A good sermon is an engineering operation by which a chasm is bridged so that the spiritual goods on one side-the 'unsearchable riches of Christ' - are actually transported into personal lives upon the other.
– Harry Emerson Fosdick
A person wrapped up in himself makes a small package.
– 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
Christians are supposed not merely to endure change, nor even to profit by it, but to cause it.
– 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
God is not a cosmic bellboy for whom we can press a button to get things.
– Harry Emerson Fosdick
Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat.
– 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
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
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
I hate war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatreds it arouses.
– Harry Emerson Fosdick
I hate war... for the dictatorships it puts in the place of democracies, and for the starvation that stalks after it.
– 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
It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.
– Harry Emerson Fosdick
Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.
– 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
Our power is not so much in us as through us.
– Harry Emerson Fosdick
Preaching is personal counseling on a group basis.
– Harry Emerson Fosdick
Rebellion against your handicaps gets you nowhere. Self-pity gets you nowhere. 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
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
The half is greater than the whole.
– Harry Emerson Fosdick
The steady discipline of intimate friendship with Jesus results in men becoming like Him.
– Harry Emerson Fosdick
The tragedy of war is that it uses man's best to do man's worst.
– 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
Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind's eye, and you will be drawn toward it.
– Harry Emerson Fosdick
The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.
– Harry Emerson Fosdick
Religion is not a burden, not a weight, it is wings.
– Harry Emerson Fosdick
Picture yourself vividly as winning, and that alone will contribute immeasurably to success.