“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
Permalink: Jane Austen
About this quote
Austen opens her sharpest comedy with a sentence that pretends to state a law of nature while announcing something absurd. The joke only lands once readers notice that the narrator treats one man's desire as a universal truth.
Source: Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 1