Collected Quotations from Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman (Mostly Non-Theological): Part II: Letters J-Z

 I originally selected these for my book, The Quotable Newman ,  but I needed to cut down the page numbers (it's over 600 pages and not yet completed, as I write), and the book is supposed to be mostly devoted to theology and Church history, so I took these out. But I think they're all great quotes. Enjoy the incredible wisdom and insight of this great man.

See also:

Part I: Letters A-I
* * * * *
Liberalism and "Progress" (Political)
The State ought to have a conscience; but what if it happened to have half-a-dozen, or a score, or a hundred, in religious matters, each different from each? . . . The Pope has denounced the sentiment that he ought to come to terms with "progress, liberalism, and the new civilization." I have no thought at all of disputing his words. I leave the great problem to the future. God will guide other Popes to act when Pius goes, as He has guided him. No one can dislike the democratic principle more than I do. No one mourns, for instance, more than I, over the state of Oxford, given up, alas! to "liberalism and progress," to the forfeiture of her great medieval motto, "Dominus illuminatio mea," . . . but what can we do? All I know is, that Toryism, that is, loyalty to persons, "springs immortal in the human breast"; that religion is a spiritual loyalty; and that Catholicity is the only divine form of religion. And thus, in centuries to come, there may be found out some way of uniting what is free in the new structure of society with what is authoritative in the old, without any base compromise with "Progress" and "Liberalism." (Dif. ii, Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, ch. 6, 1875)

Is Benthamism so absolutely the Truth, that the Pope is to be denounced because he has not yet become a convert to it? (Dif. ii, Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, ch. 7, 1875)

Martyrs
The most horrible tortures which imagination can fancy, the most appalling kinds of death, were the lot, the accepted portion, the boast and joy, of those abject multitudes. Not a few merely, but by thousands, and of every condition of life, men, women, boys, girls, children, slaves, domestics, they willingly offered their life's blood, their limbs, their senses, their nerves, to the persecutor, rather than soil their faith and their profession with the slightest act which implied the denial of their Lord. . . . And who were these her children who made this sacrifice of blood so freely? what had been their previous lives? how had they been trained? were they special men of fasting, of prayer, and of self-control? No, I repeat it, no; they were for the most part common men; it was not they who did the deed, it was not what was matured in them, it was that unfathomable ocean of faith and sanctity which flowed into, and through, and out of them, unto those tremendous manifestations of divine power. It was the narrow-minded slave, the untaught boy, the gentle maid, as well as the Bishop or the Evangelist, who took on them their cross, and smiled as they entered on their bloody way. It was the soldier of the ranks, it was the jailer or hangman suddenly converted, it was the spectator of a previous martyrdom, nay, it was even the unbaptized heathen, who with a joyful song rose up and washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. (PPC, Lecture 9)

Materialism (Wealth for its Own Sake)
. . . Christians are called upon to think little of the ordinary objects which men pursue—wealth, luxury, distinction, popularity, and power. It was this negligence about the world which brought upon them in primitive times the reproach of being indolent. Their heathen enemies spoke truly; indolent and indifferent they were about temporal matters. If the goods of this world came in their way, they were not bound to decline them; nor would they forbid others in the religious use of them; but they thought them vanities, the toys of children, which serious men let drop. (SD, Sermon 11: "Christian Nobleness," 22 May 1831)

Another consideration which the world urges in its warfare against religion, as I have already implied, is, that religion is unnatural. It is objected (what indeed cannot be denied, and is almost a truism) that religion does not bring the elementary and existing nature of man to its highest perfection, but thwarts and impairs it, and provides for a second and new nature. It is said, and truly, that religion treats the body hardly, and is severe with the soul. How different is the world, which conceives that the first object of life is to treat our inferior nature indulgently, that all methods of living are right which do this, and all wrong which do not! Hence men lay it down, that wealth is the measure of all good, and the end of life; for a state of wealth may be described as a state of ease and comfort to body and mind. They say that every act of civil government is wrong, which does not tend to what they thus consider to be man's happiness; that utility and expedience, or, in other words, whatever tends to produce wealth, is the only rule on which laws should be framed; that what tends to higher objects is not useful or expedient; that higher objects are a mere dream; that the only thing substantial is this life, and the only wisdom, to cherish and enjoy it. (SD, Sermon 7: "Faith and the World," 18 November 1838)

