quote · Legacy record
Do not dare to be so absorbed in your own life, so wrapped up in listening to the sound of your own hurrying wheels, that all this vast pathetic music, made up of the mingled joy and sorrow of your fellowmen, shall not find out your heart and claim it and make you rejoice to give yourself for them.... Be sure that ambition and charity will both grow mean unless they are both inspired and exalted by religion. Energy, love, and faith,—these make the perfect man.
Do not dare to be so absorbed in your own life, so wrapped up in listening to the sound of your own hurrying wheels, that all this vast pathetic music, made up of the mingled joy and sorrow of your fellowmen, shall not find out your heart and claim it and make you rejoice to give yourself for them.... Be sure that ambition and charity will both grow mean unless they are both inspired and exalted by religion. Energy, love, and faith,—these make the perfect man.
Approximate author period: c. 1864 AD · industrial
Meaning not yet available
An individual explanation has not yet been added. We do not substitute a generic description for an interpretation of these particular words.
Begin with source-checked readings and explanations ↗Attribution & collection notes
- Author or tradition
- Phillips Brooks
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin. - Historical period
- Approximate author period: c. 1864 AD · industrial
Approximate author-period evidence for Phillips Brooks: life dates 1835 to 1893. Wikidata Q974734, inspected 2026-10-08. Not a quotation composition date or independent verification of attribution. Source: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q974734 (accessed 2026-10-08).
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken. - Recorded source
- The Optimist’s Good Morning (1911) (1911 AD)
Complete signed selection 36; printed byline: Phillips Brooks; Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1911; printed copyright 1907
A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.
