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Quotes from John Henry Newman

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
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
It is very difficult to get up resentment towards persons whom one has never seen.
~ John Henry Newman
It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflicts pain.
~ John Henry Newman
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
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
Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.
~ John Henry Newman
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
And with the morn those angel faces smile Which I have loved long since and lost awhile.
~ John Henry Newman
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
Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather that it shall never have a beginning.
~ John Henry Newman
The world is content with setting right the surface of things.
~ John Henry Newman
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
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
We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.
~ 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
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
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
A great memory does not make a mind, any more than a dictionary is a piece of literature.
~ 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
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