John Henry Newman
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.Collection: Littles
To discover and to teach are distinct functions; they are also distinct gifts, and are not commonly found united in the same person.Collection: Science
Purity prepares the soul for love, and love confirms the soul in purity.Collection: Catholic
A universityeducates the intellect to reason well in all matters, to reach out towards truth, and to grasp it.Collection: Matter
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.Collection: Beautiful
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.Collection: Depth
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.Collection: Spiritual
It is seldom we have the heart to throw ourselves, if I may so speak, on the Divine Arm; we dare not trust ourselves on the waters, though Christ bids us. We have not St. Peter's love to ask leave to come to him upon the sea. When we once are filled with that heavenly charity, we can do all things, because we attempt all things - for to attempt is to do.Collection: Faith
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.Collection: Struggle
Flagrant evils cure themselves by being flagrant.Collection: Evil
Regarding Christianity: Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.Collection: Doubt
How can we understand forgiveness if we haven't recognized the depth of our sin?Collection: Depth
I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but men who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold and what they do not, who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it.Collection: Men
A cloud of incense was rising on high; the people suddenly all bowed low; what could it mean? The truth flashed on him, fearfully yet sweetly; it was the Blessed Sacrament - it was the Lord Incarnate who was on the altar, who had come to visit and bless his people. It was the Great Presence, which makes a Catholic Church different from every other place in the world; which makes it, as no other place can be - holy.Collection: Blessed
Christ is already in that place of peace, which is all in all. He is on the right hand of God. He is hidden in the brightness of the radiance which issues from the everlasting throne. He is in the very abyss of peace, where there is no voice of tumult or distress, but a deep stillness--stillness, that greatest and most awful of all goods which we can fancy; that most perfect of joys, the utter profound, ineffable tranquillity of the Divine Essence. He has entered into His rest. That is our home; here we are on a pilgrimage, and Christ calls us to His many mansions which He has prepared.Collection: Home
Now what is it that moves our very hearts and sickens us so much at cruelty shown to poor brutes?.. They have done us no harm and they have no power of resistance... There is something so very dreadful, so Satanic, in tormenting those who have never harmed us, who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power.Collection: Animal
Knowledge is one thing, virtue is another.Collection: Virtue
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.Collection: Dream
Faith is the result of the act of the will, following upon a conviction that to believe is a duty.Collection: Believe
It is mutual respect which makes friendship lasting.Collection: Mutual Respect
Great things are done by devotion to one idea.Collection: Ideas
Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom, lead thou me on.Collection: Dark
Cruelty to animals is as if humans did not love God.Collection: Religious
Without self-knowledge you have no root in yourselves personally; you may endure for a time, but under affliction or persecution your faith will not last. This is why many in this age (and in every age) become infidels, heretics, schismatics, disloyal despisers of the Church. They cast off the form of truth, because it never has been to them more than a form. They endure not, because they never have tasted that the Lord is gracious; and they never have had experience of His power and love, because they have never known their own weakness and need.Collection: Love
It is God himself who can be discovered in the beauty of sensible things.Collection: Sensible
The heart is commonly reached, not through the reason, but through the imagination, by means of direct impressions, by the testimony of facts and events, by history, by description. Persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us. Many a man will live and die upon a dogma; no man will be a martyr for a conclusion.Collection: Heart
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.Collection: Death
Courage does not consist in calculation, but in fighting against chances.Collection: Fighting
When men understand what each other mean, they see, for the most part, that controversy is either superfluous or hopelessCollection: Mean
Feast of Clare of Assisi, Founder of the Order of Minoresses (Poor Clares), 1253 Commemoration of John Henry Newman, Priest, Teacher, Tractarian, 1890 It is our great relief that God is not extreme to mark what is done amiss, that he looks at the motives, and accepts and blesses in spite of incidental errors.Collection: Teacher
Religion indeed enlightens, terrifies, subdues; it gives faith, it inflicts remorse, it inspires resolutions, it draws tears, it inflames devotion, but only for the occasion.Collection: Giving
There is a knowledge which is desirable, though nothing come of it, as being of itself a treasure, and a sufficient remuneration of years of labor.Collection: Years
Where good and ill together blent, Wage an undying strife.Collection: Together
Reason is God's gift, but so are the passions. Reason is as guilty as passion.Collection: Passion