Top 110 Quotes & Sayings by Harry Emerson Fosdick
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American priest Harry Emerson Fosdick.
Last updated on September 17, 2024.
Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.
Life asks not merely what you can do; it asks how much can you endure and not be spoiled.
He who chooses the beginning of the road chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determines the end.
God has put within our lives meanings and possibilities that quite outrun the limits of mortality.
Don't simply retire from something; have something to retire to.
Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.
I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.
Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat.
Christians are supposed not merely to endure change, nor even to profit by it, but to cause it.
God is not a cosmic bellboy for whom we can press a button to get things.
I hate war... for the dictatorships it puts in the place of democracies, and for the starvation that stalks after it.
The steady discipline of intimate friendship with Jesus results in men becoming like Him.
The world is moving so fast these days that the one who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.
Every human life involves an unfathomable mystery, for man is the riddle of the universe, and the riddle of man in his endowment with personal capacities.
Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it.
Preaching is personal counseling on a group basis.
He who knows no hardships will know no hardihood. He who faces no calamity will need no courage. Mysterious though it is, the characteristics in human nature which we love best grow in a soil with a strong mixture of troubles.
Religion is not a burden, not a weight, it is wings.
He who cannot rest, cannot work; he who cannot let go, cannot hold on; he who cannot find footing, cannot go forward.
Whatever you laugh at in others, laughs at yourself.
Picture yourself vividly as winning, and that alone will contribute immeasurably to success.
A person wrapped up in himself makes a small package.
To keep the Golden Rule we must put ourselves in other people's places, but to do that consists in and depends upon picturing ourselves in their places.
The tragedy of war is that it uses man's best to do man's worst.
Our power is not so much in us as through us.
No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No stream or gas drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined.
I hate war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatreds it arouses.
We cannot all be great, but we can always attach ourselves to something that it great.
Life consists not simply in what heredity and environment do to us but in what we make out of what they do to us.
Every failure can be considered as a tragedy or a chance to learn something. The latter is healthier
No man need stay the way he is.
What a testing of character adversity is.
One must have the adventurous daring to accept oneself as a bundle of possibilities and undertake the most interesting game in the world -- making the most of one's best.
The Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea are made of the same water. It flows down, clean and cool, from the heights of Herman and the roots of the cedars of Lebanon. the Sea of Galilee makes beauty of it, the Sea of Galilee has an outlet. It gets to give. It gathers in its riches that it may pour them out again to fertilize the Jordan plain. But the Dead Sea with the same water makes horror. For the Dead Sea has no outlet. It gets to keep.
No one can get inner peace by pouncing on it, by vigorously willing to have it ... Peace is a consciousness of springs too deep for earthly droughts to dry up. Peace is the gift not of volitional struggle but of spiritual hospitality.
Life is like a library owned by the author. In it are a few books which he wrote himself, but most of them were written for him.
When you hear a person say, "I hate," adding the name of some race, nation, religion, or social class, you are dealing with a belated mind. That person may dress like a modern, ride in an automobile, listen to the radio, but his or her mind is properly dated about 1000 B.C.
No man is the whole of himself; his friends are the rest of him.
It is not marriage that fails; it is people that fail. All that marriage does is to show people up.
We cannot all be great, but we can always attach ourselves to something that is great.
No one can be wrong with man and right with God.
Prayer opens our lives for God so his will can be done in and through us, because in true prayer we habitually put ourselves into the attitude of willingness to do whatever God wills.
Real Christians do not carry their religion, their religion carries them. It is not weight, it is wings.
It is magnificent to grow old, if one keeps young.
Granted the endless variations of moral customs, still the essential standards persist. As in a scientific laboratory, all else may change but the standards are unalterable- disinterested love of truth, fidelity to facts, accuracy in measurement, exactness of verification-so, in life as a whole, the towering ethical criteria remain unshaken. Falsehood is never better than truth, theft better than than honesty, treachery better than loyalty, cowardice better than courage.
Money is a miraculous thing. It is your personal energy reduced to a portable form and endowed with power you yourself do not possess. It can go where you cannot go; speak languages you cannot speak; lift burdens you cannot touch with your fingers; save lives with which you cannot deal directly.
War's tragedy is that it uses man's best to do man's worst.
He who picks up one end of a stick picks up the other. He who chooses the beginning of a road chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determine the end.
Christ has given us the most glorious interpretation of life's meaning that man has ever had. The fatherhood of God, the fellowship of the Spirit, the sovereignty of righteousness, the law of love, the glory of service, the coming of the Kingdom, the eternal hope- there was never an interpretation of life to compare with that.
No character is ultimately tested until it has suffered.
No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined.
Always take a job that is too big for you.
Fearr imprisons, faith liberates; fear paralyzes, faith empowers; fear disheartens, faith encourages; fear sickens, faith heals; fear makes useless, faith also makes serviceable az quotes.
No one can get inner peace by pouncing on it.
Men will work hard for money. They will work harder for other men. But men will work hardest of all when they are dedicated to a cause. Until willingness overflows obligation, men fight as conscripts rather than following the flag as patriots. Duty is never worthily performed until it is performed by one who would gladly do more if only he could.
Whatever you laugh at in others, laughs at yourself
Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind's eye and you will be drawn toward it. Picture yourself vividly as winning and that alone will contribute immeasurably to success.
Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it. Bitterness paralyzes life; love empowers it. Bitterness sours life; love sweetens it. Bitterness sickens life; love heals it. Bitterness blinds life; love anoints its eyes.
Divinity is not something supernatural that ever and again invades the natural order in a crashing miracle. Divinity is not in some remote heaven, seated on a throne. Divinity is love. . . . Wherever goodness, beauty, truth, love, are-there is the divine.
The most extraordinary thing about the oyster is this. Irritations set into his shell. He does not like them. But when he cannot get ride of them, he uses the irritation to do the loveliest thing an oyster ever has a chance to do. If there are irritations in our lives today, there is only one prescription: make a pearl. It may have to be a pearl of patience, but anyhow, make a pearl. And it takes faith and I love to do it.
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