"The delight derived from her pictures arises from our sympathy with ordinary characters, our relish of humor, and our intellectual pleasure in art for art's sake. But when it is admitted that she never stirs the deeper emotions, that she never fills the soul with a noble aspiration, or brightens it with a fine idea, but, at the utmost, only teaches us charity for the ordinary failings of ordinary people, and sympathy with their goodness, we have admitted an objection which lowers her claims to rank among the great benefactors of the race; and this sufficiently explains why, with all her excellence, her name has not become a household word. Her fame, we think, must endure. Such art as hers can never grow old, never be superseded. But, after all, miniatures are not frescoes, and her works are miniatures. Her place is among the Immortals; but the pedestal is erected in a quiet niche of the great temple."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Novelists from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomWomen authors from EnglandJane AustenWomen born before the 19th century
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
George Henry Lewes, The Novels of Jane Austen (1859)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jane_Austen
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Jane Austen
1775 – 1817
englische Schriftstellerin
160 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Jane Austen →
Related Quotes
"Everybody likes to go their own way- to choose their own time and manner of devotion."
"Jane Austen was born before those bonds which (we are told) protected women from truth, were burst by the Brontës or …"
"Comedy was implicit in the manner in which she told her story. Her irony, her delicate ruthless irony, was of the sub…"
"Jane Austen has been criticized as trivial by the same enlightened race of critics as think her incapable of depictin…"
"[A]s her would-be biographer, I had to face the fact that information about Jane Austen the woman was limited and fra…"
"Miss Austen's language deserves closer attention than it has received. She is not indeed one of the great writers of …"
"The daughter and sister of clergymen of the Established Church, she began life in the conservative fold, and even as …"
"The essence of her certainty is that the reforms she perceives to be necessary are within the attitudes of individual…"
"[I]n Northanger Abbey Jane Austen develops...her version of the revolutionary character, the man or woman who by acti…"
"Jane Austen influenced me very much in a general way. I read her early with great pleasure and often since, and I thi…"