Harry Emerson Fosdick Quotes - Page 2

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

Happiness is not mostly pleasure, it is mostly victory.

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.

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.

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.

It is not marriage that fails; it is people that fail. All that marriage does is to show people up.

No man need stay the way he is.

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

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.

No character is ultimately tested until it has suffered.

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.

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.

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.

War's tragedy is that it uses man's best to do man's worst.

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.

No man is the whole of himself; his friends are the rest of him.

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

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

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

No virtue is more universally accepted as a test of good character than trustworthiness .

What a testing of character adversity is.

Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.

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.

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

Whatever you laugh at in others, laughs at yourself