Collected Quotations from Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman (Mostly Non-Theological): Part I: Letters A-I

 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 II: Letters J-Z
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Allegorical Method
When the mind is occupied by some vast and awful subject of contemplation, it is prompted to give utterance to its feelings in a figurative style; for ordinary words will not convey the admiration, nor literal words the reverence which possesses it; and when, dazzled at length with the great sight, it turns away for relief, it still catches in every new object which it encounters, glimpses of its former vision, and colours its whole range of thought with this one abiding association. If, however, others have preceded it in the privilege of such contemplations, a well-disciplined piety will lead it to adopt the images which they have invented, both from affection for what is familiar to it, and from a fear of using unsanctioned language on a sacred subject. (Ari., ch. 1, sec. 3)

Anti-Catholicism (Prejudice)
On the whole then I conclude as follows:—if there is a form of Christianity now in the world which is accused of gross superstition, of borrowing its rites and customs from the heathen, and of ascribing to forms and ceremonies an occult virtue;—a religion which is considered to burden and enslave the mind by its requisitions, to address itself to the weak-minded and ignorant, to be supported by sophistry and imposture, and to contradict reason and exalt mere irrational faith;—a religion which impresses on the serious mind very distressing views of the guilt and consequences of sin, sets upon the minute acts of the day, one by one, their definite value for praise or blame, and thus casts a grave shadow over the future;—a religion which holds up to admiration the surrender of wealth, and disables serious persons from enjoying it if they would;—a religion, the doctrines of which, be they good or bad, are to the generality of men unknown; which is considered to bear on its very surface signs of folly and falsehood so distinct that a glance suffices to judge of it, and that careful examination is preposterous; which is felt to be so simply bad, that it may be calumniated at hazard and at pleasure, it being nothing but absurdity to stand upon the accurate distribution of its guilt among its particular acts, or painfully to determine how far this or that story concerning it is literally true, or what has to be allowed in candour, or what is improbable, or what cuts two ways, or what is not proved, or what may be plausibly defended;—a religion such, that men look at a convert to it with a feeling which no other denomination raises except Judaism, Socialism, or Mormonism, viz. with curiosity, suspicion, fear, disgust, as the case may be, as if something strange had befallen him, as if he had had an initiation into a mystery, and had come into communion with dreadful influences, as if he were now one of a confederacy which claimed him, absorbed him, stripped him of his personality, reduced him to a mere organ or instrument of a whole;—a religion which men hate as proselytizing, anti-social, revolutionary, as dividing families, separating chief friends, corrupting the maxims of government, making a mock at law, dissolving the empire, the enemy of human nature, and a "conspirator against its rights and privileges;"—a religion which they consider the champion and instrument of darkness, and a pollution calling down upon the land the anger of heaven;—a religion which they associate with intrigue and conspiracy, which they speak about in whispers, which they detect by anticipation in whatever goes wrong, and to which they impute whatever is unaccountable;—a religion, the very name of which they cast out as evil, and use simply as a bad epithet, and which from the impulse of self-preservation they would persecute if they could;—if there be such a religion now in the world, it is not unlike Christianity as that same world viewed it, when first it came forth from its Divine Author. (Dev., Part II: ch. 6, sec. 1)

Not believing [that] (1) priests believe what they say; (2) are continent; (3) [that] converts are satisfied—looking out for some change in them. The consequence of this deep prejudice is that from the nature of the case there are no ways of overcoming it. If Catholics are particular, devout, or charitable, etc., they are said to be hypocrites; if all things apparently simple, they think there is something in the background; they call them plausible; if nothing can be found against them, how well they conceal things; if they argue well, what clever sophists; if charitable, they have vast wealth; if they succeed, not of God's blessing, but of craft. I wish we had half the cleverness they impute to us. Hence they circulate lies about us, not inquiring the authority, and when they are disproved, instead of giving over, circulate others which can't be. When any particular lie is put out, they embrace it at once as being so likely, i.e. like their prejudice. They take not this age and place, but a thousand miles away and two hundred years ago. Catholics alone can suffer this, because they are in all times and places; they could not, e.g., treat Quakers so. . . . They say to themselves, if this is not true, yet something else is true quite as bad. . . . Now the remedy for all this is to see us . . . They cannot keep up their theories against us, but they are afraid to be puzzled with something on our side. They have a sort of feeling that if they were to see us we should contradict their prejudices, so they do all they can to keep us out of sight. Hence no person hardly who has been much abroad and lived with the people can keep up their prejudices; no one who has read much history: the strength of prejudice is with those who are not informed. (SN, "Prejudice as a Cause Why Men Are Not Catholics," 2 September 1849)

