Life comes before literature, as the material always comes before the… — Phillips Brooks

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

Phillips BrooksClergyman · American · b. 1835

More from Phillips Brooks

I can tell you, honest friend, what to believe: believe life; it teaches better that book or orator. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. — Mark Twain
All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul. — John Ruskin
A man who lives right, and is right, has more power in his silence than another has by his words. — Phillips Brooks
Forgive, forget. Bear with the faults of others as you would have them bear with yours. — Phillips Brooks
Be such a man, and live such a life, that if every man were such as you, and every life a life like yours, this earth would be God's Paradise. — Phillips Brooks