“A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.” That caught the eye of several readers. It seems to have originated with American Calvinist theologian William Greenough Thayer Shedd.

I’m glad to know it has such a respectable pedigree, as it looks a bit Hallmark-y at first sight. I’d never heard of Shedd until five minutes ago. I’d just seen the apothegm a couple of times in different contexts, assumed on that basis that it was a quote from someone or other, and so put quotes around it.

If any Sheddian out there knows the exact source in Rev. Shedd’s voluminous works, I’d be interested to learn. It’s not in his Sermons to the Natural Man, which is the only one of his books on Gutenberg.org.

Tennyson of course said it much better.