Phillips Brooks

“As you emphasize your life, you must localize and define it... you cannot do everything.”

“Happiness is the natural flower of duty.”

“Do not pray for easy lives, pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers, pray for powers equal to your tasks.”

“Prayer, in its simplest definition, is merely a wish turned God-ward.”

“A prayer, in its simplest definition, is merely a wish turned heavenward.”

“Everything keeps its best nature only by being put to its best use.”

“Bad will be the day for every man when he becomes absolutely contented with the life he is living, when there is not forever beating at the doors of his soul some great desire to do somethin...”

“To keep clear of concealment, to keep clear of the need of concealment, to do nothing that he might not do out on the middle of Boston Common at noonday -I cannot say how more and more that...”

“The truest help we can render an afflicted man is not to take his burden from him, but to call out his best energy, that he may be able to bear the burden.”

“The true way to be humble is not to stoop until you are smaller than yourself, but to stand at your real height against some higher nature that will show you what the real smallness of your...”

“Be patient and understanding. Life is too short to be vengeful or malicious.”

“No man or woman of the humblest sort can really be strong, gentle and good, without the world being better for it, without somebody being helped and comforted by the very existence of that g...”

“No man or woman can be strong, gentle, pure, and good, without the world being better for it and without someone being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness.”

“Sad will be the day for any man when he becomes contented with the thoughts he is thinking and the deeds he is doing - where there is not forever beating at the doors of his soul some great...”

“Life comes before literature, as the material always comes before the work. The hills are full of marble before the world blooms with statues.”

“The earth has grown old with its burden of care, but at Christmas it always is young, the heart of the jewel burns lustrous and fair, and its soul full of music breaks the air, when the song...”

“It does not take great men to do great things; it only takes consecrated men.”

“Call your opinions your creed, and you will change them every week.”

“Make your creed simply and broadly out of the revelation of God, and you will keep it to the end.”

“Jesus Christ, the condescension of divinity, and the exaltation of humanity.”