Everyone loves a good leading man. Here are our favorites in literature! Let us know in the comments who your pick is. From the dashing Mr. Darcy to the hopeless romantic Jay Gatsby–there’s someone for each of our readers on this list.
Jean Valjean—Les Miserables by Victor Hugo 
“These two beings, who had loved each other so exclusively, and with so touching a love, and who had lived so long for each other, were now suffering beside one another and through one another; without speaking of it, without harsh feeling, and smiling all the while.”
Fitzwilliam Darcy—Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 
“My object then,” replied Darcy, “was to show you, by every civility in my power, that I was not so mean as to resent the past; and I hoped to obtain your forgiveness, to lessen your ill opinion, by letting you see that your reproofs had been attended to. How soon any other wishes introduced themselves I can hardly tell, but I believe in about half an hour after I had seen you.”
Theodore “Laurie” Laurence—Little Women by Louisa May Alcott 
“Someday you’ll find a man, a good man, and you’ll love him, and marry him, and live and die for him. And I’ll be hanged if I stand by and watch.”
Sydney Carton—A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens 
“For you, and for any dear to you, I would do anything. I would embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you. And when you see your own bright beauty springing up anew at your feet, think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you.”
Mr. Rochester—Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë 
“I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you – especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly.”
Rhett Butler—Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell 
“Well, my dear, take heart. Some day, I will kiss you and you will like it. But not now, so I beg you not to be too impatient.”
Romeo Montague—Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare 
“Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs; Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes; Being vex’d a sea nourish’d with lovers’ tears: What is it else? a madness most discreet, A choking gall and a preserving sweet.”
Edmond Dantés—The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas 
“Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout as you did in Rome. Do your worst, for I will do mine! Then the fates will know you as we know you”
Henry Tilney—Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen 
“No man is offended by another man’s admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only who can make it a torment.”
Jay Gatsby—The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 
“It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced–or seemed to face–the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor.”
George Knightley—Emma by Jane Austen 
“You will not ask me what is the point of my envy..You are wise – but I cannot be wise. Emma, I must tell you what you will not ask, though I may wish it unsaid the next moment…Tell me, then, have I no chance of ever succeeding?”
Mr. Thornton—North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell 
“He shook hands with Margaret. He knew it was the first time their hands had met, though she was perfectly unconscious of the fact.”
Atticus Finch—To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 
“You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”
George Emerson—A Room with a View by E.M. Forster 
“This desire to govern a woman—it lies very deep, and men and women must fight it together before they shall enter the garden. But I do love you surely in a better way than he does.” He thought. “Yes—really in a better way. I want you to have your own thoughts even when I hold you in my arms.”
