Samuel Wilberforce

"Is it on your grandmother’s or grandfather’s side that you are descended from an ape?"

"A resolution to attend theatres or operas is an absolute disqualification for Holy Orders."

"Shabby, word-eating, pocket-picketing, sacrilegious villains."

"Modern liberalism: a heartless steam engine."

"He was the first of the Bishops of the Victorian age to show what the duties of a bishop were. He may truly be said to have recast the whole idea of the Episcopate, and to have successfully raised the tone of clerical life."

"I do not quite like hearing you, for you make me cry."

"The bench of Bishops has in its time contributed much to the eloquence, as well as to the appearance and dignity of the Upper House. During the last half century its most noted orator was Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford and Winchester, whose eloquence was of a very high order and, like his character, suggested the great ecclesiastical statesman rather than the divine. He leaped into fame by a speech on the Corn Laws in June, 1846, of which his biographer says that it ought to have been heard rather than read."

"The Bishop was the Holy Terror of his time; he shows up on the wrong side of every dispute."

"I admired and liked him most before he became a Bishop, and before he leant so much to those High Church views which did harm."