"Let us act on what we have, since we have not what we wish"
About this Quote
Newman’s line has the calm steel of a sermon that knows exactly how human beings dodge responsibility. “Let us act” is not pious window-dressing; it’s an imperative aimed at a favorite religious loophole: waiting for ideal conditions, ideal certainty, ideal holiness. By tying action to “what we have,” Newman yanks virtue out of the abstract and plants it in the inventory of the present - limited time, imperfect motives, partial knowledge. The sentence is a rebuke to spiritual consumerism: the fantasy that one can delay commitment until faith feels complete or life feels orderly.
The subtext is also political in the small-p sense: communities and institutions rot when they confuse wishing with governing. Newman, a 19th-century clergyman writing amid the aftershocks of the Enlightenment and the churn of industrial Britain, is speaking to an age newly obsessed with progress, systems, and grand fixes. His answer is deliberately unglamorous. Act anyway. Use the tools at hand. Work from the real, not the imagined.
What makes the line work is its tight moral logic. “Since” does the heavy lifting: it refuses the possibility that wishing can be a valid excuse. The phrase “what we wish” names desire without romanticizing it, while “what we have” hints at providence - not abundance, but sufficiency. Newman isn’t praising resignation; he’s attacking procrastination dressed up as aspiration.
The subtext is also political in the small-p sense: communities and institutions rot when they confuse wishing with governing. Newman, a 19th-century clergyman writing amid the aftershocks of the Enlightenment and the churn of industrial Britain, is speaking to an age newly obsessed with progress, systems, and grand fixes. His answer is deliberately unglamorous. Act anyway. Use the tools at hand. Work from the real, not the imagined.
What makes the line work is its tight moral logic. “Since” does the heavy lifting: it refuses the possibility that wishing can be a valid excuse. The phrase “what we wish” names desire without romanticizing it, while “what we have” hints at providence - not abundance, but sufficiency. Newman isn’t praising resignation; he’s attacking procrastination dressed up as aspiration.
Quote Details
| Topic | Contentment |
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