8 Quotes & Sayings By Elizabeth Payson Prentiss

Elizabeth Payson Prentiss was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1796. She married her first cousin, Dr. James Payson, in 1818 and later became a teacher. In 1825 she published a book about child care and in 1842 a companion volume entitled A Mothers Manual for Young Ladies Read more

She also wrote The Ladies Book of Useful Information and The Schoolmates Book of School Facts. However, her most famous work was published in 1853 under the pseudonym E.P.P., mostly to avoid being confused with Elizabeth Parrish, the wife of her cousin James Payson. Under the pen-name she wrote a series of books that were characteristically titled "The Lily," "The Rose," "The Lily and the Rose," and "The Lily and the Rose: A Tale." This series of tales featured a young woman who was a governess in a family headed by a wealthy man who could not have children of his own.

After he followed the girl from her home country to America she discovers that he is planning to bequeath his entire fortune to her when he dies. In response she plots to find another man who will take over his business empire for her after his death. In each story she finds just such a man and marries him so that she can gain control of his fortune and ultimately inherit it herself.

1
But you will imagine that it is best that He should at once enable you to see clearly. If it is, you may be sure He will do it. He never makes mistakes. But He often deals far differently with His disciples. He lets them grope their way in the dark until they fully learn how blind they are, how helpless, how absolutely in need of Him. What His methods will be with you I cannot foretell. But you may be sure that He never works in an arbitrary way. He has a reason for everything He does. You may not understand why He leads you now in this way and now in that, but you may, nay, you must believe that perfection is stamped on His every act. Elizabeth Payson Prentiss
Our course heavenward is like the plan of the zealous...
2
Our course heavenward is like the plan of the zealous pilgrim of old, who for every three steps forward, took one backward. Elizabeth Payson Prentiss
3
She says I shall now have one mouth the more to fill and two feet the more to shoe, more disturbed nights, more laborious days, and less leisure or visiting, reading, music, and drawing. Well! This is one side of the story, to be sure, but I look at the other. Here is a sweet, fragrant mouth to kiss; here are two more feet to make music with their pattering about my nursery. Here is a soul to train for God; and the body in which it dwells is worth all it will cost, since it is the abode of a kingly tenant. I may see less of friends, but I have gained one dearer than them all, to whom, while I minister in Christ's name, I make a willing sacrifice of what little leisure for my own recreation my other darlings had left me. Yes, my precious baby, you are welcome to your mother's heart, welcome to her time, her strength, her health, her tenderest cares, to her lifelong prayers! Oh, how rich I am, how truly, how wondrously blest! . Elizabeth Payson Prentiss
4
This is the testimony of all the good books, sermons, hymns, and memoirs I read--that God's ways are infinitely perfect; that we are to love Him for what He is and therefore equally as much when He afflicts as when He prospers us; that there is no real happiness but in doing and suffering His will; and that this life is but a scene of probation through which we pass to the real life above. Elizabeth Payson Prentiss
5
Wondrous as it is, how simple is this mystery! To love Christ and to know that I love Him--this is all! Elizabeth Payson Prentiss
6
You cannot prove to yourself that you love God by examining your feelings toward Him. They are indefinite and they fluctuate. But just as far as you obey Him, just so far, depend upon it; you love Him. It is not natural to us sinful, ungrateful beings to prefer His pleasure to our own or to follow His way instead of our own way, and nothing, nothing but love of Him can or does make us obedient to Him. . Elizabeth Payson Prentiss
7
People ask me how it happens that my children are all so promptly obedient and so happy. As if it chanced that some parents have such children or chanced that some have not! I am afraid it is only too true, as someone has remarked, that "this is the age of obedient parents! " What then will be the future of their children? How can they yield to God who have never been taught to yield to human authority? And how well fitted will they be to rule their own households who have never learned to rule themselves? . Elizabeth Payson Prentiss