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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.

— Phillips Brooks Sermons (1879)

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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)

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.

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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We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.

Doris Lessing The Golden Notebook (1962)

To rank the effort above the prize may be called love.

Confucius

Greatness by nature includes a power, but not a will to power.

Martin Buber Between Man and Man (1965)

The weak shows his strength and hides his weaknesses; the magnificent exhibits his weaknesses like ornaments.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)

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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.