Harry Emerson Fosdick's Quotes

Religion is not a burden, not a weight, it is wings.

The tragedy of war is that it uses man's best to do man's worst.

Whatever you laugh at in others, laughs at yourself.

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.

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.

Christians are supposed not merely to endure change, nor even to profit by it, but to cause it.

Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat.

Life asks not merely what you can do; it asks how much can you endure and not be spoiled.

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.

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.

Don't simply retire from something; have something to retire to.

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.

He who cannot rest, cannot work; he who cannot let go, cannot hold on; he who cannot find footing, cannot go forward.

A person wrapped up in himself makes a small package.

Life consists not simply in what heredity and environment do to us but in what we make out of what they do to us.

Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.

God is not a cosmic bellboy for whom we can press a button to get things.

He who chooses the beginning of the road chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determines the end.

Picture yourself vividly as winning, and that alone will contribute immeasurably to success.

Preaching is personal counseling on a group basis.

The steady discipline of intimate friendship with Jesus results in men becoming like Him.

God has put within our lives meanings and possibilities that quite outrun the limits of mortality.