Where is trade without the love of filthy lucre, which is the root of all evil? (SD, Sermon 17: "Sanctity the Token of the Christian Empire," 4 December 1842)

Others are full of projects for making money; be they high or be they low, that is their pursuit, they covet wealth and they live in the thought how they may get it. They are alive to inventions and improvements in their particular trade, and to nothing else. They rival each other. They as it were, run a race with each other, not a heavenly race, such as the Apostle's who ran for a crown incorruptible, but a low earthly race, each trying by all means in his power to distance his neighbour in what is called the favour of the public, making this their one end, and thinking nothing at all of religion. (FP, Sermon 2: "Preparation for the Judgment," 20 February 1848)

Music
I have delayed thanking you for your great kindness in uniting with Rogers in giving me a fiddle . . . on Saturday I had a good bout at Beethoven's Quartets – which I used to play . . . and thought them more exquisite than ever – so that I was obliged to lay down the instrument and literally cry out with delight . . . I really think it will add to my power of working, and the length of my life. I never wrote more than when I played the fiddle. I always sleep better after music. There must be some electric current passing from the strings through the fingers into the brain and down the spinal marrow. Perhaps thought is music. (POL; Letter to R.W. Church, 11 July 1865)

Old Age
As years go on, I have less sensible devotion and inward life. I wonder whether it is, or rather whether it is not, so with all men, viewed as apart from the grace of God. The greater part of our devotion in youth, our faith, hope, cheerfulness, perseverance, is natural—or, if not natural, it is from a [euphuia] which does not resist grace, and requires very little grace to illuminate. The same grace goes much further in youth as encountering less opposition . . . Old men are in soul as stiff, as lean, as bloodless as their bodies, except so far as grace penetrates and softens them. And it requires a flooding of grace to do this. . . . I much doubt if I, my present self, just as I am, were set down in those past years, 1820 or 1822 or 1829, if they could be brought back, whether I now should make those good prayers and bold resolves, unless, that is, I had some vast and extraordinary grant of grace from Thy Heavenly treasure-house. And that, I repeat, because I think, as death comes on, his cold breath is felt on soul as on body, and that, viewed naturally, my soul is half dead now, whereas then it was in the freshness and fervour of youth. . . . O my God, not as a matter of sentiment, not as a matter of literary exhibition, do I put this down. O rid me of this frightful cowardice, for this is at the bottom of all my ills. When I was young, I was bold, because I was ignorant—now I have lost my boldness, because I have advanced in experience. I am able to count the cost, better than I did, of being brave for Thy sake, and therefore I shrink from sacrifices. Here is a second reason, over and above the deadness of my soul, why I have so little faith or love in me. (Ward i, 574-576; Journal, 15 December 1859)

I do not mean myself to surprise people or to be audacious, but somehow, now at the end of life, I have from experience a confidence in myself, and, (though with little of St. Cyprian's sanctity, but with more of truth, as I trust, in my cause) I am led to take to myself some portion of the praise given him in Keble's line, and to "trust the lore of my own loyal heart." I trust to having some portion of an "inductive sense," founded in right instincts. (Ward ii, 270; Letter to Fr. Henry Coleridge, 5 February 1871)

I am thankful to say that I am at present quite free from any complaint, as far as I know, but I am over eighty, and it is with difficulty that I walk, eat, read, write or talk. My breath is short and my brain works slow, and, like other old men, I am so much the creature of hours, rooms, and of routine generally, that to go from home is almost like tearing off my skin, and I suffer from it afterwards. On the other hand, except in failure of memory, and continual little mistakes in the use of words, and confusion in the use of names, I am not conscious that my mind is weaker than it was. Now this is sadly egotistical; but I want you to understand why it is that I do not accept your most kind invitations, . . . I have real reasons, which friends sometimes will not believe, for they come and see me and say: "How well you are looking!" (Ward ii, 485; Letter to Lord Braye, 29 October 1882)

