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Life comes before literature, as the material always comes before the work. The hills are full of marble before the world blooms with statues.

— Phillips Brooks

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More quotes by Phillips Brooks

Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully.

Primary Education (1916)

For greatness after all, in spite of its name, appears to be not so much a certain size as a certain quality in human lives. It may be present in lives whose range is very small.

Sermons (1879)

The absence of sentimentalism in Christ's relations with men is what makes His tenderness so exquisitely touching.

A prayer in its simplest definition is merely a wish turned Godward.

Never be afraid to bring the transcendent mysteries of our faith, Christ's life and death and resurrection, to the help of the humblest and commonest of human wants.

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Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Francis Bacon Meditationes sacræ (1597)

It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge.

Albert Pike Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871)

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.

Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

Logan Pearsall Smith Afterthoughts (1931)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Phillips Brooks (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.