John Henry Newman > Quotes

“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

“God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. 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. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments.

Therefore, I will trust Him, whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me. Still, He knows what He is about.”
― John Henry Newman

“A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault.”
― John Henry Newman

“We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.”
― John Henry Newman

“To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”
― John Henry Newman

“Growth is the only evidence of life.”
― John Henry Newman

“A great memory does not make a mind, any more than a dictionary is a piece of literature.”
― John Henry Newman

“To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.”
― John Henry Newman

“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

“Evil has no substance of its own, but is only the defect, excess, perversion, or corruption of that which has substance.”
― John Henry Newman

“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.”
― Cardinal John Henry Newman

“The love of our private friends is the only preparatory exercise for the love of all men.”
― John Henry Newman

“God has created all things for good; all things for their greatest good; everything for its own good. What is the good of one is not the good of another; what makes one man happy would make another unhappy. God has determined, unless I interfere with His plan, that I should reach that which will be my greatest happiness. He looks on me individually, He calls me by my name, He knows what I can do, what I can best be, what is my greatest happiness, and He means to give it me.”
― John Henry Newman

“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.”
― Cardinal John Henry Newman

“Lead, Kindly Light, amidst th'encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home,
Lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.
I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou
Shouldst lead me on;
I loved to choose and see my path; but now
Lead Thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years!
So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on.
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone,
And with the morn those angel faces smile,
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile!
Meantime, along the narrow rugged path,
Thyself hast trod,
Lead, Saviour, lead me home in childlike faith,
Home to my God.
To rest forever after earthly strife
In the calm light of everlasting life.”
― John Henry Newman

“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

“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.”
― John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University

“Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather fear that it shall never have a beginning.”
― Newman, John Henry

“I shall drink to the Pope, if you please, still, to conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.”
― John Henry Newman

“Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt, as I understand the subject; difficulty and doubt are incommensurate.”
― John Henry Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua

“God knows what is my greatest happiness, but I do not. There is no rule about what is happy and good; what suits one would not suit another. And the ways by which perfection is reached vary very much; the medicines necessary for our souls are very different from each other. Thus God leads us by strange ways; we know He wills our happiness, but we neither know what our happiness is, nor the way. We are blind; left to ourselves we should take the wrong way; we must leave it to Him.”
― John Henry Newman

“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

“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

“Nothing would be done at all if one waited until one could do it so well that no one could find fault with it.”
― John Henry Newman

“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.”
― John Henry Newman

“To live is to change, and to change often is to become more perfect.”
― Cardinal Newman, Conscience, Consensus, and the Development of Doctrine

“A university training is the great ordinary means to a great but ordinary end; it aims at raising the intellectual tone of society…It is the education which gives a man a clear conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them and a force in urging them.”
― Cardinal Newman, The Idea of a University

“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.”
― John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons

“Here below to live is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often.”
― John Henry Newman

“Boys do not fully know what is good and what is evil; they do wrong things at first almost innocently. Novelty hides vice from them; there is no one to warn them or give them rules; and they become slaves of sin, while they are learning what sin is.”
― John Henry Newman, Loss and Gain The Story of a Convert