Benjamin Jowett Biography Quotes 15 Report mistakes

Early life and education
Benjamin Jowett was born in 1817 in London and grew up in a milieu that prized learning and moral seriousness. A gifted student, he attended St Pauls School before proceeding to Balliol College, Oxford, where he quickly distinguished himself in classics. Elected a fellow of Balliol in his early twenties, he entered a life of teaching, scholarship, and college reform that would define Victorian Oxford. His early study of Greek language and philosophy ran alongside a deep interest in religious thought, and he sought ordination in the Church of England, identifying with the broad, reforming current rather than with strict confessional parties.

Oxford tutor and reformer
As a young tutor at Balliol, Jowett gained a reputation for intense, personal engagement with students. His tutorials emphasized clear thinking, moral purpose, and independence of mind. He worked to make the college a national center of merit by encouraging open competition for scholarships and by supporting promising undergraduates regardless of their background. Among the students and younger colleagues who came within his orbit were T. H. Green, later a major figure in British idealist philosophy, and R. L. Nettleship, whose editorial work helped establish Greens posthumous influence. Jowett used his own resources to help students in financial difficulty, an unobtrusive generosity remembered across generations.

Regius Professor of Greek
Jowett was appointed Regius Professor of Greek in the 1850s, a post from which he renewed the study of Hellenic literature at Oxford. He emphasized the philosophical and ethical dimensions of Greek texts, treating the classics as living sources for modern reflection rather than as mere linguistic exercises. His lectures combined close reading with broad questions about conduct, politics, and belief, and they attracted audiences beyond his own college. He became a symbol of the new scholarly spirit at Oxford that joined historical criticism to moral inquiry.

Religion, controversy, and Essays and Reviews
Jowett aligned with the Broad Church movement, urging that Scripture be interpreted in light of history, language, and reason. He first aroused suspicion with an early volume on the Epistles of St Paul, where he advanced approaches to interpretation that departed from traditional dogmatics. The storm intensified when he contributed to Essays and Reviews (1860), a collection by seven Anglican writers that argued for critical methods in theology and for intellectual freedom within the Church. The other contributors included Frederick Temple, Mark Pattison, Baden Powell, Henry Bristow Wilson, Rowland Williams, and C. W. Goodwin. High Church leaders, notably E. B. Pusey, attacked the volume as subversive, and some contributors faced formal proceedings in ecclesiastical courts. Although Jowett himself was not condemned by a court, the opposition he encountered in Oxford was persistent; for years his professorial stipend became a focus of controversy. Supporters, including the sympathetic Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, stood by him, and in time the climate shifted toward tolerance of critical scholarship.

Scholarship and translations
Jowett became the most widely read English translator of Plato in the later nineteenth century. His multi-volume translations, with long introductions and essays, brought the dialogues to an educated public and shaped how generations of readers encountered Socrates. He sought plain English and philosophical clarity over literal replication, a choice that drew both admiration and criticism but ensured lasting influence. He also produced an English Thucydides with notes aimed at students of history and politics, and he translated Aristotles Politics, underscoring the practical import of classical political thought for modern institutions. Though later scholarship revised many of his conclusions, his introductions mapped a terrain where philology, history, and philosophy could meet.

Master of Balliol
In 1870 Jowett became Master of Balliol College, a position he held for the remainder of his life. As Master, he consolidated reforms that made Balliol preeminent in Oxford. He recruited and supported young fellows of talent, fostered a rigorous culture of tutorials and debates, and championed open scholarships that drew able students from across Britain. Under his leadership, the college produced a notable cohort of public servants and scholars. Future statesmen such as H. H. Asquith, Edward Grey, Alfred Milner, and George Curzon passed through Balliol during his tenure and acknowledged the atmosphere he created, if not always his personal tutelage, as formative. Jowett believed the aims of humane learning and public service were allied, and Balliol became known for seriousness of purpose and a cosmopolitan outlook.

Networks, friendships, and public interests
Jowett moved easily among leading figures of his age. His friendship with Florence Nightingale is particularly well known; their long correspondence reveals a mutual respect and shared commitment to moral reform and administrative improvement. Within Oxford, he worked closely with colleagues such as T. H. Green and R. L. Nettleship to elevate philosophy and history within the curriculum. He maintained cordial relations with Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, whose generosity of spirit and advocacy for religious breadth mirrored his own. Even strong critics such as Pusey forced Jowett to refine his views on authority and tradition. His influence also reached beyond Oxford through former pupils in the civil service and the law, including A. V. Dicey and others who carried Balliols intellectual stamp into national life.

Teaching style and character
Jowett cultivated a distinctive tutorial manner: probing questions, patient silences, and aphoristic remarks meant to nudge students toward self-discovery. He valued candor and duty, preferring inward conviction to outward conformity. Colleagues sometimes found him reserved, but students remembered his kindness and timely help. He gave careful attention to the pastoral side of college life, understanding that the formation of character was as important as success in examinations. At the same time, he pressed for institutional reforms across the university, supporting examinations and fellowships open on merit and backing measures that loosened confessional restrictions on academic life.

Later years and legacy
Jowett spent his later decades revising his translations of Plato, supporting new research within Balliol, and guiding the college through phases of university reform. He remained intellectually restless, returning again and again to questions of interpretation in religion and in classics, and to the ethical uses of learning in modern society. He died in 1893 after more than two decades as Master, widely mourned in Oxford and far beyond. His life helped to define the Victorian ideal of the scholar-teacher: exact in study, generous in institution-building, and bold in conscience. The memorial portrait offered by his friends and biographers, notably Lewis Campbell and Evelyn Abbott, confirmed the view that his true monument was the community he fashioned. Through his students, his translations, and his example, he made Balliol a byword for intellectual seriousness and left an enduring imprint on English higher education and on the English-speaking worlds understanding of the Greek classics.

Our collection contains 15 quotes who is written by Benjamin, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Wisdom - Never Give Up - Love - Sarcastic.

Other people realated to Benjamin: Samuel Alexander (Philosopher), Henry James Sumner Maine (Historian), Arthur Hugh Clough (Poet), Max Muller (Educator), C. S. Calverley (Poet)

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