The Author repeats here, what he has several times observed in the course of the Volume itself, that his object has not been to prove the divine origin of Catholicism, but to remove some of the moral and intellectual impediments which prevent Protestants from acknowledging it. Protestants cannot be expected to do justice to a religion whose professors they hate and scorn. . . . that he has not attempted the task to which they invite him, does not arise from any misgiving whatever in his mind about the strength of his cause, but about the disposition of his audience. He has a most profound misgiving about their fairness as judges, founded on his sense of the misconceptions concerning Catholicism which generally pre-occupy the English mind. Irresistible as the proof seems to him to be, so as even to master and carry away the intellect as soon as it is stated, so that Catholicism is almost its own evidence, yet it requires, as the great philosopher of antiquity reminds us, as being a moral proof, a rightly-disposed recipient. While a community is overrun with prejudices, it is as premature to attempt to prove that doctrine to be true which is the object of them, as it would be to think of building in the aboriginal forest till its trees had been felled. (PPC, Preface)

I am going to inquire why it is, that, in this intelligent nation, and in this rational nineteenth century, we Catholics are so despised and hated by our own countrymen, with whom we have lived all our lives, that they are prompt to believe any story, however extravagant, that is told to our disadvantage; as if beyond a doubt we were, every one of us, either brutishly deluded or preternaturally hypocritical, and they themselves, on the contrary were in comparison of us absolute specimens of sagacity, wisdom, uprightness, manly virtue, and enlightened Christianity. I am not inquiring why they are not Catholics themselves, but why they are so angry with those who are. Protestants differ amongst themselves, without calling each other fools and knaves. . . . I am neither attacking another's belief just now, nor defending myself: I am not engaging in controversy, though controversy is good in its place: I do but propose to investigate how Catholics came to be so trodden under foot, and spurned by a people which is endowed by nature with many great qualities, moral and intellectual . . . (PPC, Lecture 1)

. . . Englishmen go by that very mode of information in its worst shape, which they are so fond of imputing against Catholics; they go by tradition, immemorial, unauthenticated tradition. . . . Englishmen entertain their present monstrous notions of us, mainly because those notions are received on information not authenticated, but immemorial. This it is that makes them entertain those notions; they talk much of free inquiry; but towards us they do not dream of practising it; they have been taught what they hold in the nursery, in the school-room, in the lecture-class, from the pulpit, from the newspaper, in society. Each man teaches the other: "How do you know it?" "Because he told me." "And how does he know it?" "Because I told him;" or, at very best advantage, "We both know it, because it was so said when we were young; because no one ever said the contrary . . . this, I must maintain, is the sort of ground on which Protestants are so certain that the Catholic Church is a simple monster of iniquity. If you asked the first person you met why he believed that our religion was so baneful and odious, he would not say, "I have had good proofs of it;" or, "I know Catholics too well to doubt it;" or, "I am well read in history, and I can vouch for it;" or, "I have lived such a long time in Catholic countries, I ought to know;" . . . No; single out a man from the multitude, and he would say something of this sort: "I am sure it is;" he will look significant, and say, "You will find it a hard job to make me think otherwise;" . . . the multitude of men hate Catholicism mainly on tradition, there being few, indeed, who have made fact and argument the primary or the supplemental grounds of their aversion to it. (PPC, Lecture 2)

The consequence is natural;—tell a person of ordinary intelligence, Churchman or Dissenter, that the vulgar allegations against us are but slanders, simple lies, or exaggerations, or misrepresentations or, as far as they are true, admitting of defence or justification, and not to the point; and he will laugh in your face at your simplicity, or lift up hands and eyes at your unparalleled effrontery. The utmost concession he will make is to allow the possibility of incidental and immaterial error in the accusations which are brought against us; but the substance of the traditional view he believes, as firmly as he does the Gospel, and, if you reject it and protest against it, he will say it is just what is to be expected of a Catholic, to lie and to circumvent. To tell him, at his time of life, that Catholics do not rate sin at a fixed price, that they may not get absolution for a sin in prospect, that priests can live in purity, that nuns do not murder each other, that the laity do not make images their God, that Catholics would not burn Protestants if they could! Why, all this is as perfectly clear to him as the sun at noonday; he is ready to leave the matter to the first person he happens to meet; every one will tell us just the same; only let us try; he never knew there was any doubt at all about it; he is surprised, for he thought we granted it. When he was young, he has heard it said again and again; to his certain knowledge it has uniformly been said the last forty, fifty, sixty years, and no one ever denied it; it is so in all the books he ever looked into; what is the world coming to? What is true, if this is not? So, Catholics are to be whitewashed! What next? (PPC, Lecture 2)

