People have been suggesting quotes for the new Pride and Prejudice series, and these 24 sound like winners

Much like history documentaries that seek to tell the real story of the Tudors, police procedurals with a surly loner detective forced to endure the assistance of a young, enthusiastic sergeant, and anecdotes involving men with big muscles and tears in their eyes calling Donald Trump “Sir”, there’s no shortage of onscreen adaptations of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

There are at least 15 films and TV series, including one musical, but leaving out the ones with zombies …and dinosaurs.

There’s now another one; a Netflix miniseries starring Emma Corrin as Elizabeth Bennet, Jack Lowden as Mr Darcy, and Olivia Colman as Mrs Bennet.

The Independent shared a nugget of information for prospective viewers.

Of course, the line in question is ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.’

There were, however, a couple of problems with the article.

First of all, it’s not the first time the line has appeared in an adaptation.

Other comments have already pointed out that the line is said in the 1980 and 1995 adaptations, and I'll add that it's said on screen in the YouTube adaptation, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.

— Hydro Hostility (@hostilewaternymph.bsky.social) 29 October 2026 at 19:00

There was also this –

Sir Laurence Olivier died in 1989.

Those problems didn’t stop people enjoying some humorous speculation about what the quote could be, apart from that one.