Louis Stanton Auchincloss, [Early pseudonym Andrew Lee], Louis Auchincloss
27 September 1917 - 26 January 2010
Birthplace: Lawrence, New York
American lawyer, author and historian
“Keep doing good deeds long enough, and you’ll probably turn out a good man. In spite of yourself.”
~Louis Auchincloss, American author & lawyer
The Rector of Justin (1964) New York: Houghton Mifflin, p. 333
Extended excerpt [Fictional dialogue. ‘Dr. Prescott’ to narrator, ‘Brian Aspinwall’]:
“Some of the intrinsic goodness of a good deed must seep into the motive, and some of the bad of a bad deed. Keep doing good deeds long enough, and you’ll probably turn out a good man. In spite of yourself.” (p. 333)
Source: Library – The Rector of Justin (1964) Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) No. 279743
“Only little boys and old men sneer at love.”
~Louis Auchincloss, American author & lawyer
The Rector of Justin (1964) New York: Houghton Mifflin, p. 105
Extended excerpt [Fictional dialogue]:
“Yes, love!” she exclaimed angrily. “Don’t smile at me in that cool, cynical way. If you could see how immature you looked! Only little boys and old men sneer at love. I happen to love Frank Prescott, and he happens to love me.” (p. 105)
Source: Library – The Rector of Justin (1964) Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) No. 279743
“Perfection irritates as well as it attracts, in fiction as in life.”
~Louis Auchincloss, American author
“Edith Wharton” (1 January 1961) University of Minnesota Pamphlets on American Writers, Issue 12; reprint in Pioneers and Caretakers: A Study of Nine American Women Novelists (1961) Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, third printing, 1966, p. 21
Extended excerpt [Non-fiction overview of the work of nine American authors. In this excerpt, Auchincloss is introducing a chapter on the work of novelist Edith Wharton.]:
“This is a long way from the picture in the minds of some American critics of a precious and snobbish old lady. Yet one can see how both pictures came into being. Perfection irritates as well as it attracts, in fiction as in life. As some of Mrs. Wharton’s acquaintances complained that her taste in furnishing was too good, her French too precisely idiomatic, so have some of her critics found her heroes and heroines too exquisite, too apt to exclaim in rapt unison over little known beauties in art and literature with which the majority of her readers may not be equally familiar.” (pp. 20-21)
Source: Library – Pioneers and Caretakers: A Study of Nine American Women Novelists (1965|1966 U of M edition) Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) No. 59004074
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