­ing of being alone would melt a lit­tle with a lit­tle drink.

    Sen­tences like these, writes Barnes & Noble blog­ger Han­na McGrath, “demand some­thing from the read­er: patience.” That may be so, but they reward that patience with delight for those who love lan­guage too rich for the pinched lim­i­ta­tions of worka­day gram­mar and syn­tax.

    Relat­ed Con­tent:

    Open­ing Sen­tences From Great Nov­els, Dia­grammed: Loli­ta, 1984 & More

    Lists of the Best Sen­tences — Open­ing, Clos­ing, and Oth­er­wise — in Eng­lish-Lan­guage Nov­els

    Cor­mac McCarthy’s Three Punc­tu­a­tion Rules, and How They All Go Back to James Joyce

    Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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    by Josh Jones | Perma­link | Com­ments (10) |

    Com­ments (10)

    You can skip to the end and leave a response. Ping­ing is cur­rent­ly not allowed.
    AUS says:
    July 16, 2014 at 6:43 am
    You for­got to men­tion the god of long sen­tences – Lazs­lo Krash­na­horkai

    Reply
    Michael Callanan says:
    July 16, 2014 at 9:20 am
    And Gabriel Gar­cia Mar­quez, par­tic­u­lar­ly Autumn of the Patri­arch.

    Reply
    michel says:
    July 16, 2014 at 10:26 am
    Cor­tazar, Sara­m­a­go, Proust …

    Reply
    Rain,adustbowlstory says:
    July 16, 2014 at 1:01 pm
    They are mak­ing us hold our breath.

    Delib­er­ate­ly.

    Reply
    Mar­tin Cohen says:
    July 16, 2014 at 7:44 pm
    Semi­colons seem almost cheat­ing to me. I deduct two points for each.

    Reply
    Susan says:
    July 17, 2014 at 10:19 pm
    I think Proust has some good ones: ” And I should have liked to be able to sit down and spend the whole day there, read­ing and lis­ten­ing to the bells, for it was so charm­ing there and so qui­et that, when an hour struck, you would have said not that it broke in upon the calm of the day, but that it relieved the day of its super­fluity, and that the steeple, with the indo­lent, painstak­ing exac­ti­tude of a per­son who has noth­ing else to do, had sim­ply, in order to squeeze out and let fall the few gold­en drops which had slow­ly and nat­u­ral­ly accu­mu­lat­ed in the hot sun­light, pressed, at a giv­en moment, the dis­tend­ed sur­face of the silence.”

    Reply
    Alan Shaw says:
    Octo­ber 11, 2015 at 1:56 am
    Great blog / Vir­ginia Wolf.

    Reply
    Liz says:
    June 18, 2016 at 10:16 am
    A bor­ing aca­d­e­m­ic per­spec­tive: many of these long “run-on” sen­tences are not at all run-one. Length alone does not a run-on make. Most sen­tences become run-on when inde­pen­dent claus­es are inap­pro­pri­ate­ly linked. Nuff said.

    Reply
    Michael says:
    July 23, 2017 at 6:20 pm
    More sen­tence writ­ten by illit­er­ates- laud­ed by dumb intel­li­gentsia.

    Reply
    who you call­in pin head? says:
    August 22, 2017 at 8:46 am
    Despite its occa­sion­al use in spo­ken mono­logue, the Very Long Lit­er­ary Sen­tence prop­er­ly exists in the mind (hence “stream-of-con­scious­ness”), since the most wordy of lit­er­ary exha­la­tions would exhaust the lungs’ capac­i­ty. Mol­ly Bloom’s 36-page, two-sen­tence run-on solil­o­quy at the close of Joyce’s Ulysses takes place entire­ly in her thoughts. Faulkner’s longest sentence—smack in the mid­dle of Absa­lom, Absa­lom! —unspools in Quentin Compson’s tor­tured, silent rumi­na­tions. Accord­ing to a 1983 Guin­ness Book of Records, this mon­ster once qual­i­fied as literature’s longest at 1,288 words, but that record has long been sur­passed, in Eng­lish at least, by Jonathan Coe’s The Rotter’s Club, which ends with a 33-page-long, 13,955 word sen­tence. Czech and Pol­ish nov­el­ists have writ­ten book-length sen­tences since the six­ties, and French writer Math­ias Énard puts them all to shame with a one-sen­tence nov­el 517 pages long, though its sta­tus is “com­pro­mised by 23 chap­ter breaks that alle­vi­ate eye strain,” writes Ed Park in the New York Times. Like Faulkner’s glo­ri­ous run-ons, Jacob Sil­ver­man describes Énard’s one-sen­tence Zone as trans­mut­ing “the hor­rif­ic into some­thing sub­lime.”

