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

Phillips Brooks

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Phillips Brooks
Age: 57 †
Born: 1835
Born: December 13
Died: 1893
Died: January 23
Clergyman
Hymnwriter
Priest
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
Essential
Essentials
Toward
Conditions
Tendency
Happiness
Optimism
True
Tendencies
Men
Reasonable
Life
Condition

More quotes by Phillips Brooks

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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.
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There is a necessary limit to our achievement, but none to our attempt.
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Obedience completes itself in understanding.
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Where charity stands watching and faith holds wide the door the dark night wakes - the glory breaks, Christmas comes once more.
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Be patient and understanding. Life is too short to be vengeful or malicious.
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Do not dare to live without some clear intention toward which your living shall be bent. Mean to be something with all your might.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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O, 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 to you by the grace of God.
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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.
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Everywhere the flower of obedience is intelligence. Obey a man with cordial loyalty and you will understand him.
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The lives of men who have been always growing are strewed along their whole course with the things they have learned to do without.
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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.
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A prayer in its simplest definition is merely a wish turned Godward.
Phillips Brooks
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It is almost as presumptuous to think you can do nothing as to think you can do everything.
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The solution to sin is not to impose an ever-stricter code of behavior. It is to know God.
Phillips Brooks
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Self-confidence is either a petty pride in our own narrowness, or a realization of our duty and privilege as one of God's children.
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Joy in one's work is the consummate tool.
Phillips Brooks
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Everything keeps its best nature only by being put to its best use.
Phillips Brooks