Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

The literary artist will ... portray what he knows, and little else. Imagination is built upon knowledge, and his dreams will rest…

— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

Next to the love between man and his Creator, The love of one man and one woman, Is the loftiest and the…

— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

What an immense power over life is the power of possessing distinct aims.

— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

Surely it is one of the requisites of a tasteful garb that the expression of effort to please shall be wanting in…

— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

To exist as an advertisement of her husband's income, or her father's generosity, has become a second nature to many a woman…

— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

Superior music is purity itself; it clears the air.

— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

... to work, to work hard, to see work steadily, and see it whole, was the way to be reputable. I think…

— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

Possibly the Creator did not make the world chiefly for the purpose of providing studies for gifted novelists; but if He had…

— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

It seems to me that life is always undoing for us something that we have just laboriously done.

— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

It is in the comprehension of the physically disabled, or disordered ... that we are behind our age.... sympathy as a fine…

— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

The rainiest nights, like the rainiest lives, are by no means the saddest.

— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

... life is moral responsibility. Life is several other things, we do not deny. It is beauty, it is joy, it is…

— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

The great law of denial belongs to the powerful forces of life, whether the case be one of coolish baked beans, or…

— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

Death is not the worst sorrow.

— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

... it seems to have been my luck to stumble into various forms of progress, to which I have been of the…

— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

... when one reflects on the books one never has written, and never may, though their schedules lie in the beautiful chirography…

— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

Imagination is built upon knowledge.

— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

The distractions, the exhaustions, the savage noises, the demands of town life, are, for me, mortal enemies to thought, to sleep,and to…

— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

Who originated that most exquisite of inquisitions, the condolence system?

— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

A perfect marriage is like a pure heart ... those who have it are fit to see God.

— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

It is not in our drawing-rooms that we should look to judge of the intrinsic worth of any style of dress. The…

— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

The Girl of the Period, sauntering before one down Broadway, is one panorama of awful surprises from top to toe. Her clothes…

— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

Write, if you must; not otherwise. Do not write, if you can earn a fair living at teaching or dressmaking, at electricity…

— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

I can remember no time when I did not understand that my mother must write books because people would have and read…

— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

Life is moral responsibility.

— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward