John Henry Newman
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 ... He has not created me for naught ... If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about.Collection: Spiritual
Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ.Collection: Christ
I shall drink to the Pope, if you please, still, to conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.Collection: Firsts
To the irreligious person heaven would be hell.Collection: Heaven
Go down again - I dwell among the people.Collection: People
Such is the constitution of the human mind, that any kind of knowledge, if it be really such, is its own reward.Collection: Knowledge
Stuffing birds or playing stringed instruments is an elegant pastime, and a resource to the idle, but it is not education.Collection: Bird
Faith ventures and hazards . . . counting the costs and delighting in the sacrifice.Collection: Faith
Now what is it moves our very hearts, and sickens us so much at cruelty shown to poor brutes? I suppose this first, that they have done no harm; next, that they have no power whatever of resistance; it is the cowardice and tyranny of which they are the victims which makes their sufferings so especially touching.Collection: Moving
Thought and speech are inseparable from each other. Matter and expression are parts of one; style is a thinking out into language.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Struggle
Lions would have fared better, had lions been the artists.Collection: Artist
The world is content with setting right the surface of things.Collection: World
The ears of the common people are holier than the hearts of the priests.Collection: Heart
Two and two only supreme and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator.Collection: Self
Literature stands related to Man as Science stands to Nature; it is his history.Collection: Nature
Living Nature, not dull art Shall plan my ways and rule my Heart.Collection: Beauty
Man is emphatically self-made.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Party
Make me what Thou wouldst have me. I bargain for nothing. I make no terms. I seek for no previous information whither Thou art taking me. I will be what Thou wilt make me, and all that Thou wilt make me. I say not, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest, for I am weak, but I give myself to Thee, to lead me anywhither.Collection: Art
Every breath of air and ray of light and heat, every beautiful prospect, is, as it were, the skirts of the (angel's) garments, the waving robes of those whose faces see God.Collection: Beautiful
Faith ... acts promptly and boldly on the occasion, on slender evidence.Collection: Decision
With Christians, a poetical view of things is a duty. We are bid to color all things with hues of faith, to see a divine meaning in every event.Collection: Faith
All men have a reason, but not all men can give a reason.Collection: Men
Time hath a taming hand.Collection: Hands
Let us put ourselves into His hands, and not be startled though He leads us by a strange way, a mirabilis via, as the Church speaks. Let us be sure He will lead us right, that He will bring us to that which is, not indeed what we think best, nor what is best for another, but what is best for us.Collection: Thinking
Somehow I am necessary for His purposes, as necessary in my place as an Archangel in his.Collection: Angel
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.Collection: Teacher
Why should we be willing to go by faith? We do all things in this world by faith in the word of others. By faith only we know our position in the world, our circumstances, our rights and privileges, our fortunes, our parents, our brothers and sisters, our age, our mortality. Why should Religion be an exception?Collection: Faith
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?Collection: Christian
Health of body and mind is a great blessing, if we can bear it.Collection: Health
Satan is inconsistent. He persuades a man not to go to a synagogue on a cold morning; yet when the man does go, he follows him into it.Collection: Morning
A science is not mere knowledge, it is knowledge which has undergone a process of intellectual digestion. It is the grasp of many things brought together in one, and hence is its power; for, properly speaking, it is Science that is power, not Knowledge.Collection: Knowledge
I see nothing in the theory of evolution inconsistent with an Almighty Creator and Protector.Collection: Theory Of Evolution
Egotism is true modesty. In religious enquiry each of us can speak only for himself.Collection: Religious
And with the morn those angel faces smile Which I have loved long since and lost awhile.Collection: Sympathy
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.Collection: Love Is
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.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Responsibility
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.Collection: Sacrifice
By a garden is meant mystically a place of spiritual repose, stillness, peace, refreshment, delight.Collection: Spiritual
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.Collection: Teacher
You must make up your mind to the prospect of sustaining a certain measure of pain and trouble in you'r passage through life.Collection: Life
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 EmmanuelCollection: Jesus
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.Collection: Reflection
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.Collection: Spring