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 WardIt 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 WardOut 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... life is moral responsibility. Life is several other things, we do not deny. It is beauty, it is joy, it is tragedy, it is comedy, it is psychical and physical pleasure, it is the interplay of a thousand rude or delicate motions and emotions, it is the grimmest and the merriest motley of phantasmagoria that could appeal to the gravest or the maddest brush ever put to palette; but it is steadily and sturdily and always moral responsibility.
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps WardI 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