Top 100 Henry Newman Quotes
#1. The Idea of the University, Cardinal John Henry Newman's great work defining how the republic of the mind should be governed, hailed the importance of increasing the breadth of understanding, promoting excellence in scholarship, advancing student dialogue and freedom of expression and inquiry.
Andrew Roberts
#3. Mary became the window of heaven, for God through her poured the True Light upon the world; the
John Henry Newman
#4. 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.
John Henry Newman
#5. Somehow I am necessary for God's purpose, as necessary in my place as an archangel in his.
John Henry Newman
#6. 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.
John Henry Newman
#7. Providence has delivered me of every worldly passion, save this one; the desire to acquire books, new or old books of any kind, whose charms I cannot persuade myself to resist.
John Henry Newman
#8. Nothing is more common than for men to think that because they are familiar with words they understand the ideas they stand for.
John Henry Newman
#9. 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.
John Henry Newman
#10. A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault.
John Henry Newman
#11. The reason why Christ is unknown today is because His Mother is unknown.
John Henry Newman
#12. I sought to hear the voice of God and climbed the topmost steeple, but God declared: Go down again - I dwell among the people.
John Henry Newman
#13. We must make up our minds to be ignorant of much, if we would know anything.
John Henry Newman
#14. God has created me to do some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work.
John Henry Newman
#15. 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.
John Henry Newman
#16. Evil has no substance of its own, but is only the defect, excess, perversion, or corruption of that which has substance.
John Henry Newman
#17. If we are intended for great ends, we are called to great hazards.
John Henry Newman
#18. To live is to change, and if you have lived long, you have changed often.
John Henry Newman
#20. Certainly a liberal education does manifest itself in a courtesy, propriety, and polish of word and action, which is beautiful in itself, and acceptable to others; but it does much more. It brings the mind into form, - for the mind is like the body.
John Henry Newman
#22. I shall drink to the Pope, if you please, still, to conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.
John Henry Newman
#23. 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.
John Henry Newman
#24. To live is to change, and to change often is to become more perfect.
John Henry Newman
#26. It is very difficult to get up resentment towards persons whom one has never seen.
John Henry Newman
#27. And with the morn those angel faces smile Which I have loved long since and lost awhile.
John Henry Newman
#28. When men understand what each other mean, they see, for the most part, that controversy is either superfluous or hopeless
John Henry Newman
#29. We should ever conduct ourselves towards our enemy as if he were one day to be our friend.
John Henry Newman
#31. 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.
John Henry Newman
#33. Faith is the result of the act of the will, following upon a conviction that to believe is a duty.
John Henry Newman
#34. O loving wisdom of our God
when all was sin and shame,
a second Adam to the fight
and to the rescue came.
John Henry Newman
#35. 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.
John Henry Newman
#36. To take up the cross of Christ is no great action done once for all; it consists in the continual practice of small duties which are distasteful to us.
John Henry Newman
#37. I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.
John Henry Newman
#38. We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.
John Henry Newman
#39. 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.
John Henry Newman
#40. But one aspect of Revelation must not be allowed to exclude or to obscure another; and Christianity is dogmatical, devotional, practical all at once; it is esoteric and exoteric; it is indulgent and strict; it is light and dark; it is love, and it is fear.
John Henry Newman
#41. 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.
John Henry Newman
#42. 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.
John Henry Newman
#43. If I looked into a mirror, and did not see my face, I should have the sort of feeling which actually comes upon me, when I look into this living busy world, and see no reflexion of its Creator.
John Henry Newman
#44. When you feel in need of a compliment, give one to someone else.
John Henry Newman
#45. The ears of the common people are holier than the hearts of the priests.
John Henry Newman
#46. 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.
John Henry Newman
#47. How can we understand forgiveness if we haven't recognized the depth of our sin?
John Henry Newman
#48. It is as absurd to argue men, as to torture them, into believing.
John Henry Newman
#49. It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflicts pain.
John Henry Newman
#50. 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.
John Henry Newman
#51. Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather fear that it shall never have a beginning.
