John Henry Newman Quotes

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.

To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.

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.

I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever 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. My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be necessary causes of some great end, which is quite beyond us. He does nothing in vain.

When you feel in need of a compliment, give one to someone else.

I sought to hear the voice of God and climbed the topmost steeple, but God declared: "Go down again - I dwell among the people.

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.

A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault.

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.

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.

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 can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.

Life passes, riches fly away, popularity is fickle, the senses decay, the world changes. One alone is true to us; One alone can be all things to us; One alone can supply our need.

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.

Learn to do thy part and leave the rest to Heaven.

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

God created you to do him some particular service. He has given some work to you that he has not given to another. You have your mission. You shall do good.

All that is good, all that is true, all that is beautiful, all that is beneficent, be it great or small, be it perfect or fragmentary, natural as well as supernatural, moral as well as material, comes from God.

To take up the cross of Christ is no great action done once for all; it consists in the continual practice of small duties which are distasteful to us.

Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom, lead thou me on.

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.

If we are intended for great ends, we are called to great hazards.

Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather fear that it shall never have a beginning.

It is God himself who can be discovered in the beauty of sensible things.

Knowledge is one thing, virtue is another.