Fancy, then, how great has been their indignation, that we Catholics should pretend to be Britons; should affect to be their equals; should dare to preach, nay, to controvert; should actually make converts, nay, worse and worse, not only should point out their mistakes, but, prodigious insolence! should absolutely laugh at the absurdity of their assertions, and the imbecility of their arguments. They are at first unable to believe their ears, when they are made sensible that we, who know so well our own worthlessness, and know that they know it, who deserve at the least the hulks or transportation, talk as loudly as we do, refuse to be still, and say that the more we are known, the more we shall be esteemed. We, who ought to go sneaking about, to crouch at their feet, and to keep our eyes on the ground, from the consciousness of their hold upon us,—is it madness, is it plot, what is it, which inspires us with such unutterable presumption? (PPC, Lecture 9)

Most wonderful phenomenon! An educated man [Charles Kingsley], breathing English air, and walking in the light of the nineteenth century, thinks that neither I nor any members of my communion feel any difficulty in allowing that "Truth for its own sake need not, and on the whole ought not to be, a virtue with the Roman clergy;" nay, that they are not at all surprised to be told that "Father Newman had informed" the world, that such is the standard of morality acknowledged, acquiesced in, by his co-religionists! But, I suppose, in truth, there is nothing at all, however base, up to the high mark of Titus Oates, which a Catholic may not expect to be believed of him by Protestants, however honourable and hard-headed. (Apo. ii; Letter to X. Y., Esq., 8 January 1864)

Aristotle
While the world lasts, will Aristotle's doctrine on these matters last, for he is the oracle of nature and of truth. While we are men, we cannot help, to a great extent, being Aristotelians, for the great Master does but analyze the thoughts, feelings, views, and opinions of human kind. He has told us the meaning of our own words and ideas, before we were born. In many subject-matters, to think correctly, is to think like Aristotle; and we are his disciples whether we will or no, though we may not know it. (IU, Part I, Discourse 5: "Knowledge its Own End," 1852)

As St. Boniface had been jealous of physical speculations, so had the early Fathers shown an extreme aversion to the great heathen philosopher whom I just now named, Aristotle. . . . The Church the while had kept silence; she had as little denounced heathen philosophy in the mass as she had pronounced upon the meaning of certain texts of Scripture of a cosmological character. . . . at length St. Thomas made him a hewer of wood and drawer of water to the Church. A strong slave he is; and the Church herself has given her sanction to the use in Theology of the ideas and terms of his philosophy. (IU, Part II, ch. 8: "Christianity and Scientific Investigation," 1855)

Art
All true art comes from revelation (to speak generally), I do think, . . . (Moz. ii; Letter to Miss H., 31 December 1850)

Atheism and Agnosticism
A proof drawn from an interruption in the course of nature is in the same line of argument as one deduced from the existence of that course, and in point of cogency is inferior to it. Were a being who had experience only of a chaotic world suddenly introduced into this orderly system of things, he would have an infinitely more powerful argument for the existence of a designing Mind, than a mere interruption of that system can afford. A Miracle is no argument to one who is deliberately, and on principle, an atheist. (Mir., Essay One: "The Miracles of Scripture," 1826)