Rationalism (vs. Faith)
Rationalism is a certain abuse of Reason; that is, a use of it for purposes for which it never was intended, and is unfitted. To rationalize in matters of Revelation is to make our reason the standard and measure of the doctrines revealed; to stipulate that those doctrines should be such as to carry with them their own justification; to reject them, if they come in collision with our existing opinions or habits of thought, or are with difficulty harmonized with our existing stock of knowledge. And thus a rationalistic spirit is the antagonist of Faith; for Faith is, in its very nature, the acceptance of what our reason cannot reach, simply and absolutely upon testimony. (TT #73, 1836)

. . . it is Rationalism to accept the Revelation, and then to explain it away; to speak of it as the Word of God, and to treat it as the word of man; to refuse to let it speak for itself; to claim to be told the why and the how of God's dealings with us, as therein described, and to assign to Him a motive and a scope of our own; to stumble at the partial knowledge which He may give us of them; to put aside what is obscure, as if it had not been said at all; to accept one half of what has been told us, and not the other half; to assume that the contents of Revelation are also its proof; to frame some gratuitous hypothesis about them, and then to garble, gloss, and colour them, to trim, clip, pare away, and twist them, in order to bring them into conformity with the idea to which we have subjected them. (TT #73, 1836)

The Rationalist makes himself his own centre, not his Maker; he does not go to God, but he implies that God must come to him. (TT #73, 1836)

Our private judgment is made everything to us,—is contemplated, recognized, and consulted as the arbiter of all questions, and as independent of everything external to us. Nothing is considered to have an existence except so far forth as our minds discern it. The notion of half views and partial knowledge, of guesses, surmises, hopes and fears, of truths faintly apprehended and not understood, of isolated facts in the great scheme of Providence, in a word, the idea of Mystery, is discarded. (TT #73, 1836)

Such a belief, implicit, and symbolized as it is in the use of creeds, seems to the Rationalist superstitious and unmeaning, and he consequently confines Faith to the province of Subjective Truth, or to the reception of doctrine, as, and so far as, it is met and apprehended by the mind, which will be differently, as he considers, in different persons, in the shape of orthodoxy in one, heterodoxy in another. That is, he professes to believe in that which he opines; and he avoids the obvious extravagance of such an avowal by maintaining that the moral trial involved in Faith does not lie in the submission of the reason to external realities partially disclosed, but in what he calls that candid pursuit of truth which ensures the eventual adoption of that opinion on the subject, which is best for us individually, which is most natural according to the constitution of our own minds, and, therefore, divinely intended for us. (TT #73, 1836)

He assumes . . . that clear knowledge is the one thing needful for the human mind, and by consequence that Christian faith does not really consist in the direct contemplation of the Supreme Being, in a submission to His authority, and a resignation to such disclosures about Himself and His will, be they many or few, distinct or obscure, as it is His pleasure to make to us, but in a luminous, well-adjusted view of the scheme of salvation, . . . (TT #73, 1836)

Not that the reality of the Atonement, in itself, is formally denied, but it is cast in the background, except so far as it can be discovered to be influential, viz., to show God's hatred of sin, the love of Christ, and the like; and there is an evident tendency to consider it as a mere Manifestation of the love of Christ, to the denial of all real virtue in it as an expiation for sin; as if His death took place merely to show His love for us as a sign of God's infinite mercy, to calm and assure us, without any real connexion existing between it and God's forgiveness of our sins. . . . Rationalism, or want of faith, which has in the first place invented a spurious gospel, next looks complacently on its own off-spring, and pronounces it to be the very image of that notion of the Divine Providence, according to which it was originally modelled; a procedure, which, besides more serious objections, incurs the logical absurdity of arguing in a circle. (TT #73, 1836)

But it is the way with men, particularly in this day, to generalize freely, to be impatient of such concrete truth as existing appointments contain, to attempt to disengage it, to hazard sweeping assertions, to lay down principles, to mount up above God's visible doings, and to subject them to tests derived from our own speculations. (TT #73, 1836)

