There is no shortcut to holiness; it must be the business of our whole lives.

Measure your progress by your experience of the love of God and its exercise before men.

Can one serve God and one's nation in parliament?

I must secure more time for private devotions. I have been living far too public for me. The shortening of devotions starves the soul, it grows lean and faint. I have been keeping too late hours.

I continually find it necessary to guard against that natural love of wealth and grandeur which prompts us always, when we come to apply our general doctrine to our own case, to claim an exception.

The first years in Parliament I did nothing - nothing to any purpose. My own distinction was my darling object.

How can we judge fairly of the characters and merits of men, of the wisdom or folly of actions, unless we have . . . an accurate knowledge of all particulars, so that we may live as it were in the times, and among the persons, of whom we read, see with their eyes, and reason and decide on their premises?