From Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice （1813） 'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.' Parodied, spoofed, and misremembered, Austen's celebrated zingerremains the archetypalfirst line for an archetypal tale.

Only Dickens' comes close,the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities: 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epochof belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light,it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlativedegree of comparison only.'

出自简·奥斯丁的《傲慢与偏见》 （1813年） “有钱的单身汉必定想要娶位太太，这是尽人皆知的真理。”奥斯丁这句著名的警句尽管曾作为幽默和讽刺之语被夸张地模仿过，甚至还曾被人记错，但依然属于这类经典小说典型的开场白。

只有狄更斯《双城记》的开篇接近了它的水平：“那是最好的时代，那是最坏的时代；那是睿智的年头，那是愚昧的年头；那是满怀信念的时期，那是怀疑一切的时期；那是光明的季节，那是黑暗的季节；那是希望的春天，那是绝望的冬天；我们面前拥有一切，我们面前一无所有；我