    Reply
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  • Sufi Tao says:

    Here’s anoth­er amaz­ing­ly long sen­tence exam­ple I found very elo­quent and beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten.

    From “The Advent of Divine Jus­tice” by Shoghi Effen­di

    (One sen­tence, in 133 words. )

    Indif­fer­ent to the truth that the mem­bers of this inno­cent and pro­scribed com­mu­ni­ty can just­ly claim to rank as among the most dis­in­ter­est­ed, the most com­pe­tent, and the most ardent lovers of their native land, con­temp­tu­ous of their high sense of world cit­i­zen­ship which the advo­cates of an exces­sive and nar­row nation­al­ism can nev­er hope to appre­ci­ate, such an author­i­ty refus­es to grant to a Faith which extends its spir­i­tu­al juris­dic­tion over well-nigh six hun­dred local com­mu­ni­ties, and which numer­i­cal­ly out­num­bers the adher­ents of either the Chris­t­ian, the Jew­ish, or the Zoroas­tri­an Faiths in that land, the nec­es­sary legal right to enforce its laws, to admin­is­ter its affairs, to con­duct its schools, to cel­e­brate its fes­ti­vals, to cir­cu­late its lit­er­a­ture, to sol­em­nize its rites, to erect its edi­fices, and to safe­guard its endow­ments.

  • Xavier says:

    Here is a long sen­tence for you addicts:

    Indif­fer­ent to the truth that the mem­bers of this inno­cent and pro­scribed com­mu­ni­ty can just­ly claim to rank as among the most dis­in­ter­est­ed, the most com­pe­tent, and the most ardent lovers of their native land, con­temp­tu­ous of their high sense of world cit­i­zen­ship which the advo­cates of an exces­sive and nar­row nation­al­ism can nev­er hope to appre­ci­ate, such an author­i­ty refus­es to grant to a Faith which extends its spir­i­tu­al juris­dic­tion over well-nigh six hun­dred local com­mu­ni­ties, and which numer­i­cal­ly out­num­bers the adher­ents of either the Chris­t­ian, the Jew­ish, or the Zoroas­tri­an Faiths in that land, the nec­es­sary legal right to enforce its laws, to admin­is­ter its affairs, to con­duct its schools, to cel­e­brate its fes­ti­vals, to cir­cu­late its lit­er­a­ture, to sol­em­nize its rites, to erect its edi­fices, and to safe­guard its endow­ments, But then they were mar­ried (she felt awful about being preg­nant before but Har­ry had been talk­ing about mar­riage for a while and any­way laughed when she told him in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary about miss­ing her peri­od and said Great she was ter­ri­bly fright­ened and he said Great and lift­ed her put his arms around under her bot­tom and lift­ed her like you would a child he could be so won­der­ful when you didn’t expect it in a way it seemed impor­tant that you didn’t expect it there was so much nice in him she couldn’t explain to any­body she had been so fright­ened about being preg­nant and he made her be proud) they were mar­ried after her miss­ing her sec­ond peri­od in March and she was still lit­tle clum­sy dark-com­plect­ed Jan­ice Springer and her hus­band was a con­ceit­ed lunk who wasn’t good for any­thing in the world Dad­dy said and the feel­ing of being alone would melt a lit­tle with a lit­tle drink—I milked the cows, I churned the but­ter, I stored the cheese, I baked the bread, I brewed the tea, I washed the clothes, I dressed the chil­dren; the cat meowed, the dog barked, the horse neighed, the mouse squeaked, the fly buzzed, the gold­fish liv­ing in a bowl stretched its jaws; the door banged shut, the stairs creaked, the fridge hummed, the cur­tains bil­lowed up, the pot boiled, the gas hissed through the stove, the tree branch­es heavy with snow crashed against the roof; my heart beat loud­ly thud! thud!, tiny beads of water grew folds, I shed my skin.

