“Robert G. Ingersoll and Wendell Phillips were the two greatest orators of their time, and probably of all time. Their power sprang from their passion for freedom, for truth, for justice, for a world filled with light and with happy human beings. But for this divine passion neither would have scaled the sublime heights of immortal achievement. The sacred fire burned within them and when they were aroused it flashed from their eyes and rolled from their inspired lips in torrents of eloquence.”

As quoted in The Peaceful Path of Prosperity : Practical and Spiritual Approaches to Enrich Your Life with Your Inner Wealth (2001) by Danny Babineaux; not found in any record of Wesley before 2001.
Misattributed
Variant: I set myself on fire and people come to watch me burn.

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 115.

Hyperion, book iv. Chap. viii.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Source: "New Year Address to the Nation" http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67514 (31 December 2021)

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 270

Introduction.
An American Bible (1912)
Context: Robert Ingersoll preferred to every political and social honor the privilege of freeing humanity from the shackles of bondage and fear. He knew no holier thing than truth. He preferred using his own reason to receiving popular applause or approbation. His keen wit, clear brain and merciless sarcasm uncrowned the King of Superstition and made him a puppet in the court of reason.

2005, Address to the United Nations General Assembly (17 September 2005)