It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
— The narrator, Pride and Prejudice · Jane Austen
Austen's famous opening pretends to state a universal law, but the irony is immediate: it is not rich men who want wives, but families who want their daughters married to rich men. In one sentence she sets up the whole novel's comedy of money, marriage, and social manoeuvring.