What came immediately to my mind on seeing this thread is perhaps too well known:
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
The last sentence of Fitzgerald's
The Great Gatsby.
I checked out the reddit.com thread and the entire passage is there.
http://www.reddit.com/r/literature/c...have_read_and/
Fitzgerald no doubt worked hard on this sentence. It has many poetic elements: imagery, alliteration, evocative suggestion of several things, rhythm, concision, etc. For me it is memorable and I find myself silently saying "boats against the current" at various junctures in my day-to-day life.
Fitzgerald's own poetry is generally considered mediocre. But his prose is very often highly poetic and evocative just as language.
There's also Joseph Conrad, near the end of a passage in "Landfalls and Departures" in
The Mirror of the Sea:
"Was he looking out for a strange Landfall, or taking with an untroubled mind the bearings for his last Departure?
It is hard to say; for in that voyage from which no man returns Landfall and Departure are instantaneous, merging together into one moment of supreme and final attention"
http://www.classicreader.com/book/1587/3/
A wonderful metaphor IMO.
--Woody