Who originated that most exquisite of inquisitions, the condolence system? Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward More Quotes by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward More Quotes From Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward 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 Ward grateful habit enough Life is moral responsibility. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward moral responsibility life-is Superior music is purity itself; it clears the air. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward music purity air 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 Ward impossible-to-forget dignity world 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 Ward voice dresses looks A good short story is a work of art which daunts us in proportion to its brevity.... No inspiration is too noble for it; no amountof hard work is too severe for it. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward hard-work inspiration art 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 Ward weed running happiness The literary artist will ... portray what he knows, and little else. Imagination is built upon knowledge, and his dreams will rest upon his facts. He is worth to the world just about what he has learned from it, and no more. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward artist imagination dream It is in the comprehension of the physically disabled, or disordered ... that we are behind our age.... sympathy as a fine art is backward in the growth of progress. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward growth sympathy art I can remember no time when I did not understand that my mother must write books because people would have and read them; but I cannot remember one hour in which her children needed her and did not find her. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward mother book children The distractions, the exhaustions, the savage noises, the demands of town life, are, for me, mortal enemies to thought, to sleep,and to study; its extremes of squalor and of splendor do not stimulate, but sadden me; certain phases of its society I profoundly value, but would sacrifice them to the heaven of country quiet, if I had to choose between. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward sacrifice sleep country It is not in our drawing-rooms that we should look to judge of the intrinsic worth of any style of dress. The street-car is a truer crucible of its inherent value. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward drawing fashion judging To exist as an advertisement of her husband's income, or her father's generosity, has become a second nature to many a woman who must have undergone, one would say, some long and subtle process of degradation before she sunk [sic] so low, or grovelled so serenely. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward fashion husband father ... it seems to have been my luck to stumble into various forms of progress, to which I have been of the smallest possible use; yet for whose sake I have suffered the discomfort attending all action in moral improvements, without the happiness of knowing that this was clearly quite worth while. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward progress luck knowing I read, with a kind of hopeless envy, histories and legends of people of our craft who "do not write for money." It must be a pleasant experience to be able to cultivate so delicate a class of motives for the privilege of doing one's best to express one's thoughts to people who care for them. Personally, I have yet to breathe the ether of such a transcendent sphere. I am proud to say that I have always been a working woman, and always had to be. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward writing class people The Girl of the Period, sauntering before one down Broadway, is one panorama of awful surprises from top to toe. Her clothes characterize her. She never characterizes her clothes. She is upholstered, not ornamented. She is bundled, not draped. She is puckered, not folded. She struts, she does not sweep. She has not one of the attributes of nature nor of proper art. She neither soothes the eye like a flower, nor pleases it like a picture. She wearies it like a kaleidoscope. She is a meaningless dazzle of broken effects. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward fashion girl art Surely it is one of the requisites of a tasteful garb that the expression of effort to please shall be wanting in it; that the mysteries of the toilet shall not be suggested by it; that the steps to its completion shall be knocked away like the sculptor's ladder from the statue, and the mental force expended upon it be swept away out of sight like the chips on the studio floor. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward fashion expression sight
