Anna Quindlen, in The New York Times (21 May 1994)
“

The moment when she crawled out onto the back of the open limousine in which her husband had been murdered was the first and last time the American people would see Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis crawl... She was the last great private public figure in this country. In a time of gilt and glitz and perpetual revelation, she was perpetually associated with that thing so difficult to describe yet so simple to recognize, the apotheosis of dignity.

— Anna Quindlen on Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The moment when she crawled out onto the back of the open limousine in which her husband had been murdered was the first and last time the American people would see Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis crawl... She was the last great private public figure in this country. In a time of gilt and glitz and perpetual revelation, she was perpetually associated with that thing so difficult to describe yet so simple to recognize, the apotheosis of dignity." in the context of "Anna Quindlen, in The New York Times (21 May 1994)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis" (Quotes about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis: Sorted alphabetically by author or source, Q) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Anna Quindlen

About Anna Quindlen

Anna Quindlen (born July 8, 1952) is an American journalist and opinion columnist whose New York Times column, Public and Private, won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1992.