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Quote by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

“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.”

Quote by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

Author

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward was an American author born on January 28, 1844, and died on January 28, 1911. She is known for her works that focus on women, family, and social issues, which had a profound impact on American literature from the late 19th to the early 20th century. more

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“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.”

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Author: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 I always respected a goodblacksmith more than a lady of leisure.”

Thinking Way Hard Whole Work Hard Work Leisure Idleness

Author: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 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.”

Doe Art Eye Girl Effects Fashion Youth Flower Broken Periods Please Clothes Surprise Awful Attributes Meaningless Toes Broadway Sauntering Dazzle Kaleidoscope Panorama

Author: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 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.”

Force Effort Steps Mystery Fashion Style Expression Please Sight Studios Chips Ladders Toilets Statues Completion Sculptors Swept Away

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“... 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.”

Has Beens Use Seems Action Form Moral Knowing Progress Luck Sake Various Improvement Smallest Discomfort Attending

Author: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 who must have undergone, one would say, some long and subtle process of degradation before she sunk [sic] so low, or grovelled so serenely.”

Long Father Process Wealth Fashion Husband Lows Income Generosity Subtle Degradation Advertisements

Author:Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

“I believe in women; and in their right to their own best possibilities in every department of life. I believe that the methods ofdress practiced among women are a marked hindrance to the realization of these possibilities, and should be scorned or persuaded out of society.”

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Author: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 street-car is a truer crucible of its inherent value.”

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“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.”

“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.”

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Author:Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward