Top 63 Quotes About William Wilberforce
#1. Every time I get a bit worried about having made some second rate choices in life I go back and read about the Suffragettes or William Wilberforce, people who were 'wrong' in their own time, and think, 'Ah well.'
Bob Brown
#2. Ow interest can draw a film across the eyes, so think, that total blindness could do no more; and how it is our duty therefore to trust not to the reasonings of interested men, or to their way of colouring a transaction.
William Wilberforce, 12th May 1789, Against the slave trade
William Wilberforce
#3. Taken all together, it's difficult to escape the verdict that William Wilberforce was simply the greatest social reformer in the history of the world.
Eric Metaxas
#4. On August 26 the Assembly responded by conferring French citizenship upon Joseph Priestley, Jeremy Bentham, William Wilberforce, Anacharsis Cloots, Johann Pestalozzi, Thaddeus Kosciusko, Friedrich Schiller, George Washington, Thomas Paine, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton.
Will Durant
#5. I am disturbed when I see the majority of so-called Christians having such little understanding of the real nature of the faith they profess. Faith is a subject of such importance that we should not ignore it because of the distractions or the hectic pace of our lives.
William Wilberforce
#6. When blessed with wealth, let them withdraw from the competition of vanity and be modest, retiring from ostentation, and not be the slaves of fashion.
William Wilberforce
#8. God Almighty has set before me two Great Objects: the supression of the Slave Trade and the Reformation of Manners.
William Wilberforce
#9. It is the true duty of every man to promote the happiness of his fellow creatures to the utmost of his power.
William Wilberforce
#11. There is no shortcut to holiness; it must be the business of our whole lives.
William Wilberforce
#12. Read the Bible, read the Bible! Let no religious book take its place. Through all my perplexities and distresses, I seldom read any other book, and I as rarely felt the want of any other.
William Wilberforce
#14. This perpetual hurry of business and company ruins me in soul if not in body. More solitude and earlier hours!
William Wilberforce
#15. No one expects to attain to the height of learning, or arts, or power, or wealth, or military glory, without vigorous resolution, strenuous diligence, and steady perseverance. Yet we expect to be Christians without labour, study, or inquiry.
William Wilberforce
#16. The first years in Parliament I did nothing - nothing to any purpose. My own distinction was my darling object.
William Wilberforce
#17. To live our lives and miss that great purpose we were designed to accomplish is truly a sin. It is inconceivable that we could be bored in a world with so much wrong to tackle, so much ignorance to reach and so much misery we could alleviate
William Wilberforce
#18. Sulky labor, and the labor of sorrow are little worth: if you could only shed tranquility over the conscience and infuse joy into the soul, you would do more to make the man a thorough worker than if you could lend him the force of Hercules, or the hundred arms of Briareus.
William Wilberforce
#19. Some might say that one's faith is a private matter and should not be spoken of so publicly. They might assert this in public, but what do they really think in their hearts? The fact is, those who say such things usually don't even have a concern for faith in the privacy of their interior lives.
William Wilberforce
#20. Life as we know it, with all its ups and downs, will soon be over. We all will give an accounting to God of how we have lived.
William Wilberforce
#21. What a difference it would be if our system of morality were based on the Bible instead of the standards devised by cultural Christians.
William Wilberforce
#22. We are too young to realize that certain things are impossible ... So we will do them anyway.
William Wilberforce
#23. Selfishness is one of the principal fruits of the corruption of human nature; and it is obvious that selfishness disposes us to over-rate our good qualities, and to overlook or extenuate our defects.
William Wilberforce
#24. Surely the principles of Christianity lead to action as well as meditation.
William Wilberforce
#25. No man has a right to be idle. Where is it that in such a world as this, that health, and leisure, and affluence may not find some ignorance to instruct, some wrong to redress, some want to supply, some misery to alleviate?
William Wilberforce
#26. Measure your progress by your experience of the love of God and its exercise before men.
William Wilberforce
#27. I would suggest that faith is everyone's business. The advance or decline of faith is so intimately connected to the welfare of a society that it should be of particular interest to a politician.
William Wilberforce
#28. No matter how loud you shout, you will not drown out the voice of the people!
William Wilberforce
#29. And, sir, when we think of eternity, and of the future consequences of all human conduct, what is there in this life that should make any man contradict the dictates of his conscience, the principles of justice, the laws of religion, and of God?.
