John Wesley

"I am always in haste, but never in a hurry."

"Tell me how it is that in this room there are three candles and but one light, and I will explain to you the mode of the Divine existence."

"As to matters of dress, I would recommend one never to be first in the fashion nor the last out of it."

"The greater the share the people have in government, the less liberty, civil or religious, does a nation enjoy."

"I value all things only by the price they shall gain in eternity."

"... We now come to a numerous tribe, that seem to make approaches even to humanity; that bear an awkward resemblance to the human form, and discover the same faint efforts at intellectual sagacity."

"Animals of the MONKEY class are furnished with hands instead of paws; their ears, eyes, eye-lids, lips, and breasts, are like those of mankind; their internal conformation also bears some distant likeness; and the whole offers a picture that may mortify the pride of such as make their persons the principal objects of their admiration."

"Do all the good you can, By all the means you can, In all the ways you can, In all the places you can, At all the times you can, To all the people you can, As long as you ever can."

"You may be as orthodox as the devil and as wicked."

"Why should the Devil have all the best tunes?"

"Catch on fire with enthusiasm and people will come for miles to watch you burn."

"God buries his workmen, but carries on his work."

"The Church recruited people who had been starched and ironed before they were washed."

"Wesley was a great Englishman, first and last...if any one single man stood between England and the monstrous upheavals on the Continent, it was John Wesley... He was typically English: the best native qualities of the Englishman were in him, and were raised to such an extraordinary pitch that they became genius... Historians of that century who filled their pages with Napoleon and had nothing to say of John Wesley now realise that they cannot explain the nineteenth-century England until they can explain Wesley. And I believe it is true to say that you cannot understand twentieth-century America unless you can understand Wesley."

"[I]t was Morgan Phillips who said that the Labour movement owed more to John Wesley than it did to Marx."

"He has clearly revealed his consciousness that his teaching was a necessary synthesis of the Protestant ethic of grace with the Catholic ethic of holiness."

"John Wesley, if giving of his affection and help, was also demanding and dominating. His concern for others won their admiration and love, but he found it less easy to create an affectionate mutual relationship. His charm and grace cloaked an iron will; he was granite in aspic."

"The figure of Mr Wesley was remarkable. His stature was of the lowest: his habit of body in every period of life, the reverse of corpulent, and expressive of strict temperance, and continual exercise, and notwithstanding his small size, his step was firm, and his appearance, till within a few years of his death, vigorous and muscular. His face, for an old man, was one of the finest we have seen. A clear, smooth forehead, an aquiline nose, an eye the brightest and the most piercing that can be conceived, and a freshness of complection, scarcely ever to be found at his years, and impressive of the most perfect health, conspired to render him a venerable and interesting figure."

"I observed, "Love is the fulfilling of the law, the end of the commandment." It is not only "the first and great" command, but all the commandments in one. "Whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise," they are all comprised in this one word, love."

"As preachers and evangelists, Whitefield and other early field-preachers were more impressive than Wesley. But it was Wesley who was the superlatively energetic and skillful organiser, administrator, and law-giver. He succeeded in combining in exactly the right proportions democracy and discipline, doctrine and emotionalism; his achievement lay not so much in the hysterical revivalist meetings (which were not uncommon in the century of Tyburn) but in the organisation of self-sustaining Methodist societies in trading and market centres, and in mining, weaving, and labouring communities, the democratic participation of whose members in the life of the Church was both enlisted and strictly superintended and disciplined. He facilitated entry to these societies by sweeping away all barriers of sectarian doctrines."

"The new fact of religious life in the eighteenth century was Methodism. The mission of John Wesley, by its astonishing success, goes far to upset all generalisations about the subdued and rational spirit of the eighteenth century, for the very essence of Wesley’s movement was "enthusiasm," and it swept the country. The upper classes, however, remained hostile to Methodism, and the established Church thrust it out to join its potent young force to that of the old Dissenting bodies. The ultimate consequence was that the Nonconformists rose from about a twentieth of the church-goers to something near a half. Wesley's Methodism became the religion of the neglected poor."

"Wesley is a lean elderly man, fresh-coloured, his hair smoothly combed, but with a soupçon of curl at the ends. Wondrous clean, but as evidently an actor as Garrick."

"It was impossible to be long in his company, without partaking his hilarity. Neither the infirmities of age, nor the approach of death, had any apparent influence on his manners. His chearfulness continued to the last; and was as conspicuous at fourscore, as at one and twenty."

"I have thanks likewise to return you for the addition of your important suffrage to my argument on the American question. To have gained such a mind as yours may justly confirm me in my own opinion."

"It was, I believe, in October, 1790, and not long before his death, that I heard John Wesley in the great round Meeting-house at Colchester. He stood in a wide pulpit, and on each side of him stood a minister, and the two held him up, having their hands under his armpits. His feeble voice was barely audible. But his reverend countenance, especially his long white locks, formed a picture never to be forgotten. There was a vast crowd of lovers and admirers. It was for the most part pantomime, but the pantomime went to the heart. Of the kind I never saw anything comparable to it in after life."

"When I was about twelve years old, I heard him preach more than once, standing on a chair, in Kelso churchyard. He was a most venerable figure, but his sermons were vastly too colloquial for the taste of Saunders. He told many excellent stories."

"This country owes an enormous amount to Wesley, who was of course a High Tory [Mrs Thatcher was a Methodist by upbringing]. He inculcated the work ethic, and duty. You worked hard, you got on by the result of your own efforts: then, as you prospered, it was your duty to help others to prosper also. The essence of Methodist is in Matthew 24 – the Parable of the Talents. You have a duty to make what you can out of your talents, and to assist others."

"Das Beste von allem ist, dass Gott mit uns ist."

"Je mehr ein Mensch vom Leben aus Gott erfüllt ist, desto liebevoller wird er um die besorgt sein, die noch ohne Gott in der Welt leben."

"Gott ist so groß, dass er auch den kleinsten Dingen, die um seinetwillen getan werden, Größe verleiht."