  • Somone says:

    Tech­ni­cal­ly, the Oath of Alle­giance to the U.S.A. is very long, I am not sure of the word count

  • bob says:

    your dodo broth­er

  • N says:

    Babyyy shark dodododoo­dodododododododooodododododododododoo­dododododododoo­dododododoo­dododododoo­dododododododoo­dododododododododoo­dodoo­dododododododododododoo­dododododododoo­dodododoo­dodododododododoo­dodododododododoo­dodododoo­d­dododoo­dododododoo­dodododododododoo­dodododododoo­dododoood­dododod­dododoo­doo­dododoo­dodod­dodod

  • N says:

    Babyyy shark dodododoo­dodododododododooodododododododododoo­dododododododoo­dododododoo­dododododoo­dododododododoo­dododododododododoo­dodoo­dododododododododododoo­dododododododoo­dodododoo­dodododododododoo­dodododododododoo­dodododoo­d­dododoo­dododododoo­dodododododododoo­dodododododoo­dododoood­dododod­dododoo­doo­dododoo­dodod­dodod My name is bob

  • bob says:

    hfhr jvfd

  • bob says:

    hi my name is mrs bob

  • bob says:

    hi my name is mrs bob hi

  • K.bhushan says:

    a very long sen­tence could be the most in one area,that has been run­ning now it great,when I thought this famous sence.

  • snurt McGurt says:

    ftw3givydsGiyEGIQ&:feiqyeiygf;ieywagfgqf/iouWGHvw;iRUGFWOGHF7;IWGVweghvweubgiuasekeghiowekhgvisudkghvbsugdbviwudkgbvuwygsbrgiwu,geadiugwvdiuhgfbwyejgFBIUEQYGBFDIUAHKGRwo;o8’yhwrg8o3yghweo’rsh;geruwiw;hugiw;h4rog;rwy’o08hgwiugy8owyo’8shwg;oeho0;hutq’/ohr0;uh;59yo/erhy’p53w/3r.

  • The Gogurtburglar says:

  • NoYou says:

    i love gourt to home sllice so what chu doing up in da hood

  • Joe Mama says:

    Here’s a sen­tence

    Joe mama went to Mick­ey Deez and got fat

    The end

  • mike ock says:

    OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

    who lives in a pineap­ple under the sea?

    spoNGE BOB SQUAREPANTS.

  • mad dog says:

    Absorbent and yel­low and porous is he!
    Sponge­Bob SquarePants!If nau­ti­cal non­sense be some­thing you wish…
    Sponge­Bob SquarePants!
    Then drop on the deck and flop like a fish!
    Sponge­Bob Squarepants!

  • David Cochrane says:

    Have always been fond of this one, which clos­es out the sec­ond chap­ter of Philip Roth’s Amer­i­can Pas­toral (it’s 335 words long, for those who care):

    Only after strudel and cof­fee had capped off a chick­en din­ner that, what with bare­ly any­one able to stay seat­ed very long in one place to eat it, had required near­ly all after­noon to get through; after the kids from Maple got up on the band­stand and sang the Maple Avenue School song; after class­mate upon class­mate had tak­en the micro­phone to say “It’s been a great life” or “I’m proud of all of you”; after peo­ple had just about fin­ished tap­ping one anoth­er on the shoul­der and falling into one another’s arms; after the ten-mem­ber reunion com­mit­tee stood on the dance floor and held hands while the one-man band played Bob Hope’s theme song, “Thanks for the Mem­o­ry,” and we applaud­ed in appre­ci­a­tion of all their hard work; after Mar­vin Lieb, whose father sold my father our Pon­ti­ac and offered each of us kids a big cig­ar to smoke when­ev­er we came to get Mar­vin from the house, told me about his alimo­ny mis­eries – “A guy takes a leak with more fore­thought than I gave to my two mar­riages” – and Julius Pin­cus, who’d always been the kind­est kid and who now, because of tremors result­ing from tak­ing the cyclosporin essen­tial to the long-term sur­vival of his trans­plant, had had to give up his optom­e­try prac­tice, told me rue­ful­ly how he’d come by his new kid­ney – “If a lit­tle four­teen-year-old girl didn’t die of a brain hem­or­rhage last Octo­ber, I would be dead today” – and after Schrimmer’s tall young wife had said to me, “You’re the class writer, maybe you can explain it. Why are they all called Utty, Dut­ty, Mut­ty, and Tut­ty?”; only after I had shocked Shelly Min­skoff, anoth­er Dare­dev­il, with a nod of the head when he asked, “Is it true what you said at the mike, you don’t have kids or any­thing like that?,” only after Shelly had tak­en my hand in his and said, “Poor Skip,” only then did I dis­cov­er that Jer­ry Lev­ov, hav­ing arrived late, was among us.

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