. . . this narrow-minded, jejune, officious, and presumptuous human system teaches nothing but a Manifestation, i.e. a series of historical works conveying a representation of the moral character of God; and it dishonours our holy faith by the unmeaning reproach of its being metaphysical, abstract, and the like,—a reproach, unmeaning and irreverent, just as much so as it would be on the other hand to call the historical facts earthly or carnal. (TT #73, 1836)

Revivalism and Pietism (Excesses of)
The true preaching of the Gospel is to preach Christ. But the fashion of the day has been, instead of this, to preach conversion; to attempt to convert by insisting on conversion; to exhort men to undergo a change; to tell them to be sure they look at Christ, instead of simply holding up Christ to them; to tell them to have faith, rather than to supply its Object; to lead them to stir up and work up their minds, instead of impressing on them the thought of Him who can savingly work in them; to bid them take care that their faith is justifying, not dead, formal, self-righteous, and merely moral, whereas the image of Christ fully delineated of itself destroys deadness, formality, and self-righteousness; to rely on words, vehemence, eloquence, and the like, rather than to aim at conveying the one great evangelical idea whether in words or not. And thus faith and (what is called) spiritual-mindedness are dwelt on as ends, and obstruct the view of Christ, just as the Law was perverted by the Jews. . . . We do not affect people by telling them to weep or laugh; let us preach Christ, and leave the effect to God, to prosper it or not. . . . Now that no effect follows upon such representations I am very far from saying; experience shows the contrary. But for the most part it will be produced by sympathy, and will consist in imitation. Men will feel this and that, because they are told to feel it, because they think they ought to feel it, because others say they feel it themselves; not spontaneously, as the consequence of the objects presented to them. And hence the absence of nature, composure, unobtrusiveness, healthy and unstudied feeling, variety and ease of language, among those who are thus converted, even when that conversion is sincere. Convulsions are in their view the only real manifestation of spiritual life and strength. (Jfc., ch. 13)

Secularism
For is there not at this very time a special effort made almost all over the world . . . to do without Religion? Is there not an opinion avowed and growing, that a nation has nothing to do with Religion; that it is merely a matter for each man's own conscience?—which is all one with saying that we may let the Truth fail from the earth without trying to continue it in and on after our time. . . . Is there not a feverish and ever-busy endeavour to get rid of the necessity of Religion in public transactions? . . . an attempt to educate without Religion?—that is, by putting all forms of Religion together, which comes to the same thing;—an attempt to enforce temperance, and the virtues which flow from it, without Religion, by means of Societies which are built on mere principles of utility? an attempt to make expedience, and not truth, the end and the rule of measures of State and the enactments of Law? . . . An attempt to deprive the Bible of its one meaning to the exclusion of all other, to make people think that it may have an hundred meanings all equally good, or, in other words, that it has no meaning at all, is a dead letter, and may be put aside? an attempt to supersede Religion altogether, as far as it is external or objective, as far as it is displayed in ordinances, or can be expressed by written words,—to confine it to our inward feelings, and thus, considering how variable, how evanescent our feelings are, an attempt, in fact, to destroy Religion? (TT #83, 1838)

The evidence of History, I say, is invaluable in its place; but, if it assumes to be the sole means of gaining Religious Truth, it goes beyond its place. We are putting it to a larger office than it can undertake, if we countenance the usurpation; and we are turning a true guide and blessing into a source of inexplicable difficulty and interminable doubt. And so of other sciences: just as Comparative Anatomy, Political Economy, the Philosophy of History, and the Science of Antiquities may be and are turned against Religion, by being taken by themselves, as I have been showing, so a like mistake may befall any other. (IU, Part I, Discourse 4: "Bearing of Other Branches of Knowledge on Theology," 1852)