Why otherwise do they so frequently scoff at religious men, as if timid and narrow-minded, merely because they fear to sin? Why do they ridicule such conscientious persons as will not swear, or jest indecorously, or live dissolutely? Clearly, it is their very faith itself they ridicule; not their believing on false grounds, but their believing at all. Here they show what it is which rules them within. They do not like the tie of religion; they do not like dependence. To trust another, much more to trust him implicitly, is to acknowledge oneself to be his inferior; and this man's proud nature cannot bear to do. . . . these unbelieving men, who use hard words against Scripture, condemn themselves out of their own mouth;—in this way. It is a mistake to suppose that our obedience to God's will is merely founded on our belief in the word of such persons as tell us Scripture came from God. We obey God primarily because we actually feel His presence in our consciences bidding us obey Him. And this, I say, confutes these objectors on their own ground; because the very reason they give for their unbelief is, that they trust their own sight and reason, because their own, more than the words of God's Ministers. Now, let me ask, if they trust their senses and their reason, why do they not trust their conscience too? Is not conscience their own? Their conscience is as much a part of themselves as their reason is; and it is placed within them by Almighty God in order to balance the influence of sight and reason; and yet they will not attend to it; for a plain reason,—they love sin,—they love to be their own masters, and therefore they will not attend to that secret whisper of their hearts, which tells them they are not their own masters, and that sin is hateful and ruinous. (PS i, Sermon 15: "Religious Faith Rational," 24 May 1829)

. . . the practical safeguard against Atheism in the case of scientific inquirers is the inward need and desire, the inward experience of that Power, existing in the mind before and independently of their examination of His material world. (US, Sermon 10: "Faith and Reason, Contrasted as Habits of Mind," Jan. 1839)

I think that logically there is no middle point between Catholicism and Atheism – at the same time, holding this, I hold of course also, that numbers of men are logically inconsistent . . . (POL; Letter to Francis William Newman, 18 January 1860)

And thus again I was led on to examine more attentively what I doubt not was in my thoughts long before, viz. the concatenation of argument by which the mind ascends from its first to its final religious idea; and I came to the conclusion that there was no medium, in true philosophy, between Atheism and Catholicity, and that a perfectly consistent mind, under those circumstances in which it finds itself here below, must embrace either the one or the other. (Apo., ch. 4)

Young men must be prepared with answers to the intellectual difficulties they will meet with in the world, or in many cases where the strength of the agnostic position is first felt by them in the absence of a very special grace their faith will go suddenly and completely. (Ward ii, 491; personal conversation recorded by the author, Wilfrid Ward, 30 January 1885)

Take the first principles assumed by the unbelievers—the undeviating uniformity of nature, the unknowableness of all but phenomena, the inherent impossibility of knowing about God, the derivation of conscience from association of ideas. These are all, or nearly all, pure assumptions, and I should be inclined to say that if (which God forbid) our belief in God Himself were a pure assumption void of any proof, we should be acting not one whit less unreasonably in holding to our religion than these men in the unbelief they adhere to, based on pure assumptions, entirely unproved. (Ward ii, 494; personal conversation recorded by the author, Wilfrid Ward, 31 January 1885)

Beauty
The artist puts before him beauty of feature and form; the poet, beauty of mind; the preacher, the beauty of grace: then intellect too, I repeat, has its beauty, and it has those who aim at it. (IU, Part I, Discourse 5: "Knowledge its Own End," 1852)

Charity; Almsgiving
When men put aside a portion of their gains for God's service, then they sanctify those gains. . . . When a man who is rich, and whose duty calls on him to be hospitable, is careful also to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, thus he sanctifies his riches. When he is in the midst of plenty, and observes self-denial; when he builds his house, but builds Churches too; when he plants and sows, but pays tithes; when he buys and sells, but withal gives largely to religion; when he does nothing in the world without being suspicious of the world, being jealous of himself, trying himself, lest he be seduced by the world, making sacrifices to prove his earnestness;—in all these ways he circumcises himself from the world by the circumcision of Christ. This is the circumcision of the heart from the world. (SD, Sermon 8: "The Church and the World," 1 January 1837)

Church and Social Change
Who can deny that the treatment of prisoners has been much improved by Christianity? Who can deny that the laws for the poor are considerably influenced by its precepts? . . . Or, to come to a more apposite instance,—what greater revolution has there been in society, than the liberation of slaves? a revolution which is going on even now, as in times past. This has been owing to the Kingdom of the Saints. It has ever exalted those of low degree. It has changed the structure of the body politic all through Christendom. . . . moreover, we see from this instance of the abolition of slavery, as in the other instances I mentioned, how the Church conquers—not by force, but by persuasion. . . . she prevails, because God fights for her. (SD, Sermon 17: "Sanctity the Token of the Christian Empire," 4 December 1842)

