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The man who goes through life with an uncertain doctrine not knowing what he believes, what a poor, powerless creature he is! He goes around through the world as a man goes down through the street with a poor, wounded arm, forever dodging people he meets on the street for fear they may touch him.

— Phillips Brooks

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Faith

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.

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

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

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Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

William James The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

Thomas Jefferson Letter to Peter Carr (1787)

I had never doubted my own abilities, but I was quite prepared to believe that "the world" would decline to recognize them.

Colin Wilson Postscript to the Outsider (1967)

Love is the active, working principle in all true faith. It is its very soul, without which it is dead. "Faith works by love."

Jonathan Edwards Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

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.