“Most works in realism tell a succession of such abject truths; they are deeply in earnest, every detail is true, and yet the whole finally tumbles to the ground — true but without significance. How did Jane Austen save her novels from that danger? They appear to be compact of abject truth. Their events are excruciatingly unimportant; and yet, with R. Crusoe, they will probably outlast all Fielding, Scott, George Elliot, Thackeray, and Dickens. The art is so consummate that the secret is hidden; peer at them as hard as one may; shake them; take them apart; one cannot see how it is done.”

—  Jane Austen

Thornton Wilder, A preface for Our Town (1938)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Most works in realism tell a succession of such abject truths; they are deeply in earnest, every detail is true, and ye…" by Jane Austen?
Jane Austen photo
Jane Austen 477
English novelist 1775–1817

Related quotes

Jane Austen photo

“Jane Austen was born before those bonds which (we are told) protected women from truth, were burst by the Brontës or elaborately untied by George Eliot. Yet the fact remains that Jane Austen knew more about men than either of them. Jane Austen may have been protected from truth: but it was precious little of truth that was protected from her.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

G. K. Chesterton, The Victorian Age in Literature (1913)

Jane Austen photo

“Which brings us again, after this long way about, to Jane Austen and her novels, and that troublesome question about them. She was great and they were beautiful, because she and they were honest, and dealt with nature nearly a hundred years ago as realism deals with it to-day. Realism is nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material, and Jane Austen was the first and the last of the English novelists to treat material with entire truthfulness. Because she did this, she remains the most artistic of the English novelists, and alone worthy to be matched with the great Scandinavian and Slavic and Latin artists.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

William Dean Howells, Criticism and Fiction (1891), Chapter 15

“How I wish I lived in a Jane Austen novel!”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

Jane Austen photo

“Every housemaid expects at least once a week as much excitement as would have lasted a Jane Austen heroine throughout a whole novel.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Bertrand Russell, in The Conquest of Happiness (1930), Ch. 4: Boredom and excitement

Pope John Paul II photo

“Every truth—if it really is truth—presents itself as universal, even if it is not the whole truth. If something is true, then it must be true for all people and at all times.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Encyclical Fides et Ratio, 14 September 1998

Source: www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio_en.html

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“205. If the true is what is grounded, then the ground is not true, nor yet false.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book On Certainty

On Certainty (1969)

“The search for the truth is the most important work in the whole world — and the most dangerous.”

James Clavell (1921–1994) American novelist

François Delambre (Vincent Price) to André's son, Philippe.
The Fly (1958)

Pearl S. Buck photo

“These Chinese novels are not perfect according to Western standards. They are not always planned from beginning to end, nor are they compact, any more than life is planned or compact. They are often too long, too full of incident, too crowded with character, a medley of fact and fiction as to material, and a medley of romance and realism as to method, so that an impossible event of magic or dream may be described with such exact semblance of detail that one is compelled to belief against all reason”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

The Chinese Novel (1938)

William James photo

“Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Lecture VI, Pragmatism's Conception of Truth
1900s, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907)
Context: Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation.

Related topics