Church and State; Caesaropapism; Erastianism
If the primitive believers did not interfere with the acts of the civil government, it was merely because they had no civil rights enabling them legally to do so. But where they have rights, the case is different; . . . the principle itself, the duty of using their civil rights in the service of religion, is clear; and since there is a popular misconception, that Christians, and especially the Clergy, as such, have no concern in temporal affairs, it is expedient to take every opportunity of formally denying the position, and demanding proof of it. In truth, the Church was framed for the express purpose of interfering, or (as irreligious men will say) meddling with the world. It is the plain duty of its members, not only to associate internally, but also to develope that internal union in an external warfare with the spirit of evil, whether in Kings' courts or among the mixed multitude; . . . (Ari., ch. 3, sec. 2)

Are we to speak when individuals sin, and not when a nation, which is but a collection of individuals? Must we speak to the poor, but not to the rich and powerful? (TT #2, 1833)

Dogma would be maintained, sacraments would be administered, religious perfection would be venerated and attempted, if the Church were supreme in her spiritual power; dogma would be sacrificed to expedience, sacraments would be rationalized, perfection would be ridiculed if she was made the slave of the State. Erastianism, then, was the one heresy which practically cut at the root of all revealed truth; the man who held it would soon fraternise with Unitarians, mistake the bustle of life for religious obedience, and pronounce his butler to be as able to give communion as his priest. It destroyed the supernatural altogether, by making most emphatically Christ's kingdom a kingdom of the world. (Dif. i, Lecture 4)

. . . if the State would but keep within its own province, it would find the Church its truest ally and best benefactor. She upholds obedience to the magistrate; she recognises his office as from God; she is the preacher of peace, the sanction of law, the first element of order, and the safeguard of morality, and that without possible vacillation or failure; she may be fully trusted; she is a sure friend, for she is indefectible and undying. But it is not enough for the State that things should be done, unless it has the doing of them itself; it abhors a double jurisdiction, and what it calls a divided allegiance; aut Cæsar aut nullus, is its motto, nor does it willingly accept of any compromise. (Dif. i, Lecture 6)

The authority of the civil power is based on sanctions so solemn and august, and the temporal blessings which all classes derive from its protection are so many, that both on Christian principles and from motives of expedience it is ever a duty, unless religious considerations interfere, to profess a simple deference to its enunciations, and a hearty concurrence in its very suggestions . . . (PPC, Dedication)

I am not at all sure that it would not be better for the Catholic religion every where, if it had no very different status from that which it has in England. There is so much corruption, so much deadness, so much hypocrisy, so much infidelity, when a dogmatic faith is imposed on a nation by law, that I like freedom better. (POL; Letter to William Monsell, 17 June 1863)

If the Church is independent of the State, so far as she is a messenger from God, therefore, should the State, with its high officials and its subject masses, come into her communion, it is plain that they must at once change hostility into submission. There was no middle term; either they must deny her claim to divinity or humble themselves before it,—that is, as far as the domain of religion extends, and that domain is a wide one. They could not place God and man on one level. (Dif. ii, Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, ch. 2, 1875)

The external unity and independence of the Jewish Church remained from first to last. Even when under secular influences and secular rulers, no one could call it a department of the Roman State or an organ or function of the civil government. . . . the Jewish Church was a divine building daubed with politics, but the Anglican is a civil establishment daubed with divinity. (VM i, Lecture 14; footnotes 2 and 6 from 1877)

Church Buildings
Did our Saviour say that magnificence in worshipping God, magnificence in His house, in its furniture, and in its decorations, is wrong, wrong since He has come into the world? Does He discourage us from building handsome Churches, or beautifying the ceremonial of religion? . . . This is what many persons think. I do not exaggerate when I say, that they think the more homely and familiar their worship is, the more spiritual it becomes. And they argue, that to aim at external beauty in the service of the Sanctuary, is to be like the Pharisees, to be fair without and hollow within; that whereas the Pharisees pretended a sanctity and religiousness outside which they had not inside, therefore, every one who aims at outward religion sacrifices to it inward. . . . They who rejoice with their brethren in their common salvation, and desire to worship together, build a place to worship in, and they build it as the expression of their feelings, of their mutual love, of their common reverence. They build a building which will, as it were, speak; which will profess and confess Christ their Saviour; which will herald forth His death and passion at first sight; which will remind all who enter that we are saved by His cross, and must bear our Cross after Him. They will build what may tell out their deepest and most sacred thoughts, which they dare not utter in word: not a misshapen building, not a sordid building, but a noble dwelling, a palace all-glorious within; unfit, indeed, for God's high Majesty, whom even the heaven of heavens cannot contain, but fit to express the feelings of the builders,—a monument which may stand and (as it were) preach to all the world while the world lasts; which may show how they desire to praise, bless, and glorify their eternal Benefactor; how they desire to get others to praise Him also; a Temple which may cry out to all passers by, "Oh, magnify the Lord our God, and fall down before His footstool, for He is Holy! Oh, magnify the Lord our God, and worship Him upon His holy hill, for the Lord our God is Holy!" [Ps. xcix. 5, 9.] This, then, is the real state of the case; and when our Lord blamed the Pharisees as hypocrites, it was not for attending to the outside of the cup, but for not attending to the inside also. (PS vi, Sermon 21: "Offerings for the Sanctuary," 23 September 1839)

