Harry Emerson Fosdick

Bitterness imprisons life love releases it.

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

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

To keep the Golden Rule we must put ourselves in other peoples places but to do that consists in and depends upon picturing ourselves in their places.

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

It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.

I hate war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatreds it arouses.

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.

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 the dictatorships it puts in the place of democracies, and for the starvation that stalks after it.

Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it.

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.

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.

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

Whatever you laugh at in others, laughs at yourself.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

We cannot all be great, but we can always attach ourselves to something that it great.

A person wrapped up in himself makes a small package.

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

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.

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

Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it

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

Preaching is personal counseling on a group basis.

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.

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

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

Our power is not so much in us as through us.