Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Quotes & Sayings

Happiness must be cultivated. It is like character. It is not a thing to be safely let alone for a moment, or it will run to weeds. — Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

My wife and I said good-bye the next morning in a little sheltered place among the lumber on the wharf; she was one of your women who never like to do their crying before folks.
She climbed on the pile of lumber and sat down, a little flushed and quivery, to watch us off. I remember seeing her there with the baby till we were well down the channel. I remember noticing the bay as it grew cleaner, and thinking that I would break off swearing; and I remember cursing Bob Smart like a pirate within an hour.
("Kentucky's Ghost") — Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

Success for a woman means absolute surrender, in whatever direction. Whether she paints a picture, or loves a man, there is no division of labor possible in her economy. To the attainment of any end worth living for, a symmetrical sacrifice of her nature is compulsory upon her. — Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

Out of my discomforts, which were small enough, grew one thing for which I have all my life been grateful, the formation of fixed habits of work. — Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

A great idea is usually original to more than one discoverer. Great ideas come when the world needs them. Great ideas surround the world's ignorance and press for admission. — Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

They don't take the Bible as a general thing, sailors don't; though I will say that I never saw the man at sea who didn't give it the credit of being an uncommon good yarn.
("Kentucky's Ghost") — Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

It is impossible to forget the sense of dignity which marks the hour when one becomes a wage-earner ... I felt that I had suddenly acquired value to myself, to my family, and to the world. — Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

Surely it is one of the simplest laws of taste in dress, that it shall not attract undue attention from the wearer to the worn. — Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

It is not the straining for great things that is most effective; it is the doing the little things, the common duties, a little better and better. — Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

What an immense power over the life is the power of possessing distinct aims. The voice, the dress, the look, the very motion of a person, define and alter when he or she begins to live for a reason. — Elizabeth Stuart Phelps