Hence there is an increasing cultivation of all that is external, from a feeling that external religion is the great development and triumph of the inward principle. For instance, much curiosity is directed towards the science of ecclesiastical architecture, and much appreciation shown of architectural proprieties. Attention, too, is paid to the internal arrangement and embellishment of sacred buildings. Devotional books also of an imaginative cast, religious music, painting, poetry, and the like are in request. (SD, Sermon 9: "Indulgence in Religious Privileges," 1 May 1842)

Communism
. . . it may be in the counsels of Providence that the Catholic Church may at length come out unexpectedly as a popular power. Of course the existence of the Communists makes the state of things now vastly different from what it was in the middle ages. (POL; Letter to Matthew Arnold, 3 December 1871)

Englishmen
And as the Jews shortly before their own rejection had two dark tokens—the one, a bitter contempt of the whole world, and the other, multiplied divisions and furious quarrels at home—so we English, as if some abomination of desolation were coming on us also, scorn almost all Christianity but our own; and yet have, not one, but a hundred gospels among ourselves, and each of them with its own hot defenders, till our very note and symbol is discord, and we wrangle and denounce, and call it life; but peace we know not, nor faith, nor love. (SD, Sermon 22: "Outward and Inward Notes of the Church," 5 December 1841)

An Englishman always worships 'decency and order.' Order is the first of arguments with him in favor of Catholicism. . . . Union, consistency, and the like, to know where to find a man or a party, all such things are the condition of an Englishman's respect. (LD xii, 159-160; Letter to Frederick Lucas, 20 January 1848)

. . . there are certain peculiarities of the English character, . . . the legitimate instruments for deciding on the truth of a religion are these two, fact and reason, or in other words, the way of history and the way of science; and to both the one and the other of these, the English mind is naturally indisposed. . . . all such abstract investigations and controversial exercises are distasteful to an Englishman; they suit the Germans, and still more the French, the Italians, and the Spaniards; but as to ourselves, we break away from them as dry, uncertain, theoretical, and unreal. The other means of attaining religious truth is the way of history; when, namely, from the review of past times and foreign countries, the student determines what was really taught by the Apostles in the beginning. Now, an Englishman, as is notorious, takes comparatively little interest in the manners, customs, opinions, or doings of foreign countries. Surrounded by the sea, he is occupied with himself; his attention is concentrated on himself; and he looks abroad only with reference to himself. We are a home people; we like a house to ourselves, and we call it our castle; we look at what is immediately before us; we are eminently practical; we care little for the past; . . . Now you see how admirably this temper of Englishmen fits in with the exigencies of Protestantism; for two of the very characteristics of Protestantism are, its want of past history, and its want of fixed teaching. . . . Observe, then;—the very exercises of the intellect, by which religious truth is attained, are just those which the Englishman is too impatient, and Protestantism too shallow, to abide; the natural disposition of the one most happily jumps with the needs of the other. And this was the first singular advantage of Protestantism in England: Catholics reasoned profoundly upon doctrine, Catholics investigated rigidly the religious state of other times and places: in vain,—they had not found the way to gain the Englishman; whereas their antagonists had found a weapon of their own, far more to the purpose of the contest than argument or fact. . . . Kings are an Englishman's saints and doctors; he likes somebody or something at which he can cry "huzzah," and throw up his hat. . . . It was plain, then, what had to be done in order to perpetuate Protestantism in a country such as this. Convoke the legislature, pass some sweeping ecclesiastical enactments, exalt the Crown above the Law and the Gospel, down with Cross and up with the lion and the dog, toss all priests out of the country as traitors; let Protestantism be the passport to office and authority, force the King to be a Protestant, make his Court Protestant, bind Houses of Parliament to be Protestant, clap a Protestant oath upon judges, barristers-at-law, officers in army and navy, members of the universities, national clergy; establish this stringent Tradition in every function and department of the State, surround it with the lustre of rank, wealth, station, name, and talent; and this people, so impatient of inquiry, so careless of abstract truth, so apathetic to historical fact, so contemptuous of foreign ideas, will ex animo swear to the truth of a religion which indulges their natural turn of mind, and involves no severe thought or tedious application. (PPC, Lecture 2)

