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.
Interpretation
Money is a powerful tool that transforms personal energy into a portable resource with capabilities beyond individual reach.
This quote by Harry Emerson Fosdick suggests that money serves as a conversion of one's personal energy and efforts into a medium that extends its influence and utility across various situations. It highlights how money can operate independently of the individual, achieving tasks and resolving issues that one might not personally be able to handle, thereby emphasizing its miraculous nature in facilitating interactions and providing aid in diverse circumstances.
In practice
In a business meeting discussing resource allocation, one might say, 'As Harry Emerson Fosdick noted, money is a miraculous thing that allows us to leverage our efforts beyond our immediate capabilities.'
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.
No one can get inner peace by pouncing on it, by vigorously willing to have it ... Peace is a consciousness of springs too deep for earthly droughts to dry up. Peace is the gift not of volitional struggle but of spiritual hospitality.
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.
He who cannot rest, cannot work; he who cannot let go, cannot hold on; he who cannot find footing, cannot go forward.
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.
Nothing in this world is more inspiring than a soul up against crippling circumstances who carries it off with courage and faith and undefeated character-nothing! See Light From Many Lamps, edited by L. E. Watson, article by H. E. Fosdick, pp. 93-94 re: a serious cripple who succeeded.
When we judge or criticize another person, it says nothing about that person; it merely says something about our own need to be critical.
When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.
Heaven wheels above you, displaying to you her eternal glories, and still your eyes are on the ground.
Your "if" is the only peacemaker; much virtue in "if.
If I am against the condition of the world, it is not because I am a moralist - it is because I want to laugh more.
I have seen him set fire to his wigwam and smooth over the graves of his fathers... clap his hand in silence over his mouth, and take the last look over his fair hunting ground, and turn his face in sadness to the setting sun.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.