Phillips Brooks Quotations

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

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

Forgive, forget. Bear with the faults of others as you would have them bear with yours. Be patient and understanding. Life is too short to be vengeful or malicious.

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.

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

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

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."

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

No man or woman can be strong, gentle, pure, and good, without the world being better for it and without someone being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

Very stange is this quality of our human nature which decrees that unless we feel a future before us we do not live completely in the present.

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 lar

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

In him was vindicated the greatness of real goodness and the goodness of real greatness

Call your opinions your creed, and you will change them every week. Make your creed simply and broadly out of the revelation of God, and you will keep it to the end.

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

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.

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.

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

The solution to sin is not to impose an ever-stricter code of behavior. It is to know God.

Christ will rise on Easter day!

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.

It never frightened a Puritan when you bade him stand still and listen to the speech of God. His closet and his church were full of the reverberations of the awful, gracious, beautiful voice for which he listened.

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

Obedience completes itself in understanding.

Everything keeps its best nature only by being put to its best use.

Very strange is this quality of our human nature which decrees that unless we feel a future before us we do not live completely in the present.

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.

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.

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

The absence of sentimentalism in Christ's relations with men is what makes His tenderness so exquisitely touching.

Never be afraid to bring the transcendent mysteries of our faith, Christ's life and death and resurrection, to the help of the humblest and commonest of human wants.

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.

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.

Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Prayer is not conquering God's reluctance, but taking hold of God's willingness.

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

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.

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.

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.

You may look through the streets of heaven, asking each how they came to b there, and you will look in vain everywhere for a person who is morally and spiritually strong, whose strength did not come to him in struggle. There is no exception anywhere. Every true strength is gained in struggle.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Anger is self-immolation.

Death is strong, but Life is stronger ...

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.

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

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.

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.

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

While mortals sleep, the angels keep their watch of wondering love.

Wherever, in any world, a soul, by free-willed obedience, catches the fire of God's likeness, it is set into the growing walls, a living stone.

Call your opinions your creed, and you will change them every week. Make your creed simply and broadly out of the revelation of God, and you will keep it to the end.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

The form of godliness may exist with secret and with open wickedness, but the power of godliness cannot.

Heaven does not make holiness, but holiness makes heaven.

Heaven is not to sweep our truths away, but only to turn them till we see their glory, to open them till we see their truth, and to unveil our eyes till for the first time we shall really see them.

Joy in one's work is the consummate tool.

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.

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.

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

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 has begun to live more seriously within, begins to live more simply without.