For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?
Jane Austen
- Author
- Jane Austen
- Year
- 1813
- Genres
- novel of manners, satirical fiction, psychological fiction
Facts: Wikidata (CC0), as of 2026-07-09
Jane Austen's 1813 novel opens with the most parodied first sentence in English fiction -- 'a truth universally acknowledged' now prefixes a thousand jokes Austen never made. Mr. Darcy's insults and retractions are quoted as romance, though Austen wrote them as social comedy with teeth. The novel was published anonymously, credited only to 'the author of Sense and Sensibility'.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
Jane Austen
Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied.
Jane Austen
Undoubtedly ... there is a meanness in all the arts which ladies sometimes condescend to employ for captivation. What bears affinity to cunning is despicable.
Jane Austen
Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.
Jane Austen
You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.
Jane Austen