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The finest quality of our characters do not come from trying but from the mysterious and yet most effective capacity to be inspired.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

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Harry Emerson Fosdick
Age: 91 †
Born: 1878
Born: May 24
Died: 1969
Died: October 5
Author
Preacher
Theologian
Writer
Buffalo
New York
H. E. Fosdick
Characters
Capacity
Quality
Character
Come
Finest
Trying
Effective
Mysterious
Inspired

More quotes by Harry Emerson Fosdick

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Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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Every great scientist becomes a great scientist because of the inner self-abnegation with which he stands before truth, saying: Not my will, but thine, be done. What, then, does a man mean by saying, Science displaces religion, when in this deep sense science itself springs from religion?
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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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
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Life consists not simply in what heredity and environment do to us, but in what we make out of what they do to us
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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Our power is not so much in us as through us.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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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
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While each of us ... has depressed hours, none of us needs to be a depressed person.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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God has put within our lives meanings and possibilities that quite outrun the limits of mortality.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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Life asks not merely what you can do it asks how much can you endure and not be spoiled.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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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
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Great living starts with a picture, held in your imagination, of what you would like to do or be.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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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
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No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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Bitterness imprisons life love releases it.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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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.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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We cannot restore integrity and morality to our society until each of us-singly and individually-takes responsibility for our actions.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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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
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Always take a job that is too big for you.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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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
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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.
Harry Emerson Fosdick