Dreadful will be the day when the world becomes contented, when one great universal satisfaction spreads itself over the world. Sad will be the day for every man when he becomes absolutely contented with the life that he is living, with the thoughts that he is thinking, with the deeds that he is doing, when there is not forever beating at the doors of his soul some great desire to do something larger which he knows that he was meant and made to do because he is a child of God.

The degree of STD had been conferred upon him by Harvard (1877) and Columbia (1887) and the Doctor of Divinity degree by the University of Oxford England (1885). In 1869 he became rector of Trinity Church Boston; today his statue is located on the left exterior of the church. The latest work on Brooks is the chapter on the Ecumenical Quest in Douglass Shand-Tucci's Ralph Adams Cram: an Architects Four Quests publiPhillips Brooksd by the University of Massachusetts Press in 2005.

In the Episcopal liturgical calendar he is remembered on January 23. He is known for being the lyricist of "O Little Town of Bethlehem".