It is not at all easy (humanly speaking) to wind up an Englishman to a dogmatic level. (Apo., ch. 4)

Enthusiasm, Religious (Derogatory Sense)
Nothing lasts, nothing keeps incorrupt and pure, which comes of mere feeling; feelings die like spring-flowers, and are fit only to be cast into the oven. Persons thus circumstanced will find their religion fail them in time; a revulsion of mind will ensue. They will feel a violent distaste for what pleased them before, a sickness and weariness of mind; or even an enmity towards it; or a great disappointment; or a confusion and perplexity and despondence. They have learned to think religion easier than it is, themselves better than they are; they have drunk their good wine instead of keeping it; and this is the consequence. . . . The most awful consequences of this untrue kind of devotion, which would have all the glories of the Gospel without its austerities, of course are those into which the dreadful heretics fell who are alluded to in the text; and of which it is well not to speak. Yet it must not be forgotten that even in these latter times, though not in our own Church, and not certainly among persons of high or refined minds, even immoralities have been the ultimate consequents of religious enthusiasm. . . . Christianity, considered as a moral system, is made up of two elements, beauty and severity; whenever either is indulged to the loss or disparagement of the other, evil ensues. (SD, Sermon 9: "Indulgence in Religious Privileges," 1 May 1842)

Happiness
Man is not sufficient for his own happiness; he is not happy except the Presence of God be with him. When he was created, God breathed into him that supernatural life of the Spirit which is his true happiness: and when he fell, he lost the divine gift, and with it his happiness also. Ever since he has been unhappy; ever since he has a void within him which needs filling, and he knows not how to fill it. He scarcely realizes his own need: only his actions show that he feels it, for he is ever restless when he is not dull and insensible, seeking in one thing or another that blessing which he has lost. (SD, Sermon 21: "Invisible Presence of Christ," 28 November 1841)

Infidels
Infidelity is a positive, not a negative state; it is a state of profaneness, pride, and selfishness . . . (Ari., ch. 1, sec. 3)

I think those shocking imaginations against everything supernatural and sacred, are as really diseases of the soul, as complaints of the body are, and become catching and epidemic, by contact or neighbourhood or company, (of course the will comes in, as a condition of their being caught, as, on the other hand, in the cures effected by St. Paul's handkerchiefs and aprons, faith would be a condition). But were I deliberately to frequent the society, the parties of clever infidels, I should expect all sorts of imaginations contrary to Revealed Truth, not based on reason, but fascinating or distressing, unsettling visions, to take possession of me ... This does not apply to intercourse with hereditary and religious Protestants, but to our Heresiarchs, to the preachers of infidel science, and our infidel literati and philosophers. This leads me on to recur in thought to the fierce protests and shuddering aversion with which St. John, St. Polycarp, and Origen are recorded to have met such as Marcion and his fellows—and, though it may be impossible to take their conduct as a pattern to copy literally, yet I think we should avoid familiar intercourse with infidel poets, essayists, historians, men of science, as much as ever we can lawfully. I am speaking of course of such instruments of evil as really propagate evil. (Ward ii, 477-478; Letter to Emily Bowles, 5 January 1882)

