Quotes from Phillips Brooks

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.

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

Genius, by its very intensity, decrees a special path of fire for its vivid power.

It is while you are patiently toiling at the little tasks of life that the meaning and shape of the great whole of life dawn on you.

O, 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! Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle. But you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come to you by the grace of God.

Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be the miracle.

Charity should begin at home, but should not stay there.

Some day, in years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now, in these quiet weeks. Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long continued process.

Heaven does not make holiness, but holiness makes heaven.

Let us beware of losing our enthusiasms. Let us ever glory in something, and strive to retain our admiration for all that would ennoble, and our interest in all that would enrich and beautify our life.

Let every man and woman count himself immortal. Let him catch the revelation of Jesus in his resurrection. Let him say not merely, "Christ is risen," but "I shall rise."

Stand up, on this Thanksgiving Day, stand upon your feet. Believe in man. Soberly and with clear eyes, believe in your own time and place. There is not, and there never has been a better time, or a better place to live in.

A man who lives right, and is right, has more power in his silence than another has by his words.

Happiness is the natural flower of duty.

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 of angels is sung.

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

Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks.

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 greatness is.

Tomb, thou shalt not hold Him longer; Death is strong, but Life is stronger; Stronger than the dark, the light; Stronger than the wrong, the right...

O little town of Bethlehem!How still we see thee lie;Above thy deep and dreamless sleepThe silent stars go by;Yet in thy dark streets shinethThe everlasting Light;The hopes and fears of all the yearsAre met in thee tonight.

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 desire to do something larger which he knows he was meant and made to do.

In him was vindicated the greatness of real goodness and the goodness of real greatness.

A prayer in its simplest definition is merely a wish turned Godward.

Be such a man, and live such a life, that if every man were such as you, and every life a life like yours, this earth would be God's Paradise.