Quotes from 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
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
To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.
- 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
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
Nothing would be done at all if one waited until one could do it so well that no one could find fault with it.
- John Henry Newman
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.
- John Henry Newman
Providence has delivered me of every worldly passion, save this one; the desire to acquire books, new or old books of any kind, whose charms I cannot persuade myself to resist.
- John Henry Newman
Cease, stranger, cease those witching notes, The art of syren choirs; Hush the seductive voice that floats Across the trembling wires. Music's ethereal power was given Not to dissolve our clay, But draw Promethean beams from heaven To purge the dross away.
- John Henry Newman