Quote sites file this under Sense and Sensibility. It is not in that novel, and not in any of the others: a full-text search of Austen’s complete fiction at Project Gutenberg returns no occurrence of “defines us” — or even of the phrase “what we do”. The usual fallback claim, that a screenwriter wrote it, does not survive checking either: the words are absent from Emma Thompson’s published screenplay of the 1995 film ↗ as well. We could not establish who did write it.
“It isn't what we say or think that defines us, but what we do” Jane Austen did not write “It isn’t what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.” It appears nowhere in her complete fiction, and nowhere in Emma Thompson’s published 1995 Sense and Sensibility screenplay either. Its real origin is undetermined. Via quotle.info
Can you use it?
? We couldn’t establish where this was first published, so there’s no rights status to give. Credit it as shown above — just don’t present it as public domain, and get permission for commercial or published reuse.
Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool
In context
Evoking the world of Jane Austen — English novelist. Theme: "It isn't what we say or think that defines us, but what we do". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "It isn't what we say or think that defines us, but what we do". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
What the search actually found
Usually credited to
Sense and Sensibility (1811)
In that novel
Not present
Anywhere in Austen
Not present — six novels, Lady Susan and the juvenilia searched
In the 1995 screenplay
Not present
Documented origin
Not established
It isn’t what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.
There is no passage to quote here, and that is the finding. Every other page on this site shows you the sentence in its source; this one cannot, because no source for it has been found.
Downloaded the Project Gutenberg plain-text editions of all six completed novels plus Lady Susan and Love and Freindship, and searched the combined 4.5 MB of text. “defines us”: 0 matches. “what we do”: 0 matches. As a control, “truth universally acknowledged” returns exactly one. Texts used include Sense and Sensibility ↗ and Pride and Prejudice ↗.
We are not able to tell you where it came from. A widely repeated account credits Andrew Davies’s 2008 television adaptation with a differently-worded line on the same idea; we could not reach a transcript or any source that documents it, so we are not asserting it. If you can point us at a citable one, tell us ↗.
No rights status is claimed, because the wording has no established source. Austen’s own writing is long out of copyright and free to use — but this sentence is not Austen’s writing, and whoever composed it may well hold rights in it. Quote it as unattributed, or quote Austen instead.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
Often misattributed
Two claims travel with this sentence. Both are checkable, and both fail.
✕
The usual creditJane Austen, Sense and Sensibilitynot in the novel
✓The safe statement is the negative one: this is not a sentence Jane Austen wrote. For the positive half, see Wikiquote’s sourced Austen page ↗ for lines that genuinely are hers.
Context
Why so many “Austen quotes” are not Austen
Austen is funny in paragraphs, not in slogans. Her irony depends on the sentence before it and the one after, which makes her very hard to excerpt and very easy to improve upon — and improving upon her is exactly what adapters are paid to do.
The result is a large body of Austen-flavoured aphorism that has never been inside an Austen novel. Some of it is traceable to a specific screenwriter. This one is not yet traceable to anybody.
We can prove where it is not from. That is still an answer.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) published four novels in her lifetime — Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815) — all anonymously. Her effects are built out of paragraphs rather than epigrams, which is exactly why so much of what circulates as “Jane Austen” turns out to have been written for a camera by somebody else.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
The primary source (Chicago)
No primary source located. The wording does not appear in Jane Austen’s complete fiction (Project Gutenberg texts of the six novels, Lady Susan and the juvenilia) or in Emma Thompson, The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay & Diaries (New York: Newmarket Press, 1995). Origin undetermined as of 11 Sep 2026.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘It isn't what we say or think that defines us, but what we do’?” Last verified 11 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/it-isnt-what-we-say-or-think-that-defines-us-but-what-we-do/