Phillips Brooks

“ Never does human nature seem so glorious and so wicked all at once as when we stand before the cross of Jesus! The most enthusiastic hopes, the most profound humiliation, have found their inspiration there. ”

“ No beauty is really beautiful which in any way hinders righteousness or weakens spiritual life.
To every heart's experience comes its time of desert-journeyings.... It eats its manna in the wilderness. ”

“ The tent-life is the true life until the building of God, the "house not made with hands," is reached.
he visionary is the man who has no present; the drudge is the man who has no future. To be saved from being either,—that can come only by joining a clear, sharp, solid work to large hopes and great ambitions. ”

“ Optimism is a belief in a great purpose underlying the world for good, absolutely certain to fulfil itself somewhere, somehow. That must have been what God saw when He looked upon the world and called it "good." ”

“ Dependence upon God makes the independence of men in which are liberty and courage.
here is a type of universal human life in harmony with the best life of all the ages, in tune with the sublimest and finest spiritual music of the universe, which you can live in your parlor and your shop. ”

“ Devotion is like the candle which Michael Angelo used to carry stuck on his forehead in a paste-board cap, and which kept his own shadow from being cast upon his work when he was hewing out his statues. ”

“ A hundred men stand on the shore and say: "There is no land beyond." One brave and trustful man like Columbus, believes that the complete world is complete, and sails for a fair land beyond the sea, and finds it. ”

“ Does not the soul, finding the heart of its suffering full of joy, forget the mere rough outside in which that heart of joy was folded?
Ideality, magnanimity and bravery—these are what make the heroes. The materialist, the sceptic and the coward—he cannot be a hero. ”

“ Be true and pure and lofty and devout, and He who ever seeks the souls of men shall find His way to some of them through you.
When a man means to be honest solely because honesty is right, and not because honesty is profitable, there is a perpetual and beautiful tendency of his honesty to refine and deepen itself. ”

“ You can know nothing which you do not reverence. You can see nothing before which you do not veil your eyes.
Repentance for safety, even for cleanness, is not complete. The true motive is that God may be glorified in us. ”

“ Any honest task is capable of being so largely conceived that he who enters into it may see, stretching before him, the promise of things to do and be, that will stir his enthusiasm and satisfy his best desires. ”

“ Not merely a Voice to be heard, but a Friend to be loved, a Shepherd to be followed, a Bread to be eaten,—so does the Christ of the Gospels present Himself in word and sacrament and every presentation of His personality. ”

“ The only way to run from God is to run to Him. The Infinite Knowledge is also the Infinite Pity.
ot simply His coming and His going, not simply His birth, or death, but the living, total life of Jesus is the world's salvation. And the Book in which His life shines orbed and distinct is the world's treasure.
Remember we are debtors to the Good by birth, but remember we may become debtors to the Bad by life ”

“ One who was man, yet mightier than man, has walked the vale before us.
Every attempt to do right has a tendency to reveal to us more spiritual ways of doing right, and our need of spiritual helps in doing it. ”

“ It is the reality that he makes of it, by the way in which he does it, that seems to him sordid.
Character is the divinest thing on earth. It is the one thing that you can put into the shop or into the study, and be sure that the fire is going to burn. ”

“ To disbelieve is to give ourselves into the power of death, and just so far to cease from living.
t is only in poor men and in the lower things that success increases self-conceit. In every high work and in men worthy of it, success is always sure to bring humility. ”