Phillips Brooks Quote

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


Literature and Life, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).


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

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

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

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