Quotes from John Henry Newman

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

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

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

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

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

...for nothing would be done at all, if a man waited till he could do it so well, that no one could find fault with it.

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.

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

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

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.

Here below to live is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often.

En un mundo superior puede ser de otra manera, pero aquí abajo, vivir es cambiar y ser perfecto es haber cambiado muchas veces.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

The world then is the enemy of our souls; first, because, however innocent its pleasures, and praiseworthy its pursuits may be, they are likely to engross us, unless we are on our guard: and secondly, because in all its best pleasures, and noblest pursuits, the seeds of sin have been sown; an enemy hath done this; so that it is most difficult to enjoy the good without partaking of the evil also.

From shadows and symbols into the truth.

It is beautiful in a picture to wash the disciples' feet; but the sands of the real desert have no lustre in them to compensate for the servile nature of the occupation.

And this one thing at least is certain; whatever history teaches, whatever it omits, whatever it exaggerates or extenuates, whatever it says and unsays, at least the Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth, it is this.

The nature of the case and the history of philosophy combine to recommend to us this division of intellectual labour between Academies and Universities. To discover and to teach are distinct functions; they are also distinct gifts, and are not commonly found united in the same person. He, too, who spends his day in dispensing his existing knowledge to all comers is unlikely to have either leisure or energy to acquire new.