John Henry Newman Quotations

Let us act on what we have, since we have not what we wish.

To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.

We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.

A great memory does not make a mind, any more than a dictionary is a piece of literature.

Men will die upon dogma but will not fall victim to a conclusion.

In this world no one rules by love; if you are but amiable, you are no hero; to be powerful, you must be strong, and to have dominion you must have a genius for organizing.

The love of our private friends is the only preparatory exercise for the love of all men.

There is such a thing as legitimate warfare: war has its laws; there are things which may fairly be done, and things which may not be done.

From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion: I know no other religion; I cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion; religion, as a mere sentiment, is to me a dream and a mockery.

If we are intended for great ends, we are called to great hazards.

It is often said that second thoughts are best. So they are in matters of judgment but not in matters of conscience.

Nothing would be done at all if one waited until one could do it so well that no one could find fault with it.

Virtue is its own reward, and brings with it the truest and highest pleasure; but if we cultivate it only for pleasure's sake, we are selfish, not religious, and will never gain the pleasure, because we can never have the virtue.

If we insist on being as sure as is conceivable... we must be content to creep along the ground, and never soar.

It is as absurd to argue men, as to torture them, into believing.

To holy people the very name of Jesus is a name to feed upon, a name to transport. His name can raise the dead and transfigure and beautify the living.

It is very difficult to get up resentment towards persons whom one has never seen.

A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault.

A great memory is never made synonymous with wisdom, any more than a dictionary would be called a treatise.

Let us take things as we find them: let us not attempt to distort them into what they are not... We cannot make facts. All our wishing cannot change them. We must use them.

It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflicts pain.

Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather that it shall never have a beginning.

Evil has no substance of its own, but is only the defect, excess, perversion, or corruption of that which has substance.

Nothing is more common than for men to think that because they are familiar with words they understand the ideas they stand for.

We must make up our minds to be ignorant of much, if we would know anything.

Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.

Health of body and mind is a great blessing, if we can bear it.

It is mutual respect which makes friendship lasting.

With Christians, a poetical view of things is a duty. We are bid to color all things with hues of faith, to see a divine meaning in every event.

Stuffing birds or playing stringed instruments is an elegant pastime, and a resource to the idle, but it is not education.

I toast the Pope, but I toast conscience first.

I shall drink to the Pope, if you please, still, to conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.

Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom, lead thou me on.

All men have a reason, but not all men can give a reason.

Religion indeed enlightens, terrifies, subdues; it gives faith, it inflicts remorse, it inspires resolutions, it draws tears, it inflames devotion, but only for the occasion.

Reason is one thing and faith is another and reason can as little be made a substitute for faith, as faith can be made a substitute for reason.

Good is never accomplished except at the cost of those who do it, truth never breaks through except through the sacrifice of those who spread it.

To discover and to teach are distinct functions; they are also distinct gifts, and are not commonly found united in the same person.

Feast of Clare of Assisi, Founder of the Order of Minoresses (Poor Clares), 1253 Commemoration of John Henry Newman, Priest, Teacher, Tractarian, 1890 It is our great relief that God is not extreme to mark what is done amiss, that he looks at the motives, and accepts and blesses in spite of incidental errors.

Faith ... acts promptly and boldly on the occasion, on slender evidence.

Somehow I am necessary for God's purpose, as necessary in my place as an archangel in his.

Living Nature, not dull art Shall plan my ways and rule my Heart.

Let us put ourselves into His hands, and not be startled though He leads us by a strange way, a mirabilis via, as the Church speaks. Let us be sure He will lead us right, that He will bring us to that which is, not indeed what we think best, nor what is best for another, but what is best for us.

Calculation never made a hero.

To the irreligious person heaven would be hell.

Thought and speech are inseparable from each other. Matter and expression are parts of one; style is a thinking out into language.

I want a laitywho know their creed so well, that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it.

A universityeducates the intellect to reason well in all matters, to reach out towards truth, and to grasp it.

How many writers are there... who, breaking up their subject into details, destroy its life, and defraud us of the whole by their anxiety about the parts.

Literature stands related to Man as Science stands to Nature; it is his history.

There is in stillness oft a magic power To calm the breast when struggling passions lower, Touched by its influence, in the soul arise Diviner feelings, kindred with the skies.

Now what is it moves our very heart, and sickens us so much as cruelty shown to poor brutes? I suppose this: first, that they have done us no harm; next that they have no power whatsoever of resistance; it is the cowardice and tyranny, of which they are the victims, which make their sufferings so especially touching. There is something so very dreadful, so satanic in tormenting those who have never harmed us, and who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power.

Such is the constitution of the human mind, that any kind of knowledge, if it be really such, is its own reward.

The heart is commonly reached, not through the reason, but through the imagination, by means of direct impressions, by the testimony of facts and events, by history, by description. Persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us. Many a man will live and die upon a dogma; no man will be a martyr for a conclusion.

It's really not a difficult decision when you reflect on it, ... The situation is just so tenuous with where it's going to hit. You don't want to take any chances.

Go down again - I dwell among the people.

After the fever of life--after wearinesses, sicknesses, fightings and despondings, languor and fretfulness, struggling and failing, struggling and succeeding--after all the changes and chances of this troubled and unhealthy state, at length comes death--at length the white throne of God--at length the beatific vision.

