Samuel Johnson, Rhetorical Action Considered:
compared with the conversion of sinners, propriety and elegance are less than nothing.
Entire paragraph…
It is, perhaps, the character of the English to despise trifles; and that art may surely be accounted a trifle which is at once useless and ostentatious, which can seldom be practised with propriety, and which, as the mind is more cultivated, is less powerful. Yet as all innocent means are to be used for the propagation of truth, I would not deter those who are employed in preaching to common congregations from any practice which they may find persuasive: for, compared with the conversion of sinners, propriety and elegance are less than nothing.