Quotes by John Newman

• To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.
• Let us act on what we have, since we have not what we wish.
• 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.
• Men will die upon dogma but will not fall victim to a conclusion.
• Nothing is more common than for men to think that because they are familiar with words they understand the ideas they stand for.
• Nothing would be done at all if one waited until one could do it so well that no one could find fault with it.
• Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.
• The love of our private friends is the only preparatory exercise for the love of all men.
• 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.
• Virtue is its own reward, and brings with it the truest and highest pleasure; but if we cultivate it only for pleasure's sake, we are selfish, not religious, and will never gain the pleasure, because we can never have the virtue.
• We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.
• We must make up our minds to be ignorant of much, if we would know anything.
• It is very difficult to get up resentment towards persons whom one has never seen.
• Evil has no substance of its own, but is only the defect, excess, perversion, or corruption of that which has substance.
• 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.
• From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion: I know no other religion; I cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion; religion, as a mere sentiment, is to me a dream and a mockery.
• It is often said that second thoughts are best. So they are in matters of judgment but not in matters of conscience.
• A great memory is never made synonymous with wisdom, any more than a dictionary would be called a treatise.
• A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault.
• Calculation never made a hero.
• Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather that it shall ever have a beginning.
• A great memory does not make a mind, any more than a dictionary is a piece of literature.
• Growth is the only evidence of life.
• If we are intended for great ends, we are called to great hazards.
• If we insist on being as sure as is conceivable... we must be content to creep along the ground, and never soar.
• 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.
• It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflicts pain.
• It is almost the definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflicts pain.
• It is as absurd to argue men, as to torture them, into believing.
• Ability is sexless.