John Henry Newman
#52. Men will die upon dogma but will not fall victim to a conclusion.
John Henry Newman
#53. I see nothing in the theory of evolution inconsistent with an Almighty Creator and Protector.
John Henry Newman
#54. Of all points of faith, the being of a God is, to my own apprehension, encompassed with most difficulty, and yet borne in upon our minds with most power.
John Henry Newman
#55. Cease, stranger, cease those witching notes,
The art of syren choirs;
Hush the seductive voice that floats
Across the trembling wires.
Music's ethereal power was given
Not to dissolve our clay,
But draw Promethean beams from heaven
To purge the dross away.
John Henry Newman
#56. 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.
John Henry Newman
#57. To discover and to teach are distinct functions; they are also distinct gifts, and are not commonly found united in the same person.
John Henry Newman
#60. 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.
John Henry Newman
#61. Divine Wisdom speaks not to the world, but to her own children.
John Henry Newman
#63. Egotism is true modesty. In religious enquiry each of us can speak only for himself.
John Henry Newman
#64. Two and two only supreme and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator.
John Henry Newman
#65. All that is good, all that is true, all that is beautiful, all that is beneficent, be it great or small, be it perfect or fragmentary, natural as well as supernatural, moral as well as material, comes from God.
John Henry Newman
#66. 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.
John Henry Newman
#67. 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.
John Henry Newman
#68. It is not God's way that great blessings should descend without the sacrifice first of great sufferings. If the truth is to be spread to any wide extent among the people, how can we dream, how can we hope, that trial and trouble shall not accompany its going forth.
John Henry Newman
#70. A development, to be faithful, must retain both the doctrine and the principle with which it started. Doctrine
John Henry Newman
#72. Stuffing birds or playing stringed instruments is an elegant pastime, and a resource to the idle, but it is not education.
John Henry Newman
#73. The refutation and remedy of errors cannot precede their rise; and thus the fact of false developments or corruptions involves the correspondent manifestation of true ones. Moreover,
John Henry Newman
#74. 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.
John Henry Newman
#75. A great memory is never made synonymous with wisdom, any more than a dictionary would be called a treatise.
John Henry Newman
#76. Slang surely, as it is called, comes of, and breathes of the personal
John Henry Newman
#77. Doctrine without its correspondent principle remains barren, if not lifeless, of which the Greek Church seems an instance; or
John Henry Newman
#79. The love of our private friends is the only preparatory exercise for the love of all men.
John Henry Newman
#80. 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..
John Henry Newman
#82. If we insist on being as sure as is conceivable ... we must be content to creep along the ground, and never soar.
John Henry Newman
#83. Every breath of air and ray of light and heat, every beautiful prospect, is, as it were, the skirts of the (angel's) garments, the waving robes of those whose faces see God.
John Henry Newman
#84. A universityeducates the intellect to reason well in all matters, to reach out towards truth, and to grasp it.
John Henry Newman
#85. 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.
John Henry Newman
#86. Dear Lord ... shine through me, and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel Your presence in my soul ... Let me thus praise You in the way You love best, by shining on those around me.
John Henry Newman
#87. 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.
John Henry Newman
#88. What is more likely, considering our perverse nature, than that we should neglect the duties, while we wish to retain the privileges of our Christian profession? Our
John Henry Newman
#89. It is often said that second thoughts are best. So they are in matters of judgment but not in matters of conscience.
John Henry Newman
#90. Purity prepares the soul for love, and love confirms the soul in purity.
John Henry Newman
#91. Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt, as I understand the subject; difficulty and doubt are incommensurate.
John Henry Newman
#93. You must make up your mind to the prospect of sustaining a certain measure of pain and trouble in you'r passage through life.
John Henry Newman
#94. Courage does not consist in calculation, but in fighting against chances.
John Henry Newman
#95. 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.
John Henry Newman
#96. 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.
John Henry Newman
#97. 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.
John Henry Newman
#98. Thought and speech are inseparable from each other. Matter and expression are parts of one; style is a thinking out into language.
John Henry Newman
#99. 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.
John Henry Newman
#100. 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.
John Henry Newman
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