William Lyon Phelps

William Lyon Phelps (2 January 1865 - 21 August 1943) was an American author, critic and scholar. Phelps gained a B.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University and an M.A. from Harvard University, where he went on to teach for just one year before returning to Yale to hold a position in the English department for 41 years. From 1941 to 1943 he was the director of the Hall of Fame for Great Americans. Phelps is included in Steven D. Price's compilation "1001 Smartest Things Ever Said" for saying, "This is the first test of a gentleman: his respect for those who can be of no possible value to him."

Yale Institutions

During his time as a Yale professor, he was responsible for the creation of two of its enduring institutions: The Pundits and the Elizabethan Club. The Pundits were first convened by Phelps in 1884 as a collection of the Senior Class' most notable wits and minds, and would dine weekly at Mory's -- today the group regularly also lampoons the campus through elaborate pranks. The Elizabethan Club's founder, Alexander Smith Cochran, was a student of Phelps', and took his professor's suggestion that he use the Cochran family's extensive collection of Shakesperan filios and other rare books to endow a private Club for the arts and humanities, separate from the University.

Quotes

"If you develop the absolute sense of certainty that powerful beliefs provide, then you can get yourself to accomplish virtually anything, including those things that other people are certain are impossible."

"The happiest people are those who think the most interesting thoughts. Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good company, good conversation, are the happiest people in the world. And they are not only happy in themselves, they are the cause of happiness in others."

Publications

His works include;

• Essays on Modern Novelists (1910),
• Advance of the English Novel (1916),
• Essays on Modern Dramatists (1921-1922),
• As I Like It (1923),
• Autobiography with Letters (1939),
• Marriage (1940).

External links

• Works by William Lyon Phelps at Project Gutenberg
• "Human Nature in the Bible", by William Lyon Phelps, 1923.

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