Quote

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

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While mortals sleep, the angels keep their watch of wondering love.
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A man who lives right, and is right, has more power in his silence than another has by his words.
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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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Be such a man, and live such a life, that if every man were such as you, and every life a life like yours, this earth would be God's Paradise.
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Heaven does not make holiness, but holiness makes heaven.
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The Saviour comes in the strength of righteousness. Righteousness is at the bottom of all things. Righteousness is thorough it is the very spirit of unsparing truth.
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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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There is no life so humble that, if it be true and genuinely human and obedient to God, it may not hope to shed some of His light. There is no life so meager that the greatest and wisest of us can afford to despise it. We cannot know at what moment it may flash forth with the life of God.
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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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I would know any man as a Christian, would rejoice to know any man as a Christian, whom Jesus would recognize as a Christian and Jesus Christ, I am sure, in these old days recognized His followers even if they came after Him with the blindest sight, with the most imperfect recognition and acknowledgment of what He was and of what He could do.
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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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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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Christianity helps us face the music even when we don't like the tune.
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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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The absence of sentimentalism in Christ's relations with men is what makes His tenderness so exquisitely touching.
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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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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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We do not want to lose our grief, because our grief is bound up with our love and we could not cease to mourn without being robbed of our affections.
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