Phillips Brooks Quotes

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.

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

Where charity stands watching and faith holds wide the door the dark night wakes - the glory breaks, Christmas comes once more.

Character cannot be made except by a steady, long-continued process.

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.

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.

Happiness is the natural flower of duty.

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.

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; Faith and Hope triumphant say Christ will rise on Easter Day.

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.

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

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.

Those who help a child help humanity with an immediateness which no other help given to human creature in any other stage of human life can possibly give again.

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.

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

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.

Life comes before literature, as the material always comes before the work. The hills are full of marble before the world blooms with statues.

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.

When you discover you've been leading only half a life, the other half is going to haunt you until you develop it.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

No man ever yet thought whether he was preaching well without weakening his sermon.