William Wilberforce
#30. In the calmness of the morning before the mind is heated and weary by the turmoil of the day, you have a season of unusual importance for communing with God and with yourself.
William Wilberforce
#31. What should we suppose must naturally be the consequence of our carrying on a slave trade with Africa? With a country, vast in its extent, not utterly barbarous, but civilized in a very small degree? Does any one suppose a slave trade would help their civilization?
William Wilberforce
#32. There are four things that we ought to do with the Word of God - admit it as the Word of God, commit it to our hearts and minds, submit to it, and transmit it to the world.
William Wilberforce
#33. Of all things, guard against neglecting God in the secret place of prayer.
William Wilberforce
#34. True Christians consider themselves not as satisfying some rigorous creditor, but as discharging a debt of gratitude
William Wilberforce
#35. May God enable me to have a single eye and a simple heart, desiring to please God, to do good to my fellow creatures, and testify my gratitude to my adorable Redeemer.
William Wilberforce
#36. Servile, and base, and mercenary, is the notion of Christian practice among the bulk of nominal Christians. They give no more than they dare not with-hold; they abstain from nothing but what they must not practise.
William Wilberforce
#37. Let everyone regulate his conduct ... by the golden rule of doing to others as in similar circumstances we would have them do to us, and the path of duty will be clear before him.
William Wilberforce
#38. 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.
William Wilberforce
#39. The objects of the present life fill the human eye with a false magnification because of their immediacy.
William Wilberforce
#40. Oh Lord, purify my soul from all its stains. Warm my heart with the love of thee, animate my sluggish nature and fix my inconstancy, and volatility, that I may not be weary in well doing,
William Wilberforce
#41. Christianity has been successfully attacked and marginalized ... because those who professed belief were unable to defend the faith from attack, even though its attackers' arguments were deeply flawed.
William Wilberforce
#42. If ... a principle of true Religion [i.e., true Christianity] should ... gain ground, there is no estimating the effects on public morals, and the consequent influence on our political welfare.
William Wilberforce
#43. Our motto must continue to be perseverance. And ultimately I trust the Almighty will crown our efforts with success.
William Wilberforce
#44. So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the [slave] trade's wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for abolition. Let the consequences be what they would: I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition.
William Wilberforce
#45. 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.
William Wilberforce
#46. Surely the experience of all good men confirms the proposition that without a due measure of private devotions the soul will grow lean.
William Wilberforce
#47. Africa, your sufferings have been the theme that has arrested & engaged my heart.
William Wilberforce
#48. Can you tell a plain man the road to heaven? Certainly, turn at once to the right, then go straight forward.
William Wilberforce
#49. Because they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, he gave them over to a reprobate mind
William Wilberforce
#50. My walk is a public one. My business is in the world, and I must mix in the assemblies of men or quit the post which Providence seems to have assigned me.
William Wilberforce
#51. As much pains were taken to make me idle as were ever taken to make me studious.
William Wilberforce
#52. If you love someone who is ruining his or her life because of faulty thinking, and you don't do anything about it because you are afraid of what others might think, it would seem that rather than being loving, you are in fact being heartless.
William Wilberforce
#53. God has so made the mind of man that a peculiar deliciousness resides in the fruits of personal industry.
William Wilberforce
#54. If to be feelingly alive to the sufferings of my fellow-creatures is to be a fanatic, I am one of the most incurable fanatics ever permitted to be at large.
William Wilberforce
#55. It is the distinguishing glory of Christianity not to rest satisfied with superficial appearances, but to rectify the motives, and purify the heart.
William Wilberforce
#56. Blessed be to God for the day of rest and religious occupation wherein earthly things assume their true size.
William Wilberforce
#58. It must be conceded by those who admit the authority of Scripture (such only he is addressing) that from the decision of the word of God there can be no appeal.
William Wilberforce
#59. A private faith that does not act in the face of oppression is no faith at all.
William Wilberforce
#60. The distemper of which, as a community, we are sick, should be considered rather as a moral than a political malady.
William Wilberforce
#61. No man, ever indulged more freely or happily in that playful facetiousness which gratifies all without wounding any.
William Wilberforce
#62. You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.
William Wilberforce
#63. Men of authority and influence may promote good morals. Let them in their several stations encourage virtue. Let them favor and take part in any plans which may be formed for the advancement of morality.
William Wilberforce
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