John Henry Newman

“Ability is sexless.”

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

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

“It is often said that second thoughts are best. So they are in matters of judgment but not in matters of conscience.”

“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.”

“To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”

“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 very difficult to get up resentment towards persons whom one has never seen.”

“Nothing would be done at all if one waited until one could do it so well that no one could find fault with it.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather that it shall never have a beginning.”

“I sought to hear the voice of God and climbed the topmost steeple, but God declared: "Go down again - I dwell among the people.”

“A great memory does not make a mind, any more than a dictionary is a piece of literature.”

“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.”

“If we are intended for great ends, we are called to great hazards.”

“A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault.”

“Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.”

“It is almost the definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflicts pain.”

“We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.”