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

More quotes by Phillips Brooks

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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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There is such a difference between coming out of sorrow thankful for relief, and coming out of sorrow full of sympathy with and trust in Him who has released us.
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Life is too short to nurse one's misery. Hurry across the lowlands so that you may spend more time on the mountain tops.
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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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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 almost as presumptuous to think you can do nothing as to think you can do everything.
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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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A man who lives right, and is right, has more power in his silence than another has by his words.
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So shall we join the disciples of our Lord, keeping faith in Him in spite of the crucifixion, and making ready, by our loyalty to Him in the days of His darkness, for the time when we shall enter into His triumph in the days of His light.
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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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O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie! Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.
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Preaching is truth through personality.
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Only the soul that with an overwhelming impulse and a perfect trust gives itself up forever to the life of other men, finds the delight and peace which such complete self-surrender has to give.
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Christianity knows no truth which is not the child of love and the parent of duty.
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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.
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Faith says not, 'I see that it is good for me, so God must have sent it,' but, 'God sent it, and so it must be good for me.' Faith, walking in the dark with God, only prays Him to clasp its hand more closely.
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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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Christ will rise on Easter day!
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The man, who has begun to live more seriously within, begins to live more simply without.
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He who thinks that he is being released from the work, and not set free in order that he may accomplish that work, mistakes the Christ from whom the freedom comes, mistakes the condition into which his soul is invited.
Phillips Brooks