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Here is a list of sentences considered the best by the folks at The American Scholar: http://theamericanscholar.org/ten-best-sentences/

It's not recent, but I only recently came across it. Feel free to offer your own favorites, and comment on the ones here. My favorite from these is the Dickens quote. So sadly true then, and still to this day.

The Fitzgerald and Hershey quotes are actually three sentences mispunctuated. So, it took Fitzgerald and Hershey three times more effort to compete than other writers.

I had a feeling as I left my much to quickly written note that something was awry. Thanks.

The American Scholar author has too great an attraction for runon sentences which repel me.

Of all the wonderful sentences Dickens penned, his choice was not oneof them. My chief problem is Dickens is his prose reads like poetry. I so often get bogged down enjoying the sounds he creates, I make slow plodding through the book. Oddly, Shakespeare does no do this, except when I pause to admire a turn of phrase and realize he was working against a deadline. Did you evere wonder how much was a re-write because it didn't work at that day's rehearsal?

I clicked through to the guy trying to tell us why they were good, but he didn't know either.

My choices? Read a page from Steibeck, Hemingway, Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, and you will find several. I first read E.B. White on a flight from Louisville to DC in 1959 in the New Yorker in the pocket before me. I proceeded to subscribe.

Dear Dr Goodword,

I am a bit confused by your post(s). I believe the Fitzgerald and Hershey are quoted exactly as published. Are you claiming Fitzgerald and Hershey didn't construct grammatical sentences? I will agree both of the quoted sentences could be re-written by replacing the comma-and with a period, a capital letter and some other appropriate changes, which would makie them two, not three, sentences. But is not valid in English to combine two independent clauses with a comma-and? (It is not wise to try to extend the technique to three independent clauses, however.)