Phillips Brooks Quotes

The glory of the star, the glory of the sun - we must not lose either in the other. We must not be so full of the hope of heaven that we cannot do our work on the earth; we must not be so lost in the work of the earth that we shall not be inspired by the hope of heaven.

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

We are haunted by an ideal life, and it is because we have within us the beginning and the possibility of it.

Up and down our lives obedient
Walk, dear Christ, with footsteps radiant,
Till those garden lives shall be
Fair with duties done for Thee;
And our thankful spirits say,
"Christ arose on Easter Day."

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.

No one ever fell under the burden of the day; it is only when the burden of tomorrow is added that the load becomes unbearable.

O, do not pray for easy lives ...

No man dares to condemn the Christian faith today, because the Christian faith has not been tried. Not until men get rid of the thought that it is a poor machine, an expedient for saving them from suffering and pain; not until they get the grand idea of it as the great power of God present in and through the lives of men; not until then does Christianity enter upon its true trial and become ready to show what it can do.

If man is man and God is God, to live without prayer is not merely an awful thing: it is an infinitely foolish thing.

I do not pray for a lighter load, but for a stronger back.

There are no times in life when opportunity, the chance to be and do, gathers so richly about the soul as when it has to suffer. Then everything depends on whether the man turns to the lower or the higher helps. If he resorts to mere expedients and tricks the opportunity is lost. He comes out harder, poorer, smaller for his pain. But, if he turns to God, the hour of suffering is the turning hour of his life.

Greatness after all, in spite of its name, appears to be not so much a certain size as a certain quality in human lives. It may be present in lives whose range is very small.

There is such a difference between coming out of sorrow merely thankful for belief, and coming out of sorrow full of sympathy with, and trust in, Him who has released us.

The man who goes through life with an uncertain doctrine not knowing what he believes, what a poor, powerless creature he is! He goes around through the world as a man goes down through the street with a poor, wounded arm, forever dodging people be meets on the street for fear they may touch him.

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 the miracle.

How silently, how silently The wonderous gift is given! So God imparts to human hearts The blessings of his heaven. No ear may hear his coming, But in this world of sin, Where meek souls will receive him still, The dear Christ enters in.

The danger facing all of us--let me say it again, for one feels it tremendously--is not that we shall make an absolute failure of life, nor that we shall fall into outright viciousness, nor that we shall be terribly unhappy, nor that we shall feel that life has no meaning at all--not these things. The danger is that we may fail to perceive life's greatest meaning, fall short of its highest good, miss its deepest and most abiding happiness, be unable to render the most needed service, be unconscious of life ablaze with the light of the Presence of God--and be content to have it so--that is the danger. That some day we may wake up and find that always we have been busy with the husks and trappings of life--and have really missed life itself. For life without God, to one who has known the richness and joy of life with Him, is unthinkable, impossible. That is what one prays one's friends may be spared--satisfaction with a life that falls short of the best, that has in it no tingle and thrill which come from a friendship with the Father.

Obedience completes itself in understanding.

The essential tendency of life is toward happiness ... Optimism is the only true condition for a reasonable man.

Get the pattern of your life from God, then go about your work and be yourself.

You must learn, you must let God teach you, that the only way to get rid of your past is to make a future out of it. God will waste nothing.

Newton's great generalization, which he called the "third law of motion," was that "Action and reaction are always equal to each other;" and that law has been one of the most pregnant of all truths about the mystery of force;
one of the brightest windows through which modern eyes have looked into the world of Nature.

Be courageous. Be independent. Only remember where the true courage and independence come from.

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

It is almost as presumptuous to think you can do nothing as to think you can do everything.

To say, 'well done' to any bit of good work is to take hold of the powers which have made the effort and strengthen them beyond our knowledge.

Forgive, forget. Bear with the faults of others as you would have them bear with yours.

The Bible is like a telescope. If a man looks through his telescope, then he sees worlds beyond; but if he looks at his telescope, then he does not see anything but that. The Bible is a thing to be looked through, to see that which is beyond; but most people only look at it; and so they see only the dead letter.

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

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

O Risen Christ! O Easter Flower!
How dear Thy Grace has grown!
From east to west, with loving power,
Make all the world Thine own.

Life is too short to nurse one's misery. Hurry across the lowlands so that you may spend more time on the mountain tops.

Greatness is not so much a certain size as a certain quality in your life.

Never fear to bring the sublimest motive to the smallest duty, and the most infinite comfort to the smallest trouble.

If you limit the search for truth and forbid men anywhere, in any way, to seek knowledge, you paralyze the vital force of truth itself.
In the best sense of the word, Jesus was a radical. His religion has been so long identified with conservation
often with conservatism of the obstinate and unyielding sort
that it is almost startling for us sometimes to remember that all of the conservatism of his own times was against him; that it was the young, free, restless, sanguine, progressive part of the people who flocked to him.

The ideal life is in our blood and never will be still.

The trouble is that I'm in a hurry, but God isn't.

The man who has begun to live more seriously within begins to live more simply without.

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

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

Faith says not, 'I see that it is good for me, so God must have sent it,' but, 'God sent it, and so it must be good for me.' Faith, walking in the dark with God, only prays Him to clasp its hand more closely.

Distrust your religion unless it is cheerful, unless it turns every act and deed to music and exults in attempts to catch the harmony of the new life.

Self-confidence is either a petty pride in our own narrowness, or the realization of our duty and privilege as God's children.

