John Henry Newman Quotes

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

I wonder what day I shall die on - one passes year by year over one's death day, as one might pass over one's grave.

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

And with the morn those angel faces smile Which I have loved long since and lost awhile.

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

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

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

Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ.

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

Growth is the only evidence of life.

Time hath a taming hand.

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

When you feel in need of a compliment, give one to someone else.

Slang surely, as it is called, comes of, and breathes of the personal

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

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

To live is to change, and if you have lived long, you have changed often.

Man is emphatically self-made.

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

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

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

Cruelty to animals is as if humans did not love God.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

I sought to hear the voice of God and climbed the topmost steeple, but God declared: Go down again - I dwell among the people.

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

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

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

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

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.

A development, to be faithful, must retain both the doctrine and the principle with which it started. Doctrine

I toast the Pope, but I toast conscience first.

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

Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt, as I understand the subject; difficulty and doubt are incommensurate.

Living movements do not come of committees, nor are great ideas worked out through the post, even though it had been the penny post.

You must make up your mind to the prospect of sustaining a certain measure of pain and trouble in you'r passage through life.

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

Calculation never made a hero.

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.

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.

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

Great things are done by devotion to one idea.

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

Purity prepares the soul for love, and love confirms the soul in purity.

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

To the irreligious person heaven would be hell.

Regarding Christianity: Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.

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

Courage does not consist in calculation, but in fighting against chances.

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

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

Knowledge is one thing, virtue is another.

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

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

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

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.

Mary became the window of heaven, for God through her poured the True Light upon the world; the

Faith ventures and hazards ... counting the costs and delighting in the sacrifice.

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

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

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

Divine Wisdom speaks not to the world, but to her own children.

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

Nothing is more common in an age like this, when books abound, than to fancy that the gratification of a love of reading is real study.

The reason why Christ is unknown today is because His Mother is unknown.

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

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

To live is to change, and to change often is to become more perfect.

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

It is mutual respect which makes friendship lasting.

Flagrant evils cure themselves by being flagrant.

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

Its home is in the world; and to know what it is, we must seek it in the world, and hear the world's witness of it.

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

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

Doing is at a far greater distance from intending to do than you at first sight imagine. Join

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

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

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

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.

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

Prayer is to the spiritual life what the beating of the pulse and the drawing of the breath are to the life of the body.

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

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.

Ability is sexless.

The present is a text, and the past its interpretation.

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

Doctrine without its correspondent principle remains barren, if not lifeless, of which the Greek Church seems an instance; or

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

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