Time hath a taming hand.

The ears of the common people are holier than the hearts of the priests.

Flagrant evils cure themselves by being flagrant.

There is a knowledge which is desirable, though nothing come of it, as being of itself a treasure, and a sufficient remuneration of years of labor.

Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ.

An academical system without the personal influence of teachers on pupils, is an arctic winter; it will create an icebound, petrified, cast-iron University, and nothing else.

Two and two only supreme and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator.

Knowledge is one thing, virtue is another.

Man is emphatically self-made.

Reason is God's gift, but so are the passions. Reason is as guilty as passion.

I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears, Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.

Where good and ill together blent, Wage an undying strife.

The world is content with setting right the surface of things.

To be deep in history, is to cease to be Protestant.

Egotism is true modesty. In religious enquiry each of us can speak only for himself.

How can we feel our need of His help, or our dependence on Him, or our debt to Him, or the nature of His gift to us, unless we know ourselves.... This is why many in this age (and in every age) become infidels, heretics, schismatics, disloyal despisers of the Church.... They have never had experience of His power and love, because they have never known their own weakness and need.

Make me what Thou wouldst have me. I bargain for nothing. I make no terms. I seek for no previous information whither Thou art taking me. I will be what Thou wilt make me, and all that Thou wilt make me. I say not, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest, for I am weak, but I give myself to Thee, to lead me anywhither. ...

Great things are done by devotion to one idea.

May He support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done! Then in His mercy may He give us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.

A science is not mere knowledge, it is knowledge which has undergone a process of intellectual digestion. It is the grasp of many things brought together in one, and hence is its power; for, properly speaking, it is Science that is power, not Knowledge..

Without self-knowledge you have no root in yourselves personally; you may endure for a time, but under affliction or persecution your faith will not last. This is why many in this age (and in every age) become infidels, heretics, schismatics, disloyal despisers of the Church. They cast off the form of truth, because it never has been to them more than a form. They endure not, because they never have tasted that the Lord is gracious; and they never have had experience of His power and love, because they have never known their own weakness and need.

When men understand what each other mean, they see, for the most part, that controversy is either superfluous or hopeless

Animals have done us no harm and they have no power of resistance. There is something so very dreadful in tormenting those who have never harmed us, who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power.

This is what the Church is said to want, not party men, but sensible, temperate, sober, well-judging persons, to guide it through the channel of no-meaning, between the Scylla and Charybdis of Aye and no.

True religion is slow in growth, and, when once planted, is difficult of dislodgement; but its intellectual counterfeit has no root in itself: it springs up suddenly, it suddenly withers.

Brutes gaze on sights, they are arrested by sounds; and what they see and what they hear are sights and sounds only. The intellectof man, on the contrary, energises as well as his eye or ear, and perceives in sights or sounds something beyond them. It seizes and unites what the senses present to it; it grasps and forms what need not be seen or heard except in detail. It discerns in lines and colors, or in tones, what is beautiful and what is not. It gives them a meaning, and invests them with an idea.

Satan is inconsistent. He persuades a man not to go to a synagogue on a cold morning; yet when the man does go, he follows him into it.

We should ever conduct ourselves towards our enemy as if he were one day to be our friend.

How can we understand forgiveness if we haven't recognized the depth of our sin?

By a garden is meant mystically a place of spiritual repose, stillness, peace, refreshment, delight.

Faith is illuminative, not operative; it does not force obedience, though it increases responsibility; it heightens guilt, but it does not prevent sin. The will is the source of action.

O loving wisdom of our God when all was sin and shame, a second Adam to the fight and to the rescue came.

It is God himself who can be discovered in the beauty of sensible things.

I see nothing in the theory of evolution inconsistent with an Almighty Creator and Protector.

O most sacred, most loving heart of Jesus, thou art concealed in the Holy Eucharist, and thou beatest for us still.... Thou art the heart of the Most High made man.... Thy Sacred Heart is the instrument and organ of Thy love. It did beat for us. It yearned for us. It ached for our salvation. It was on fire through zeal, that the glory of God might be manifested in and by us.... In worshipping thee I worship my incarnate God, my Emmanuel

The attributes of God, though intelligible to us on their surface yet, for the very reason that they are infinite, transcend our comprehension, when they are dwelt upon, when they are followed out, and can only be received by faith.

Lions would have fared better, had lions been the artists.

Why should we be willing to go by faith? We do all things in this world by faith in the word of others. By faith only we know our position in the world, our circumstances, our rights and privileges, our fortunes, our parents, our brothers and sisters, our age, our mortality. Why should Religion be an exception?

Praise to the Holiest in the height, And in the depth be praise; In all His words most wonderful, Most sure in all His ways.

If then a practical end must be assigned to a University course, I say it is that of training good members of society... It is the education which gives a man a clear, conscious view of their own opinions and judgements, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them. It teaches him to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought to detect what is sophistical and to discard what is irrelevant.

You must be patient, you must wait for the eye of the soul to be formed in you. Religious truth is reached, not by reasoning, but by an inward perception. Anyone can reason; only disciplined, educated, formed minds can perceive.

Faith is the result of the act of the will, following upon a conviction that to believe is a duty.

Learn to do thy part and leave the rest to Heaven.