Phillips Brooks

Who was Phillips Brooks?

Phillips Brooks was an American Episcopal clergyman and author, long the Rector of Boston's Trinity Church and briefly Bishop of Massachusetts, and particularly remembered as lyricist of the Christmas hymn, "O Little Town of Bethlehem".

In the Episcopal liturgical calendar he is remembered on January 23.

Famous Quotes:

• To say, well done to any bit of good work is to take hold of the powers which have made the effort and strengthen them beyond our knowledge.
• 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.
• A man who lives right, and is right, has more power in his silence than another has by his words.
• Charity should begin at home, but should not stay there.
• I do not pray for a lighter load, but for a stronger back.
• 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.
• The best advisers, helpers and friends, always are not those who tell us how to act in special cases, but who give us, out of themselves, the ardent spirit and desire to act right, and leave us then, even through many blunders, to find out what our own form of right action is.
• The truest help we can render an afflicted man is not to take his burden from him, but to call out his best energy, that he may be able to bear the burden.
• Self-confidence is either a petty pride in our own narrowness, or the realization of our duty and privilege as God's children.
• 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.