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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
Essentials
Toward
Conditions
Tendency
Happiness
Optimism
True
Tendencies
Men
Reasonable
Life
Condition
Essential

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The place where two friends first met is sacred to them all through their friendship, all the more sacred as their friendship deepens and grows old.
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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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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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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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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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Preaching is truth through personality.
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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.
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The man, who has begun to live more seriously within, begins to live more simply without.
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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.
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Genius, by its very intensity, decrees a special path of fire for its vivid power.
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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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Bear with the faults of others as you would have them bear with yours.
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Joy in one's work is the consummate tool.
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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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Pray for powers equal to your tasks.
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To find his place and fill it is success for a man.
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The great Easter truth is not that we are to live newly after death - that is not the great thing - but that...we are to, and may, live nobly now because we are to live forever.
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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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Be patient and understanding. Life is too short to be vengeful or malicious.
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The solution to sin is not to impose an ever-stricter code of behavior. It is to know God.
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