Nothing lies beyond the reach of prayer except that which lies outside the will of God.

The lives of men who have been always growing are strewed along their whole course with the things they have learned to do without.

Christianity helps us face the music even when we don't like the tune.

The place where two friends first met is sacred to them all through their friendship, all the more sacred as their friendship deepens and grows old.

Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones.

No one who has come to true greatness has not felt in some degree that his life belongs to the people, and what God has given them he gives it for mankind.

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

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.

Dreadful will be the day when the world becomes contented, when one great universal satisfaction spreads itself over the world. Sad will be the day for every man when he becomes absolutely contented with the life that he is living, with the thoughts that he is thinking, with the deeds that he is doing, when there is not forever beating at the doors of his soul some great desire to do something larger which he knows that he was meant and made to do because he is a child of God.

No man has come to true greatness who has not felt that his life belongs to his race, and that which God gives to him, He gives him for mankind.

The elements which determine the make of any particular sermon are three; the preacher, the material, and the audience; just as the character of any battle is determined by three elements; the gun (including the gunner), the ammunition, and the fortress against which the attack is made.

I do not see how we can help thinking about God when He is so good to us all the time. Let me tell you how it seems to me that we come to know about our heavenly Father. It is from the power of love which is in our own hearts. Love is at the soul of everything. Whatever has not the power of loving must have a very dreary life indeed. We like to think that the sunshine and the winds and the trees are able to love in some way of their own, for it would make us know that they were happy if we knew that they could love. And so God who is the greatest and happiest of all beings is the most loving too. All the love that is in our hearts comes from him, as all the light which is in the flowers comes from the sun. And the more we love, the more near we are to God and His Love.

If we could sweep intemperance out of the country, there would be hardly poverty enough left to

Do not dare to live without some clear intention toward which your living shall be bent. Mean to be something with all your might.

There are passages of the Bible that are soiled forever by the touches of the hands of ministers who delight in the cheap jokes they have left behind them.

Christmas day is a day of joy and charity. May God make you very rich in both.

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

To whatever world He carries our souls when they shall pass out of these imprisoning bodies, in those worlds these souls of ours shall find themselves part of the same great temple; for it belongs not to this earth alone.

Set yourself earnestly to see what you are made to do, and then set yourself earnestly to do it.

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

It is not pride when the beech-tree refuses to copy the oak. The only chance of any healthy life for it is to be as full a beech-tree as it can be.

We anticipate a time when the love of truth shall have come up to our love of liberty, and men shall be cordially tolerant and earnest believers both at once.

Pray the largest prayers.pray not for crutches but for wings.

We may say that on the first Good Friday afternoon was completed that great act by which light conquered darkness and goodness conquered sin. That is the wonder of our Saviour's crucifixion.

It is God's world still. It has been given to man not absolutely, but in trust, that man may work out in it the will of God; given-may we not say?-just as a father gives a child a corner of his great garden, and says, "There, that is yours; now cultivate it."

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.

The Saviour comes in the strength of righteousness. Righteousness is at the bottom of all things. Righteousness is thorough; it is the very spirit of unsparing truth.

The faith which you keep must be a faith that demands obedience, and you can keep it only by obeying it.

Pray for and work for fullness of life above every thing; full red blood in the body; full honesty and truth in the mind; and the fullness of a grateful love for the Saviour in your heart.

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

The feet of the humblest may walk in the field Where the feet of the Holiest trod, This, then, is the marvel to mortals revealed.

Christ will rise on Easter day!

Everywhere the flower of obedience is intelligence. Obey a man with cordial loyalty and you will understand him.

There is one universal religion, Helen - the religion of Love. Love your Heavenly Father with your whole heart and soul, love every child of God as much as ever you can, and remember that the possibilities of good are greater than the possibilities of evil; and you have the key to Heaven.

The essence of that by which Jesus overcame the world was not suffering, but obedience. Yes, men may puzzle themselves and their hearers over the question where the power of the life of Jesus and the death of Jesus lay; but the soul of the Christian always knows that it lay in the obedience of Christ. He was determined at every sacrifice to do His Father's will. Let us remember that; and the power of Christ's sacrifice may enter into us, and some little share of the redemption of the world may come through us, as the great work came through Him.

For the Christ-child who comes is the Master of all; No palace too great, no cottage too small.

Pray for powers equal to your tasks.

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.'

Truth is always strong, no matter how weak it looks, and falsehood is always weak, no matter how strong it looks.

Preaching is truth through personality.

Think of life as a voyage. The truest liver of the truest life is like a voyager who, as he sails, is not indifferent to all the beauty of the sea around him.

There is no life so humble that, if it be true and genuinely human and obedient to God, it may not hope to shed some of His light. There is no life so meager that the greatest and wisest of us can afford to despise it. We cannot know at what moment it may flash forth with the life of God.

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

The more man becomes irradiated with the Divinity of Christ, the more, not the less, truly he is man.

Feed on Christ, and then go and live your life, and it is Christ in you that lives your life, that helps the poor, that tells the truth, that fights the battle, and that wins the crown.

So shall we join the disciples of our Lord, keeping faith in Him in spite of the crucifixion, and making ready, by our loyalty to Him in the days of His darkness, for the time when we shall enter into His triumph in the days of His light.

Joy in one's work is the consummate tool.

Christianity knows no truth which is not the child of love and the parent of duty.

We do not want to lose our grief, because our grief is bound up with our love and we could not cease to mourn without being robbed of our affections.