Phillips Brooks was an American Episcopal clergyman and author, long the Rector of Boston’s Trinity Church and briefly Bishop of Massachusetts, and particularly remembered as lyricist of the Christmas hymn, “O Little Town of Bethlehem”.
In the Episcopal liturgical calendar he is remembered on January 23.
In 1877 Brooks published a course of lectures upon preaching, which he had delivered at the theological school of Yale University, and which are an expression of his own experience. 1879 appeared the Bohlen Lectures on The Influence of Jesus.1878 he published his first volume of sermons, and from time to time issued other volumes, including Sermons Preached in English Churches (1883) and “The Candle of the Lord” and Other Sermons (1895). Brooks was also famous and beloved for his collections of sermons,Com The Purpose and Use of Comfort, first published in 1878, which includes the title sermon as well as: “The Withheld Completions of Life,” “The Conqueror from Edom,” “Keeping the Faith,” “The Soul’s Refuge in God,” “The Man with One Talent,” “The Food of Man, “The Symbol and the Reality,” “Is It I?” and more. (via Wikipedia)
Following are his great quotes about various aspects of life:
On Life:
Be patient and understanding. Life is too short to be vengeful or malicious.
The ideal life is in our blood and never will be still.
Tomb, thou shalt not hold Him longer. Death is strong, but Life is stronger, Stronger than the dark, the lightStronger than the wrong, the right…
As you emphasize your life, you must localize and define it… you cannot do everything.
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.
A man who lives right, and is right, has more power in his silence than another has by his words.
Life comes before literature, as the material always comes before the work. The hills are full of marble before the world blooms with statues.
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.
On Death:
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…
On God:
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.
As the Master Wills Slowly, through all the universe, the temple of God is being built. Wherever, in any world, a soul, by free-willed obedience, catches the fire of Gods likeness, it is set into the growing walls, a living stone. When, in your hard fight, in your tiresome drudgery, or in your terrible temptation, you catch the purpose of your being, and give yourself to God, and so give Him the chance to give Himself to you, your life, a living stone, is taken up and set into that growing wall. Wherever souls are being tried and ripened, in whatever commonplace and homely waysthere God is hewing out the pillars for His temple. Oh, if the stone can only have some vision of the temple of which it is to be a part forever, what patience must fill it as it feels the blows of the hammer
It is good for us to think that no grace or blessing is truly ours till we are aware that God has blessed some one else with it through us.
Wherever souls are being tried and ripened, in whatever commonplace and homely way, there God is hewing out the pillars for His temple.
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.
Make your creed simply and broadly out of the revelation of God, and you will keep it to the end.
On Happiness:
On Christianity:
Christianity helps us face the music even when we don’t like the tune.