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Quote by Ellen Glasgow

“Apart from letters, it is the vulgar custom of the moment to deride the thinkers of the Victorian and Edwardian eras; yet there has not been, in all history, another agewhen so much sheer mental energy was directed toward creating a fairer social order.”

Quote by Ellen Glasgow

Author

Ellen Glasgow, an American novelist, was born on April 22, 1873, and died on November 21, 1945. Her works are known for their profound psychological insights and critical portrayal of the Southern society. more

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“...America has enjoyed the doubtful blessing of a single-track mind. We are able to accommodate, at a time, only one national hero; and we demand that that hero shall be uniform and invincible. As a literate people we are preoccupied, neither with the race nor the individual, but with the type. Yesterday, we romanticized the "tough guy;" today, we are romanticizing the underprivileged, tough or tender; tomorrow, we shall begin to romanticize the pure primitive.”

“I have watchedmany literary fashions shoot up and blossom, and then fade and drop.... Yet with the many that I have seen comeand go, I have never yet encountered a mode of thinking that regarded itself as simply a changing fashion, and not as an infallible approach to the right culture.”

Thinking Culture Literature Fashion Approach Thoughtful Fades Infallible Fads

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“... the ordinary is simply the universal observed from the surface, that the direct approach to reality is not without, but within. Touch life anywhereand you will touch universality wherever you touch the earth.”

Life Reality Earth Approach Ordinary Direct Universal Surface Realism Universality Direct Approach

Author:Ellen Glasgow

“My first reading of Tolstoy affected me as a revelation from heaven, as the trumpet of the judgment. What he made me feel was notthe desire to imitate, but the conviction that imitation was futile.”

Feels Firsts Made Desire Reading Heaven Judgment Conviction Revelations Affected Imitation Trumpets

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“... to be "literary" appeared to my deluded innocence as an unending romance.”

Romance Literature Innocence Unending Deluded

Author:Ellen Glasgow

“I would write of the universal, not the provincial, in human nature.... I would write of characters, not of characteristics.”

Writing Humans Character Human Nature Universal Characteristics

Author:Ellen Glasgow

“I had no place in any coterie, or in any reciprocal self-advertising. I stood alone. I stood outside. I wanted only to learn. I wanted only to write better.”

Writing Self Wanted Independence Advertising Reciprocal

Author:Ellen Glasgow

“Although the primitive in art may be both interesting and impressive, as portrayed in American fiction it is conspicuous for dullness alone. Drab persons living drab lives, observed by drab minds and reported in drab writing.”

Writing Mind May Persons Art Artist Interesting Fiction Primitive Impressive Dullness

Author:Ellen Glasgow

“The attraction of horror is a mental, or even an intellectual, excitement, but the fascination of the repulsive, so noticeable incontemporary writing, can spring openly from some rotted substance within our civilization.”

Writing Literature Civilization Horror Intellectual Spring Attraction Substance Excitement Fascination Decadence

Author:Ellen Glasgow

“Nothingis so ungrateful as a rising generation; yet, if there is any faintest glimmer of light ahead of us in the present, itwas kindled by the intellectual fires that burned long before us.”

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Author:Ellen Glasgow