It happened one day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore

Every now and then, I come across some passage read in childhood, that starts from the page with great familiarity. Hadn't thought about it in years but there it is, as gripping as the first time you read it. For example, in A Tale of Two Cities, the line that has stuck with me the most over the years is

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.

Can't really say why, but it has.

I just came across another such line that I haven't thought about in years, but in reading it I freshly recall its first vivid impact. Opening of Chapter Fifteen in Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.

It happened one day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the sand. I stood like one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an apparition. I listened, I looked round me, I could hear nothing, nor see anything. I went up to a rising ground, to look farther. I went up the shore, and down the shore, but it was all one; I could see no other impression but that one.

I went to it again to see if there were any more, and to observe if it might not be my fancy; but there was no room for that, for there was exactly the very print of a foot — toes, heel, and every part of a foot. How it came thither I knew not, nor could in the least imagine. But after innumerable fluttering thoughts, like a man perfectly confused and out of myself, I came home to my fortification, not feeling, as we say, the ground I went on, but terrified to the last degree, looking behind me at every two or three steps, mistaking every bush and tree, and fancying every stump at a distance to be a man; nor is it possible to describe how many various shapes affrighted imagination represented things to me in, how many wild ideas were found every moment in my fancy, and what strange unaccountable whimsies came into my thoughts by the way.

You can never experience a sentence in its whole novelty again, but some few hold the capacity to still seize your attention.