John Henry Newman Quotes

All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves...

Man approaches the unattainable truth through a succession of errors.

It has been a privilege to pursue knowledge for its own sake and to see how it might help mankind in more practical ways.

Honey is sweet, "and so is knowledge, but knowledge is like the bee that made that sweet honey, you have to chase it through the pages of a book." (taken from "Thank you, Mr. Falker" )

There is a physical, not moral, impossibility of supplying the wants of the intellect in the state of civilisation at which we have arrived.

Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy; research, the progress; ignorance, the end. There is, by heavens, a strong and generous kind of ignorance that yields nothing, for honour and courage, to knowledge: an ignorance to conceive which needs no less knowledge than to conceive knowledge.

When a man, after long years of searching, chances upon a thought which discloses something of the beauty of this mysterious universe, he should not therefore be personally celebrated. He is already sufficiently paid by his experience of seeking and finding.

Some men covet knowledge out of a natural curiosity and inquisitive temper; some to entertain the mind with variety and delight; some for ornament and reputation; some for victory and contention; many for lucre and a livelihood; and but few for employing the Divine gift of reason to the use and benefit of mankind.

You lovers of knowledge! So what have you done out of your love of knowledge up to now? Have you already stolen and murdered so as to know how a thief and a murderer feels?

Virtue is its own reward.

Learning isn't a means to an end; it is an end in itself.

Fine dancing, I believe like virtue, must be its own reward. Those who are standing by are usually thinking of something very different.

Intellectual beauty is sufficient unto itself, and only for it rather than for the future good of humanity does the scholar condemn himself to arduous and painful labors.

Love is alone sufficient by itself, it pleases by itself and for it's own sake. It is itself a merit, and itself it's own recompense. It seeks neither cause, nor consequences beyond itself. It is its own fruit, its own object and usefulness. I love because I love you, I love that I may love.

I set out to discover the why of it, and to transform my pleasure into knowledge.

What a deep faith in the rationality of the structure of the world and what a longing to understand even a small glimpse of the reason revealed in the world there must have been in Kepler and Newton to enable them to unravel the mechanism of the heavens in long years of lonely work!

Intellectual ''work'' is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward.

The desire for knowledge shapes a man.

The worker must work for the glory of his handiwork, not simply for pay; the thinker must think for truth, not for fame.

Just being born makes you worthy enough to be here

I keep six honest serving men.

All knowledge is worth having

Science strives for answers, but art is happy with a good question.

Instead of going to Paris to attend lectures, go to the public library, and you won't come out for twenty years, if you really wish to learn.

What really matters in a pencil is not its wooden exterior, but the graphite inside. So always pay attention to what is happening inside you.