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Who really said it

Perhaps it is our imperfections that make us so perfect for one another

Not Jane Austen — not in any of her books Unknown Author unconfirmed · commonly reported as a 1996 screen line
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

Austen did not write this. We searched the complete Project Gutenberg texts of all six novels — including Emma ↗, the book it is usually credited to — plus Lady Susan and Love and Freindship, and the sentence does not occur; nor does the phrase “perfect for one another” in any form. It is widely reported to come instead from the 1996 film of Emma, written and directed by Douglas McGrath ↗, but we could not obtain a transcript to confirm that, so we report it rather than assert it.

Last verified 12 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Perhaps it is our imperfections that make us so perfect for one another” Author unconfirmed — not Jane Austen. The sentence appears in none of her novels. Source: Quotle.info

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Jane Austen. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the themes of love, character and humility. Theme: "Perhaps it is our imperfections that make us so perfect for one another". 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 "Perhaps it is our imperfections that make us so perfect for one another". 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 books actually say

Claimed source
Emma
Searched
All six novels, plus Lady Susan and Love and Freindship
Occurrences found
None
Commonly reported origin
Emma (1996 film), screenplay by Douglas McGrath

“Perhaps it is our imperfections that make us so perfect for one another.”

We cannot show this in context, because there is no context in Austen to show. The word “imperfection” does occur in her novels — eight times across the six — but never in this sentence or anything close to it.

Emma at Project Gutenberg (full text)

How we verified this

  • We downloaded the full Project Gutenberg texts of Emma ↗, Pride and Prejudice ↗, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Lady Susan and Love and Freindship, flattened the line breaks so no phrase could hide across a line ending, and searched all eight. The sentence is not present in any of them.
  • Austen’s English Wikiquote page ↗ does not list this line in any section, and a search across the whole of Wikiquote returns no page containing the phrase “so perfect for one another”.
  • Wikipedia records that the 1996 film of Emma was written and directed by Douglas McGrath ↗ for Miramax, with Jeremy Northam as Mr Knightley, and notes that his screenplay “enlivens the banter between the staid Mr Knightley and the vivacious Emma” beyond the novel. That is the film the quotation is usually traced to; we could not reach a transcript to check the line itself.

No rights badge. Austen’s own writing is long out of copyright, but this sentence is not Austen’s, and we could not establish which work it does belong to — so there is nothing here whose status we can honestly certify. If it is a 1996 screen line, it would be in copyright to the film’s studio.

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

Austen attracts a particular kind of misquotation — not fabricated from nothing, but written by a screenwriter adapting her, then quietly promoted to the novel. This is the pattern, and her Wikiquote page already documents another instance of it.

Jane Austen, in Emma Refuted

The sentence is absent from the complete text of Emma ↗ and from every other novel she wrote.

Douglas McGrath, screenwriter of Emma (1996) Unconfirmed

Wikipedia confirms McGrath wrote and directed the 1996 film ↗, but we could not obtain a transcript to verify that this line is in it, so we do not credit him on this page.

Austen, for “a quick succession of busy nothings” Context

Her Wikiquote page ↗ records that popular one-liner as coming from a 1999 screen adaptation, rewording a longer sentence in Mansfield Park.

What we can say for certain is the negative, and it is a strong one: the text of Emma ↗ is freely readable and this sentence is not in it, nor in any other book Austen wrote.

Context

Why it mattered

This is a well-made sentence, and its cleverness is precisely why it does not read as Austen once you look closely: she was suspicious of that kind of symmetry, and tended to let her characters say it and then be wrong. The line is the moral an adaptation reaches for; the novel is more sceptical.

It is also a useful reminder that a misattribution does not need a villain. Nobody forged this. Somebody wrote a good line for a film, and the credit drifted one step up the chain to the more famous name.

The line is the moral an adaptation reaches for. The novel is more sceptical.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Love Character Humility

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Emma (full text)gutenberg.org

The novel this line is credited to. The sentence is not in it.
Pride and Prejudice (full text)gutenberg.org

One of the eight Austen texts we searched.
Wikiquote: Jane Austenen.wikiquote.org

Her sourced quotations and the lines misattributed to her.
Wikipedia: Emma (1996 film)en.wikipedia.org

The adaptation written and directed by Douglas McGrath, to which the line is usually traced.
Wikipedia: Jane Austenen.wikipedia.org

Her life and the six novels.

Who it wasn’t

About the woman on the graphic

Jane Austen

1775–1817 · English novelist

Jane Austen published four novels in her lifetime and two more posthumously, and her complete fiction is short enough to search end to end in a few seconds — which is why lines credited to her can be checked properly rather than argued about. She is also among the most-adapted novelists in English, and that is the machinery behind most of her misattributions: a screenwriter writes a sentence in her register, and within a decade it is being quoted as hers.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The primary source (Chicago)

The sentence has no located source. It appears in none of Austen's published works; its origin is commonly reported as the 1996 film Emma, unconfirmed here.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Perhaps it is our imperfections that make us so perfect for one another’?” Last verified 12 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/perhaps-it-is-our-imperfections-that-make-us-so-perfect-for/

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