quote · Legacy record
How large a part of our Godward life is travelled, not by clear landmarks seen far off in the promised land, but as travellers climb a mountain peak, by putting footstep after footstep, slowly and patiently, into the prints which someone going before us, with keener sight, with stronger nerves, tied to us by the cord of saintly sympathy, has planted deep into the pathless snow of the bleak distance that stretches up between humanity and God.... So we ascend by one another. We live by one another's blessings.
How large a part of our Godward life is travelled, not by clear landmarks seen far off in the promised land, but as travellers climb a mountain peak, by putting footstep after footstep, slowly and patiently, into the prints which someone going before us, with keener sight, with stronger nerves, tied to us by the cord of saintly sympathy, has planted deep into the pathless snow of the bleak distance that stretches up between humanity and God.... So we ascend by one another. We live by one another's blessings.
Approximate author period: c. 1864 AD · industrial
Meaning not yet available
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- 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 239; 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.