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Oh, do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks! Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle. But you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come in you by the grace of God.

Oh, do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks! Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle. But you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come in you by the grace of God.

Approximate author period: c. 1864 AD · industrial

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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
Thoughts: Selected from the writings of favorite authors (1901) (1901 AD)

Complete signed selection 338; printed byline: Phillips Brooks; New York: Dodge Publishing Company, 1901

A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.