Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Quotes


"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
(Related: Life, Power, Dress, Reason, Voice)

"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
(Related: Idea, Ideas, Ignorance, Needs, Press, World)

"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
(Related: Happiness, Character, Will)

"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
(Related: Family, Dignity, Forget, Sense, Value, Wage, World)

"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
"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
(Related: Life, Work, Habits)