Phillips Brooks Quotes (60 Quotes)


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

    We never become truly spiritual by sitting down and wishing to become so. You must undertake something so great that you cannot accomplish it unaided.

    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.

    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.

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


    To hold your truth, to believe it with all your heart, to work with all your might, first to make it real to yourself and then to show its preciousness to other men, and then not till then, but then to leave the questions of when and how and by whom it shall prevail to God that is the true life of the believer. There is no feeble unconcern and indiscriminateness there, and neither is there any excited hatred of the creed, the doctrine, or the Church, which you feel wholly wrong. You have not fled out of the furnace of bigotry to freeze on the open and desolate plains of indifference. You believe and yet you have no wish to persecute.

    The best advisers, helpers and friends, always are not those who tell us how to act in special cases, but who give us, out of themselves, the ardent spirit and desire to act right, and leave us then, even through many blunders, to find out what our own form of right action is.

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

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

    O little town of Bethlehem, How still we see thee lie Above thy deep and dreamless sleep The silent stars go by Yet in thy dark streets shineth The everlasting Light. The hopes and fears of all the years Are met in thee tonight. For Christ is born of Mary, And, gathered all above While mortals sleep,the angels keep Their watch of wondring love. O morning stars, together Proclaim the holy birth, And praises sing to God the King, And peace to men on earth. How silently, how silently The wondrous gift is givn So God imparts to human hearts The blessings of his heavn. No ear may hear his coming But in this world of sin, Where meek souls will receive him, still The dear Christ enters in.

    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.

    Bad 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 still, in spite of all, the child of God.

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

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

    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.


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

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

    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.

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

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

    Much as we deplore our condition in life, nothing would make us more satisfied with it than the changing of places, for a few days, with our neighbors.

    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.

    You who are passing men sullenly upon the street, not speaking to them out of some silly spite, and yet knowing that it would fill you with shame and remorse if you heard that one of those men were dead tomorrow morning you who are letting your neighbor starve, till you hear that he is dying of starvation or letting your friend's heart ache for a word of appreciation or sympathy, which you mean to give him someday.

    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, and knows that success for it is simply to let itself be wrought into what shape the Master wills.

    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.

    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.

    You who are letting miserable misunderstandings run on from year to year, meaning to clear them up someday you who are keeping wretched quarrels alive because you cannot quite make up your mind that now is the day to sacrifice your pride and kill them

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

    Tomb, thou shalt not hold Him longerDeath is strong, but Life is strongerStronger than the dark, the lightStronger than the wrong, the right...

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

    Sad is the day for any man when he becomes absolutely satisfied with the life he is living, the thoughts that he is thinking and the deeds that he is doing when there ceases to be forever beating at the doors of his soul a desire to do something larger which he seeks and knows he was meant and intended to do.

    If you could only know and see and feel, all of a sudden, that 'the time is short,' how it would break the spell. How you would go instantly and do the thing, which you might never have another chance to do

    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.

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

    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.

    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 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.

    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.

    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.

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

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

    To believe in the God over us and around us and not in the God within us that would be a powerless and fruitless faith.

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

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


    What is the Christian Everywhere the man who, so far as he comprehends Jesus Christ, so far as he can get any knowledge of Him, is His servant the man who makes Christ a teacher of his intelligence and the guide of his soul the man who obeys Christ as far as he has been able to understand him.... I would know any man as a Christian, would rejoice to know any man as a Christian, whom Jesus would recognize as a Christian and Jesus Christ, I am sure, in these old days recognized His followers even if they came after Him with the blindest sight, with the most imperfect recognition and acknowledgment of what He was and of what He could do.

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

    Wherever souls are being tried and ripened, in whatever commonplace and homely way, there God is hewing out the pillars for His temple.

    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.


    More Phillips Brooks Quotations (Based on Topics)


    Life - Man - Christianity - God - Mind - Jesus Christ - Belief & Faith - Sadness - Love - Charity - Truth - Soul - Wisdom & Knowledge - Thought & Thinking - Duty - Mankind - Work & Career - Characters - Time - View All Phillips Brooks Quotations

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    Joel Osteen - Buddha - Baal Shem Tov - Timothy Radcliffe - Robert H. Schuller - Richard Cardinal Cushing - Pat Robertson - Max Lucado - Francis Cardinal Spellman - Cardinal Richelieu


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