All Quotes by John Henry Newman
“To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”
“Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather that it shall never have a beginning.”
“I sought to hear the voice of God and climbed the topmost steeple, but God declared: "Go down again - I dwell among the people.”
“The love of our private friends is the only preparatory exercise for the love of all men.”
“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.”
“Time hath a taming hand.”
“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.”
“Sin can read sin, but dimly scans high grace.”
“Christian! hence learn to do thy part,And leave the rest to Heaven.”
“Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,The distant scene,—one step enough for me.”
“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 safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last!”
“Flagrant evils cure themselves by being flagrant.”
“We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.”
“Growth is the only evidence of life.”
“Firmly I believe and truly God is Three, and God is One;And I next acknowledge duly Manhood taken by the Son.”
“It is thy very energy of thoughtWhich keeps thee from thy God.”
“So living Nature, not dull Art,Shall plan my ways and rule my heart.”
“Now what is it that moves our very hearts and sickens us so much at cruelty shown to poor brutes? … They have done us no harm and they have no power of resistance; it is the cowardice and tyranny of which they are the victims which make their sufferings so especially touching. Cruelty to animals is as if man did not love God. … There is something so very dreadful, so Satanic, in tormenting those who have never harmed us, who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power.”
“To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.”
“In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”
“After he had gone over the mansion, his entertainer asked him what he thought of the splendours it contained; and he in reply did full justice to the riches of its owner and the skill of its decorators, but he added, "Lions would have fared better, had lions been the artists."”
“I do not shrink from uttering my firm conviction that it would be a gain to the country were it vastly more superstitious, more bigoted, more gloomy, more fierce in its religion than at present it shows itself to be.”
“Moreover, there is this harm too, and one of vast extent, and touching men generally, that by insincerity and lying faith and truth are lost, which are the firmest bonds of human society, and, when they are lost, supreme confusion follows in life, so that men seem in nothing to differ from devils.”
“As I have already said, there are but two alternatives, the way to Rome, and the way to Atheism.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Knowledge is one thing, virtue is another.”
“The world is content with setting right the surface of things.”
“It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say he is one who never inflicts pain.”
“A great memory does not make a philosopher, any more than a dictionary can be called grammar.”
“We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.”
“To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”
“Growth is the only evidence of life.”