John Henry Newman Quotes - Page 3

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.

You must make up your mind to the prospect of sustaining a certain measure of pain and trouble in you'r passage through life.

I wonder what day I shall die on - one passes year by year over one's death day, as one might pass over one's grave.

If then a practical end must be assigned to a University course, I say it is that of training good members of society... It is the education which gives a man a clear, conscious view of their own opinions and judgements, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them. It teaches him to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought to detect what is sophistical and to discard what is irrelevant.

True religion is slow in growth, and, when once planted, is difficult of dislodgement; but its intellectual counterfeit has no root in itself: it springs up suddenly, it suddenly withers.

Most people go not by argument, but by sympathies.

Faith is illuminative, not operative; it does not force obedience, though it increases responsibility; it heightens guilt, but it does not prevent sin. The will is the source of action.

By a garden is meant mystically a place of spiritual repose, stillness, peace, refreshment, delight.

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

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.

O most sacred, most loving heart of Jesus, thou art concealed in the Holy Eucharist, and thou beatest for us still.... Thou art the heart of the Most High made man.... Thy Sacred Heart is the instrument and organ of Thy love. It did beat for us. It yearned for us. It ached for our salvation. It was on fire through zeal, that the glory of God might be manifested in and by us.... In worshipping thee I worship my incarnate God, my Emmanuel

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

Reason is one thing and faith is another and reason can as little be made a substitute for faith, as faith can be made a substitute for reason.

The love of our private friends is the only preparatory exercise for the love of all men.

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

It's really not a difficult decision when you reflect on it, ... The situation is just so tenuous with where it's going to hit. You don't want to take any chances.

A universityeducates the intellect to reason well in all matters, to reach out towards truth, and to grasp it.

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.

Flagrant evils cure themselves by being flagrant.

Purity prepares the soul for love, and love confirms the soul in purity.

The attributes of God, though intelligible to us on their surface yet, for the very reason that they are infinite, transcend our comprehension, when they are dwelt upon, when they are followed out, and can only be received by faith.

A great memory does not make a mind, any more than a dictionary is a piece of literature.

To discover and to teach are distinct functions; they are also distinct gifts, and are not commonly found united in the same person.

Brutes gaze on sights, they are arrested by sounds; and what they see and what they hear are sights and sounds only. The intellectof man, on the contrary, energises as well as his eye or ear, and perceives in sights or sounds something beyond them. It seizes and unites what the senses present to it; it grasps and forms what need not be seen or heard except in detail. It discerns in lines and colors, or in tones, what is beautiful and what is not. It gives them a meaning, and invests them with an idea.

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.