You can gain in your effectiveness as a politician from a wide acquaintance with the world and from a degree of independence that having some outside interests gives. ↗
For my part, I confess I seldom listen to the players: one has so much to do, in looking about and finding out one's acquaintance, that, really, one has no time to mind the stage. One merely comes to meet one's friends, and show that one's alive. ↗
Farewell all relations and friends in Christ; farewell acquaintances and all earthly enjoyments; farewell reading and preaching, praying and believing, wanderings, reproaches, and sufferings. ↗