Quotes by Phillips Brooks

Happiness is the natural flower of duty.

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.

Do not pray for easy lives pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers pray for powers equal to your tasks.

Prayer in its simplest definition is merely a wish turned God-ward.

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

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

Bad will be the day for every man when he becomes absolutely contented with the life he is living when there is not forever beating at the doors of his soul some great desire to do something larger.

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.

To keep clear of concealment to keep clear of the need of concealment to do nothing that he might not do out on the middle of Boston Common at noonday -I cannot say how more and more that seems to me to be the glory of a young mans life. It is an awful hour when the first necessity of hiding anything comes. The whole life is different thenceforth. When there are questions to be feared and eyes to be avoided and subjects that must not be touched then the bloom of life is gone. Put off that day as long as possible. Put if off forever if you can.

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

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 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.

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

Christianity helps us face the music even when we dont like the tune.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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