John Henry Newman Quotes
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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.
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What can this world offer comparable with that insight into spiritual things, that keen faith, that heavenly peace, that high sanctity, that everlasting righteousness, that hope of glory, which they have, who in sincerity love and follow our Lord Jesus Christ?
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Men will die upon dogma but will not fall victim to a conclusion.
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Praise to the Holiest in the height, And in the depth be praise; In all His words most wonderful, Most sure in all His ways.
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When you feel in need of a compliment, give one to someone else.
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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.
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Regarding Christianity: Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.
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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.
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I sought to hear the voice of God and climbed the topmost steeple, but God declared: "Go down again - I dwell among the people.
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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.
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An academical system without the personal influence of teachers on pupils, is an arctic winter; it will create an icebound, petrified, cast-iron University, and nothing else.
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We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.
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There are wounds of the spirit which never close and are intended in God's mercy to bring us nearer to Him, and to prevent us leaving Him by their very perpetuity. Such wounds then may almost be taken as a pledge, or at least as a ground for a humble trust, that God will give us the great gift of perseverance to the end. This is how I comfort myself in my own great bereavements.
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O loving wisdom of our God when all was sin and shame, a second Adam to the fight and to the rescue came.
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I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but men who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold and what they do not, who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it.
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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... 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.
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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.
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We should ever conduct ourselves towards our enemy as if he were one day to be our friend.
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Evil has no substance of its own, but is only the defect, excess, perversion, or corruption of that which has substance.
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Literature stands related to Man as Science stands to Nature; it is his history.
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The heart is commonly reached, not through the reason, but through the imagination, by means of direct impressions, by the testimony of facts and events, by history, by description. Persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us. Many a man will live and die upon a dogma; no man will be a martyr for a conclusion.
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After the fever of life--after wearinesses, sicknesses, fightings and despondings, languor and fretfulness, struggling and failing, struggling and succeeding--after all the changes and chances of this troubled and unhealthy state, at length comes death--at length the white throne of God--at length the beatific vision.
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How can we feel our need of His help, or our dependence on Him, or our debt to Him, or the nature of His gift to us, unless we know ourselves.... This is why many in this age (and in every age) become infidels, heretics, schismatics, disloyal despisers of the Church.... They have never had experience of His power and love, because they have never known their own weakness and need.
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Growth is the only evidence of life.
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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.
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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 never may know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I have a part in a great work; 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 and serve Him in my calling.
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Man is emphatically self-made.
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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.
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It is as absurd to argue men, as to torture them, into believing.
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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.
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