Harry Emerson Fosdick
Nothing else matters much...not wealth, nor learning, nor even health...without this gift: the spiritual capacity to keep zest in living. This is the creed of creeds, the final deposit and distillation of all important faiths: that you should be able to believe in life.Collection: Life
Democracy is not simply a political system; it is a moral movement and it springs from adventurous faith in human possibilities.Collection: Spring
Falsehood is never better than truth, theft better than honesty, treachery better than loyalty, cowardice better than courage.Collection: Loyalty
It is cynicism and fear that freeze life; it is faith that thaws it out, releases it, sets it free.Collection: Faith
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.Collection: Spiritual
Of all mad faiths maddest is the faith that we can get rid of faith.Collection: Faith
The stars are not so strange as the mind that studies them, analyzes their light, and measures their distance.Collection: Stars
My friends, nothing in all the world is so much worth thinking of as God, Christ, the Bible, sin and salvation, the divine purposes for humankind, life everlasting. But you cannot challenge the dedicated thinking of this generation to these sublime themes upon any such terms as are laid down by an intolerant church.Collection: Thinking
The process has now run full circle: Preaching originates in personal counseling; preaching is personal counseling on a group basis; personal counseling originates in preaching. Personal counseling imparts to the preacher a practical familiarity with human nature which he would not otherwise obtain.Collection: Running
I renounce war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatred it arouses, for the dictatorships it puts in place of democracy, for the starvation that stalks after it. I renounce war, and never again, directly or indirectly, will I sanction or support another.Collection: War
One of the strange phenomena of the last century is the spectacle of religion dropping the appeal of fear while other human interests have picked it up.Collection: Lasts
A supremely religious man or woman is one who believes deeply and consistently in the veracity of his highest experiences. He has his hours in the cellar ... but he believes in the truth of the hours he spends upstairs.Collection: Religious
Some things mankind can finish and be done with, but not ... science, that persists, and changes from ancient Chaldeans studying the stars to a new telescope with a 200-inch reflector and beyond; not religion, that persists, and changes from old credulities and world views to new thoughts of God and larger apprehensions of his meaning.Collection: Change
Life consists not simply in what heredity and environment do to us, but in what we make out of what they do to usCollection: Inspirational
Every year the inventions of science weave more inextricably the web that binds man to man, group to group, nation to nation.Collection: Science
The finest quality of our characters do not come from trying but from the mysterious and yet most effective capacity to be inspired.Collection: Character
In the foothills of the Himalayas, one hears the prayer: "Oh Lord, we know not what is good for us. You know what it is. For it we pray."Collection: Prayer
Religion is something that only secondarily can be taught. It must must primarily be taught.Collection: Taught
We must take the abiding spiritual values which inhere in the deep experiences of religion in all ages and give them new expression in terms of the framework which our new knowledge gives us. Science forces religion to deal with new ideas in the theoretical realm and new forces in the practical realm.Collection: Spiritual
The all but unanimous judgment seems to be that we, the democracies, are just as responsible for the rise of the dictators as the dictatorships themselves, and perhaps more so.Collection: Democracy
No one can get inner peace by pouncing on it.Collection: Success
All intelligent faith in God has behind it a background of humble agnosticism.Collection: Humble
Atheism is a theoretical formulation of the discouraged life.Collection: Atheism
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.Collection: Spiritual
All altruism springs from putting yourself in the other person's place.Collection: Spring
We cannot restore integrity and morality to our society until each of us-singly and individually-takes responsibility for our actions.Collection: Integrity
One could almost phrase the motto of our modern civilization thus: Science is my shepherd; I shall not want.Collection: Science
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.Collection: Change
While each of us ... has depressed hours, none of us needs to be a depressed person.Collection: Depression
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.Collection: Dream
It is by acts (actions) and not by ideas (mere thoughts) that people [really] live.Collection: Ideas
The first question to be answered by any individual or by any social group, The real handle facing a hazardous sit - to a difficult uation, is whether the stuaton crisis is to be met as a challenge to strength or as an occasion for despair.Collection: Adversity
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.Collection: Evil
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.Collection: Roots
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.Collection: 4th Of July
Great living starts with a picture, held in your imagination, of what you would like to do or be.Collection: Imagination
Self-pity gets you nowhere. But insight to see that something can be done with the second-bests and adventurous daring to try might be a handle to take hold of.Collection: Self
One of the most amazing things ever said on this earth is Jesus's statement: "He that is greatest among you shall be your servant." Nobody has one chance in a billion of being thought really great after a century has passed except those who have been the servants of all. That strange realist from Bethlehem knew that.Collection: Jesus
[L]ife ceases to be a fraction and becomes an integer.Collection: Fractions
He is a poor son whose sonship does not make him desire to serve all men's mothers.Collection: Family
What a testing of character adversity is.Collection: Character
No virtue is more universally accepted as a test of good character than trustworthiness .Collection: Character
It is not marriage that fails; it is people that fail. All that marriage does is to show people up.Collection: Love
Every failure can be considered as a tragedy or a chance to learn something. The latter is healthierCollection: Encouragement
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.Collection: God
One never finds life worth living. One always has to make it work living.Collection: Life Worth Living
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.Collection: Friendship
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.Collection: Inspirational
Happiness is not mostly pleasure, it is mostly victory.Collection: Victory