Most Beautiful Lines from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: Quotes, Meaning & Analysis

S ome lines in literature feel less written than overheard. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is full of them. The novel is sharp, ironic, and almost painfully alive to the quiet pressures of society, money, and feeling, and its most memorable passages still stop readers in their tracks more than two hundred years later. What follows is a selection of thirty of the most beautiful and enduring longer passages, presented with enough context to feel their original force and enough close attention to see why they continue to work. Each quotation is kept to a substantial length (ideally eight to twelve lines), and each is followed by a Meaning section and an Analysis section that are deliberately longer than the quotation itself, so that the language can be given the space it deserves. 1. The Opening Sentence and Its Immediate Expansion It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or vie…