A Quote by Harry Emerson Fosdick

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.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

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Quote Author

Harry Emerson Fosdick
American - Priest
May 24, 1878 - October 5, 1969

The world is your oyster. Yes, but in that oyster is the pearl; and to get to the pearl one has to first discard the shell and the flesh.

Ian Gardner

It is, after all, the dab of grit that seeps into an oyster's shell that makes the pearl, not pearl-making seminars with other oysters.

Stephen King

If that a pearl may in a toad's head dwell, And may be found too in an oyster shell.

John Bunyan

What strikes the oyster shell doesn't damage the pearl.

Rumi

My role in life is that of the grain of sand to the oyster-it irritates the oyster and out comes a pearl.

Ross Perot

Everyone is so afraid of death, but the real sufis just laugh: nothing tyrannizes their hearts. What strikes the oyster shell does not damage the pearl

Rumi

For memory, we use our imagination. We take a few strands of real time and carry them with us, then like an oyster we create a pearl around them.

John Banville

Within the oyster's shell uncouth The purest pearl may hide, Trust me you'll find a heart of truth Within that rough outside.

Frances Sargent Osgood

...like a grain of sand that gets into an oyster's shell. What if the grain doesn't want to become a pearl? Is it ever asked to climb out quietly and take up its old position as a bit of ocean floor?

Robin McKinley

There are stories that are true, in which each individual's tale is unique and tragic, and the worst of the tragedy is that we have heard it before, and we cannot allow ourselves to feel it to deeply. We build a shell around it like an oyster dealing with a painful particle of grit, coating it with smooth pearl layers in order to cope. This is how we walk and talk and function, day in, day out, immune to others' pain and loss. If it were to touch us it would cripple us or make saints of us; but, for the most part, it does not touch us. We cannot allow it to.