Top 120 John Henry Newman Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “If we are intended for great ends, we are called to great hazards.”

— John Henry Newman

52. “Egotism is true modesty. In religious enquiry each of us can speak only for himself.”

— John Henry Newman

53. “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.”

— John Henry Newman

54. “All men have a reason, but not all men can give a reason.”

— John Henry Newman

55. “Let us act on what we have, since we have not what we wish.”

— John Henry Newman

56. “Cruelty to animals is as if humans did not love God.”

— John Henry Newman

57. “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

58. “The ears of the common people are holier than the hearts of the priests.”

— John Henry Newman

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

— John Henry Newman

60. “Knowledge is one thing, virtue is another; good sense is not conscience, refinement is not humility, nor is largeness and justness of view faith. Philosophy, however enlightened, however profound, gives no command over the passions, no influential motives, no vivifying principles. Liberal Education makes not the Christian, not the Catholic, but the gentleman.”

— John Henry Newman

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

— John Henry Newman

62. “Quarry the granite rock with razors, or moor the vessel with a thread of silk; then may you hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to contend against those giants, the passion and the pride of man.”

— John Henry Newman

63. “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.”

— John Henry Newman

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

— John Henry Newman

65. “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.”

— John Henry Newman

66. “Go down again – I dwell among the people.”

— John Henry Newman

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

— John Henry Newman

68. “I shall drink to the Pope, if you please, still, to conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.”

— John Henry Newman

69. “And with the morn those angel faces smile Which I have loved long since and lost awhile.”

— John Henry Newman

70. “Courage does not consist in calculation, but in fighting against chances.”

— John Henry Newman

71. “Regarding Christianity: Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.”

— John Henry Newman

72. “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.”

— John Henry Newman

73. “It is not God’s way that great blessings should descend without the sacrifice first of great sufferings. If the truth is to be spread to any wide extent among the people, how can we dream, how can we hope, that trial and trouble shall not accompany its going forth.”

— John Henry Newman

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

— John Henry Newman

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

— John Henry Newman

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

— John Henry Newman

77. “Faith is the result of the act of the will, following upon a conviction that to believe is a duty.”

— John Henry Newman

78. “Time hath a taming hand.”

— John Henry Newman

79. “From shadows and symbols into the truth.”

— John Henry Newman

80. “Two and two only supreme and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator.”

— John Henry Newman

81. “Living Nature, not dull art Shall plan my ways and rule my Heart.”

— John Henry Newman

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

— John Henry Newman

83. “I see nothing in the theory of evolution inconsistent with an Almighty Creator and Protector.”

— John Henry Newman

84. “This is what the Church is said to want, not party men, but sensible, temperate, sober, well-judging persons, to guide it through the channel of no-meaning, between the Scylla and Charybdis of Aye and no.”

— John Henry Newman

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

— John Henry Newman

86. “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.”

— John Henry Newman

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

— John Henry Newman

88. “Flagrant evils cure themselves by being flagrant.”

— John Henry Newman

89. “Stuffing birds or playing stringed instruments is an elegant pastime, and a resource to the idle, but it is not education.”

— John Henry Newman

90. “Where good and ill together blent, Wage an undying strife.”

— John Henry Newman

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

— John Henry Newman

92. “Reason is God’s gift, but so are the passions. Reason is as guilty as passion.”

— John Henry Newman

93. “Boys do not fully know what is good and what is evil; they do wrong things at first almost innocently. Novelty hides vice from them; there is no one to warn them or give them rules; and they become slaves of sin, while they are learning what sin is.”

— John Henry Newman

94. “But one aspect of Revelation must not be allowed to exclude or to obscure another; and Christianity is dogmatical, devotional, practical all at once; it is esoteric and exoteric; it is indulgent and strict; it is light and dark; it is love, and it is fear.”

— John Henry Newman

95. “Nothing is more common in an age like this, when books abound, than to fancy that the gratification of a love of reading is real study.”

— John Henry Newman

96. “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.”

— John Henry Newman

97. “In this world no one rules by love; if you are but amiable, you are no hero; to be powerful, you must be strong, and to have dominion you must have a genius for organizing.”

— John Henry Newman

98. “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.”

— John Henry Newman

99. “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.”

— John Henry Newman

100. “The minds of young people are pliable and elastic, and easily accommodate themselves to any one they fall in with.”

— John Henry Newman