Hitherto the civil power has been Christian. Even in countries separated from the Church, as in my own, the dictum was in force, when I was young, that: 'Christianity was the law of the land.' Now, everywhere that goodly framework of society, which is the creation of Christianity, is throwing off Christianity. The dictum to which I have referred, with a hundred others which followed upon it, is gone, or is going everywhere; and, by the end of the century, unless the Almighty interferes, it will be forgotten. Hitherto, it has been considered that religion alone, with its supernatural sanctions, was strong enough to secure submission of the masses of our population to law and order; now the Philosophers and Politicians are bent on satisfying this problem without the aid of Christianity. Instead of the Church's authority and teaching, they would substitute first of all a universal and thoroughly secular education, calculated to bring home to every individual that to be orderly, industrious, and sober is his personal interest. Then, for great working principles to take the place of religion, for the use of the masses thus carefully educated, it provides—the broad fundamental ethical truths, of justice, benevolence, veracity, and the like; proved experience; and those natural laws which exist and act spontaneously in society, and in social matters, whether physical or psychological; for instance, in government, trade, finance, sanitary experiments, and the intercourse of nations. As to Religion, it is a private luxury, which a man may have if he will; but which of course he must pay for, and which he must not obtrude upon others, or indulge in to their annoyance. The general [nature] of this great apostasia is one and the same everywhere; but in detail, and in character, it varies in different countries. For myself, I would rather speak of it in my own country, which I know. There, I think it threatens to have a formidable success; though it is not easy to see what will be its ultimate issue. At first sight it might be thought that Englishmen are too religious for a movement which, on the continent, seems to be founded on infidelity; but the misfortune with us is, that, though it ends in infidelity as in other places, it does not necessarily arise out of infidelity. . . . it must be borne in mind, that there is much in the liberalistic theory which is good and true; for example, not to say more, the precepts of justice, truthfulness, sobriety, self-command, benevolence, which, as I have already noted, are among its avowed principles, and the natural laws of society. It is not till we find that this array of principles is intended to supersede, to block out, religion, that we pronounce it to be evil. There never was a device of the Enemy so cleverly framed and with such promise of success. (Ward ii, 460-462; "Biglietto Speech" upon becoming a Cardinal, 12 May 1879)

Skepticism
Now I think that controversy is Lord P's food. He is supported, as on crutches, on asking and urging difficulties on the one hand and demolishing answers on the other. The best hope of his changing lies in his having no one to combat with him. Especially no one whom he loves or knows about. There is no substance in his scepticism, and this is most likely to come home upon him, if silence is offered to his restless activity of mind . . . (POL; Letter to Lady Herbert of Lea, 6 October 1879)

I do really think it an epidemic, and wonderfully catching. It does not spread by the reason, but by the imagination. The imagination presents a possible, plausible view of things which haunts and at length overcomes the mind. We begin by asking "How can we be sure that it is not so?" and this thought hides from the mind the real rational grounds on which our faith is founded. Then our faith goes, and how in the world is it ever to be regained, except by a wonderful grant of God's grace. May God keep us all from this terrible deceit of the latter days. What is coming upon us? I look with keen compassion on the next generation and with, I may say, awe. (Ward ii, 478; Letter to Emily Bowles, 15 June 1882)

Sloganism (in Religion)
Principles are great truths or laws which embody in them the character of a system, enable us to estimate it, and indirectly guide us in practice. For instance, "all is of grace," is a great principle of the Gospel. So are the following:—"we conquer by suffering,"—"the saints of God are hidden,"—"obedience is of the spirit not of the letter,"—"the blood of the Martyrs is the seed of the Church,"—"to gain happiness we must not seek it." It is a characteristic of such statements of principles to be short, pointed, strong, and often somewhat paradoxical in appearance. Such, for example, is the political maxim, which has a clear and true meaning, but in form is startling, "The King can do no wrong;" or in physics, that "nature abhors a vacuum." They are laws or exhibitions of general truths; and not directly practical. I mean, a man will be sure to get into difficulty or error if he attempts to use them as guides in matters of conduct and duty. They mean nothing, or something wide of the truth, taken as literal directions. Proverbs, again, are of the same nature; we recognize their truth in the course of life, but we do not walk by them. They come after us, not go before. They confirm, they do not explore for us. They are reflections upon human conduct, not guides for it. (Jfc., ch. 13)

