Anna Brownell Jameson

I have more confidence in the charity which begins in the home and diverges into a large humanity, than in the worldwide philanthropy which begins at the outside of our horizon to converge into egotism.

Anna Brownell Jameson (née Anna Murphy; 17 May 1794 – 17 March 1860) was an Anglo-Irish art historian whose work spanned art and literary criticism, philosophy, travel writing, and feminism.

Quotes

• I have more confidence in the charity which begins in the home and diverges into a large humanity, than in the worldwide philanthropy which begins at the outside of our horizon to converge into egotism.
  • A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies; Original and Selected, 2nd ed. (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1855) p. 27

Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada (1838)

London: Saunders and Otley

• As the rolling stone gathers no moss, so the roving heart gathers no affections.
  • "Detached Thoughts—Sternberg's Novels"

• A man may be as much a fool from the want of sensibility as the want of sense.
  • "Detached Thoughts"

• The true purpose of education is to cherish and unfold the seed of immortality already sown within us; to develop, to their fullest extent, the capacities of every kind with which the God who made us has endowed us.
  • "Education"

Memoirs and Essays (1846)

London: Richard Bentley

• Piety in art—poetry in art—Puseyism in art—let us be careful how we confound them.
  • "The House of Titian"

• He that seeks popularity in art closes the door on his own genius: as he must needs paint for other minds, and not for his own.
  • "Washington Allston"

• Reputation is but a synonyme of popularity: dependent on suffrage, to be increased or diminished at the will of the voters.
  • "Washington Allston"

• Reputation being essentially contemporaneous, is always at the mercy of the Envious and the Ignorant. But Fame, whose very birth is posthumous, and which is only known to exist by the echo of its footsteps through congenial minds, can neither be increased nor diminished by any degree of wilfulness.
  • "Washington Allston"

• Fame has no necessary conjunction with praise: it may exist without the breath of a word: it is a recognition of excellence which must be felt but need not be spoken. Even the envious must feel it: feel it, and hate it in silence.
  • "Washington Allston"

• The only competition worthy a wise man is with himself.
  • "Washington Allston"

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Anna Brownell Jameson on Wikipedia