Ireland and Irishmen
Even Rome itself has its insubordinate population, and its concealed free-thinkers; even Belgium, that nobly Catholic country, cannot boast of the religious loyalty of its great towns. Such a calamity is unknown to the Catholicism of Dublin, Cork, Belfast, and the other cities of Ireland; for, to say nothing of higher and more religious causes of the difference, the very presence of a rival religion is a perpetual incentive to faith and devotion in men who, from the circumstances of the case, would be in danger of becoming worse than lax Catholics, unless they resolved on being zealous ones. . . . the Irish ever have been, as their worst enemies must grant, not only a Catholic people, but a people of great natural abilities, keen-witted, original, and subtle. This has been the characteristic of the nation from the very early times, and was especially prominent in the middle ages. As Rome was the centre of authority, so, I may say, Ireland was the native home of speculation. . . . "Philosopher," is in those times almost the name for an Irish monk. Both in Paris and Oxford, the two great schools of medieval thought, we find the boldest and most subtle of their disputants an Irishman,—the monk John Scotus Erigena, at Paris, and Duns Scotus, the Franciscan friar, at Oxford. Now, it is my belief, Gentlemen, that this character of mind remains in you still. I think I rightly recognize in the Irishman now, as formerly, the curious, inquisitive observer, the acute reasoner, the subtle speculator. (IU, Part II, ch. 9: "Discipline of Mind," November 1858)

I know well what simple firm faith the great body of the Irish people have, and how they put the Catholic Religion before anything else in the world. It is their comfort, their joy, their treasure, their boast, their compensation for a hundred worldly disadvantages . . . they do not, cannot, distinguish between their love of Ireland and their love of religion; their patriotism is religious, and their religion is strongly tinctured with patriotism . . . (Dif. ii, Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, ch. 1, 1875)

Cromwell, and others have, by their conduct to the Irish, burned into the national heart a deep hatred of England, and, if the population perseveres, the sentiment of patriotism and the latent sense of historical wrongs will hinder even the more rational, and calm judging, the most friendly to England, from separating themselves from their countrymen. They are abundantly warmhearted and friendly to individual Englishmen, of that I have clear experience in my own case, but what I believe, though I have no large experience to appeal to, is, that there is not one Anglophilist in the nation. . . . Our rule has been marked by a persistent forcing on them English ways. . . . What I do know is the stupid forcing on their Catholicism our godless education. Since 1845 all English parties have been resolved that primary education and University education in Ireland should be without religion, except that . . . the Bible without comment should be allowed in the primary . . . (Ward ii, 517-518; Letter to John Rickards Mozley, 20 October 1881)

Why has not England acted towards Ireland as it has treated Scotland? Scotland had its own religion, and after a short time the attempt to impose Episcopacy on it was given up, and so indulgent has been England to Scotland, that even the Queen, the head of the Anglican Church, goes to kirk and listens to Presbyterian preachers. On the contrary, not only great sums have been poured through centuries into Ireland from England by the State and by the people, to force Protestantism on the Irish, but there were persecuting laws, . . . (Ward ii, 518; Letter to John Rickards Mozley, 24 October 1881)

The Irish Patriots hold that they never have yielded themselves to the sway of England and therefore never have been under her laws, and never have been rebels. . . . If I were an Irishman, I should be (in heart) a rebel. (POL; Letter to Gerard Manley Hopkins, 3 March 1887)

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)]

Apo. Apologia pro Vita Sua (1865; London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1908)

Apo. ii Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864-1865 combined edition, edited by Wilfrid Ward; London: Oxford University Press, 1913)

Ari. Arians of the Fourth Century (1833 / 1871; London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 3rd edition, 1908)

Dev. An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845 / 2nd edition, 1878; London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1909)

Dif. i Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching Considered, vol. 1 (1850; London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1901)

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)

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

LD xii The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, Vol. XII: Rome to Birmingham: January 1847 to December 1848 (edited by Charles Stephen Dessain, London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1962)

Mir. Two Essays on Biblical and Ecclesiastical Miracles (1826, 1843 / 1870; London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1907)

Moz. ii Letters and Correspondence of John Henry Newman During His Life in the English Church, vol. 2 [starting from December 1833] (edited by Anne Mozley; 1891; London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1903)

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)

PS i-viii Parochial and Plain Sermons (8 volumes: i 1834, ii 1835, iii 1836, iv 1839, v 1840, vi 1842, vii 1842, viii 1843 / 1869; London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1907 [i, iii, v-vii], 1908 [ii, viii], 1909 [iv])

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

SN Sermon Notes of John Henry Cardinal Newman: 1849-1878 (edited by the Fathers of the Birmingham Oratory; London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1913)

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)

US Oxford University Sermons (1826-1843 / 1871; London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1909)

VM i The Via Media of the Anglican Church: Illustrated in Lectures, Letters and Tracts Written Between 1830 and 1841, vol. 1; aka Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church (1837 / 1877; London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 3rd edition, 1901)

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