Harry Emerson Fosdick was an American pastor. Fosdick became a central figure in the Fundamentalist–Modernist controversy within American Protestantism in the 1920s and 1930s and was one of the most prominent liberal ministers of the early 20th century. These Harry Emerson Fosdick quotes will motivate you in life.
Best Harry Emerson Fosdick Quotes
- “Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “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.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “Every failure can be considered as a tragedy or a chance to learn something. The latter is healthier” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “A person wrapped up in himself makes a small package.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
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“It is magnificent to grow old if one keeps young.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “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.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “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.” ~ 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 rid 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 Quotes
- “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.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
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“Always take a job that is too big for you.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “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.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “He who cannot rest, cannot work; he who cannot let go, cannot hold on; he who cannot find footing, cannot go forward.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “Life asks not merely what you can do; it asks how much can you endure and not be spoiled.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “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.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “Real Christians do not carry their religion, their religion carries them. It is not weight, it is wings.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
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“No character is ultimately tested until it has suffered.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “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.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “What a testing of character adversity is.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “Picture yourself vividly as winning, and that alone will contribute immeasurably to success.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “No man need stay the way he is.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “It is not marriage that fails; it is people that fail. All that marriage does is to show people up.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “We cannot all be great, but we can always attach ourselves to something that is great.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “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.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick Quotes
- “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.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “The steady discipline of intimate friendship with Jesus results in men becoming like Him.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
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“God is not a cosmic bellboy for whom we can press a button to get things.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “Fear imprisons, faith liberates; fear paralyzes, faith empowers; fear disheartens, faith encourages; fear sickens, faith heals; fear makes useless, faith also makes serviceable az quotes.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “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.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “No one can get inner peace by pouncing on it.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “Our power is not so much in us as through us.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “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.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “One could almost phrase the motto of our modern civilization thus: Science is my shepherd; I shall not want.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
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“No one can be wrong with man and right with God.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “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.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “The more we know about this universe, the more mysterious it is. The old world that Job knew was marvelous enough, and his description of its wonders is among the noblest poetry of the race, but today the new science has opened to our eyes vistas of mystery that transcend in their inexplicable marvel anything the ancients ever dreamed.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “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.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “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.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
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“Opinions may be mistaken; love never is.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “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.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “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 honesty, treachery better than loyalty, cowardice better than courage.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “Atheism is a theoretical formulation of the discouraged life.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “Happiness is not mostly pleasure, it is mostly victory.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
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“No man is the whole of himself; his friends are the rest of him.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “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.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “Friends are necessary to a happy life. When friendship deserts us, we are as helpless as a ship left by the tide high upon the shore. When friendship returns to us, it’s as though the tide came back, giving us buoyancy and freedom.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “The fact that astronomies change while the stars abide is a true analogy of every realm of human life and thought, religion not least of all. No existent theology can be a final formulation of spiritual truth.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “Don’t simply retire from something; have something to retire to.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
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“War’s tragedy is that it uses man’s best to do man’s worst.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “Peace is an awareness of reserves from beyond ourselves so that our power is not so much in us as through us. Peace is the gift, not of volitional struggle, but of spiritual hospitality.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “Christians are supposed not merely to endure change, nor even to profit by it, but to cause it.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “We ask the leaf, “Are you complete in yourself?” And the leaf answers, “No, my life is in the branches.” We ask the branch, and the branch answers, “No my life is in the root.” We ask the root, and it answers, “No my life is in the trunk and the branches and the leaves. Keep the branches stripped of leaves, and I shall die,” So it is with the great tree of being. Nothing is completely and merely individual.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
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“Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “The tragic evils of our life are so commonly unintentional. We did not start out for that poor, cheap goal. That aim was not in our minds at all….Look to the road you are walking on. 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.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “He is a poor patriot whose patriotism does not enable him to understand how all men everywhere feel about their altars and their hearthstones, their flag, and their fatherland.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “While each of us … has depressed hours, none of us needs to be a depressed person.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “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.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “All intelligent faith in God has behind it a background of humble agnosticism.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “God has put within our lives meanings and possibilities that quite outrun the limits of mortality.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
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“[L]ife ceases to be a fraction and becomes an integer.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “Great living starts with a picture, held in your imagination, of what you would like to do or be.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “No virtue is more universally accepted as a test of good character than trustworthiness .” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “It is going to be a long, hard haul; it will require patience, courage, faith that hangs on when hope fails, if we are to tame the rude barbarity of man, so that the atomic age becomes a blessing, not a curse. There never was such a day for the Christian gospel. God help us all in these years ahead to make that gospel live in men and nations!” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