Picked verses, bits torn from the context, half sentences, are the warrant of the Protestant Idea, of what is Apostolic truth, on the one hand, and, on the other, of what is Catholic falsehood. As they have their chips and fragments of St. Paul and St. John, so have they their chips and fragments of Suarez and Bellarmine; and out of the former they make to themselves their own Christian religion, and out of the latter our Anti-christian superstition. . . . they judge of us by scraps, and on these scraps they exercise their private judgment . . . and the process ends in their bringing forth, out of their scraps from the Apostles, what they call "Scriptural Religion," and out of their scraps from our theologians, what they call Popery. . . . all this multitudinous testimony about the truths of Revelation, Protestants narrow down into one or two meagre sentences, which at their own will and pleasure they select from St. Paul, and at their own will and pleasure they explain, and call the Gospel. . . . The Catholic doctrine is after all too great to be comfortably accommodated in a Protestant nutshell; it cannot be surveyed at a glance, or refuted by a syllogism . . . (PPC, Lecture 8)

When a person goes to a fever ward, he takes some essence with him to prevent his catching the disorder; and of this kind are the anti-Catholic principles in which Protestants are instructed from the cradle. For instance, they are taught to get by heart without any sort of proof, as a kind of alphabet or spelling lesson, such propositions as these:—"miracles have ceased long ago;" "all truth is in the Bible;" "any one can understand the Bible;" "all penance is absurd;" "a priesthood is pagan, not Christian," and a multitude of others. These are universally taught and accepted, as if equally true and equally important, just as are the principles "it is wrong to murder or thieve," or "there is a judgment to come." When then a person sets out in life with these maxims as a sort of stock in trade in all religious speculations, and encounters Catholics, whose opinions hitherto he had known nothing at all about, you see he has been made quite proof against them, and unsusceptible of their doctrines, their worship, and their reasoning, by the preparation to which he has been subjected. He feels an instinctive repugnance to everything Catholic, by reason of these arbitrary principles, which he has been taught to hold, and which he thinks identical with reason. (PPC, Lecture 9)

. . . what I here speak of is professing to understand without understanding. It is thus that political and religious watchwords are created; first one man of name and then another adopts them, till their use becomes popular, and then every one professes them, because every one else does. Such words are "liberality," "progress," "light," "civilization;" such are "justification by faith only," "vital religion," "private judgment," "the Bible and nothing but the Bible." Such again are "Rationalism," "Gallicanism," "Jesuitism," "Ultramontanism"—all of which, in the mouths of conscientious thinkers, have a definite meaning, but are used by the multitude as war-cries, nicknames, and shibboleths, with scarcely enough of the scantiest grammatical apprehension of them to allow of their being considered in truth more than assertions. (GA, Part I, ch. 4, sec. 1)

Sources
[alphabetically by source abbreviations]
[multiple dates = first date of publication / date of uniform edition (preceding publisher); date of volume used for quotations (following publisher)]


Dif. ii Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching Considered, vol. 2 (contains Letter to Pusey, 1865 and Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, 1875 / 1875; London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1900)

FP Faith and Prejudice and Other Unpublished Sermons (1848, 1870, 1873; New York: Sheed & Ward, 1956)

GA An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (1870; London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1903)

IU The Idea of a University (1852, 1858 / 1873; London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1907)

Jfc. Lectures on the Doctrine of Justification (1838 / 1874; London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 3rd edition, 1908)

POL A Packet of Letters: A Selection from the Correspondence of John Henry Newman; edited by Joyce Sugg (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983)

PPC Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England (1851; London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1908)


SD Sermons Bearing on Subjects of the Day (1831-1843 / 1869; London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1902)


TT Tracts for the Times (#1-3, 6-8, 10-11, 15, 19-21, 31, 33-34, 38, 41, 45, 47, 71, 73-76, 79, 82-83, 85, 88, 90; 1833-1840; London: J. G. F. and J. Rivington, 1840; #38, 41, 71, 82, and 90 also appeared in Via Media, vol. 2; #73 in Essays Critical and Historical, vol. 1 (1871; London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1907); #83, 85 in Discussions and Arguments on Various Subjects (1872; London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1907); these later versions are used here, with Newman's corrections and comments)


Ward i, ii [Wilfrid Ward] The Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman (two volumes: London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1912)