Quotes from Phillips Brooks

We feel the thing we ought to be beating beneath the thing we are.

If man is man and God is God, to live without prayer is not merely an awful thing: it is an infinitely foolish thing.

Every time we see a man who has attained our human ideal a little more fully than we have, it wakens our languid blood and fills us with new longings.

The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

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. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be the miracle.

If you hold a rose up before a man and he shuts his eyes tight and just holds out his hands and says "Here, I am ready to be persuaded; convince me by touch that your rose is red;" then you are helpless.

Beware of the tendency to preach about Christianity, and try to preach Christ.

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! Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle. But you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come in you by the grace of God.

Truth is always strong, no matter how weak it looks, and falsehood is always weak, no matter how strong it looks.

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.

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.

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.