It is not pride when the beech-tree refuses to copy the oak. He knows his limitations. The only chance of any healthy life for him is to be as full a beech-tree as he can.
Phillips BrooksGet up; repent. Come to God. Get the pattern of your life from Him, and then go about your work and be yourself.
Phillips BrooksLife comes before literature, as the material always comes before the work. The hills are full of marble before the world blooms with statues.
Phillips BrooksThe 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.
Phillips Brooks