One of the all time great opening lines (and paragraphs)

I have been rereading the Lovecraft canon and just absorbed Call of Cthulhu. I realized two things: first off, it has one of the truly great opening sentences and/or first full paragraphs; secondly, for better or worse, I realized I know it from memory:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a dark new age.

I'm thinking of doing a broadside of this with a local letterpress artist, with a nice graphic of some sort. We shall see. Feel free to post your favorite below.