William Ellery Channing Quotes

Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.

Fix your eyes on perfection and you make almost everything speed towards it.

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common - this is my symphony.

We smile at the ignorance of the savage who cuts down the tree in order to reach its fruit; but the same blunder is made by every person who is over eager and impatient in the pursuit of pleasure.

Every human being is intended to have a character of his own; to be what no others are, and to do what no other can do.

May your life preach more loudly than your lips.

Every mind was made for growth, for knowledge, and its nature is sinned against when it is doomed to ignorance.

Nothing which has entered into our experience is ever lost.

All virtue lies in individual action, in inward energy, in self determination. There is no moral worth in being swept away by a crowd even toward the best objective.

I am a living member of the great family of all souls; and I cannot improve or suffer myself, without diffusing good or evil around me through an ever-enlarging sphere. I belong to this family. I am bound to it by vital bonds.

It is not the quantity but the quality of knowledge which determines the mind's dignity.

One of the tremendous evils of the world, is the monstrous accumulation of power in a few hands.

I laugh, for hope hath a happy place with me; If my boat sinks, 'tis to another sea.

The home is the chief school of human virtues.

No power in society, no hardship in your condition can depress you, keep you down, in knowledge, power, virtue, influence, but by your own consent.

Reading is the royal road to intellectual eminence...Truly good books are more than mines to those who can understand them. They are the breathings of the great souls of past times. Genius is not embalmed in them, but lives in them perpetually.

Faith is love taking the form of aspiration.

Every man is a volume if you know how to read him.

The best books for a man are not always those which the wise recommend, but often those which meet the peculiar wants, the natural thirst of his mind, and therefore awaken interest and rivet thought.

The chief evil of war is more evil. War is the concentration of all human crimes. Here is its distinguishing, accursed brand. Under its standard gather violence, malignity, rage, fraud, perfidy, rapacity, and lust. If it only slew man, it would do little. It turns man into a beast of prey.

God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.

Be true to your own highest convictions.

Mistakes and errors are the discipline through which we advance.

Whatever you may suffer, speak the truth. Be worthy of the entire confidence of your associates. Consider what is right as to what must be done. It is not necessary that you should keep your property, or even your life, but it is necessary that you should hold fast your integrity.

Great minds are to make others great. Their superiority is to be used, not to break the multitude to intellectual vassalage, not to establish over them a spiritual tyranny, but to rouse them from lethargy, and to aid them to judge for themselves.

O God, animate us to cheerfulness! May we have a joyful sense of our blessings, learn to look on the bright circumstances of our lot, and maintain a perpetual contentedness

Influence is to be measured, not by the extent of surface it covers, but by its kind.

The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated.

Precept is instruction written in the sand; the tide flows over it and the record is gone; example is graven on the rock, and the lesson is not soon lost.

The office of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men the opportunity to work out happiness for themselves.

Great effort from great motives is the best definition of a happy life

The spirit of liberty is not merely, as multitudes imagine, a jealousy of our own particular rights, but a respect for the rights of others, and an unwillingness that any man, whether high or low, should be wronged and trampled under foot.

The world is to be carried forward by truth, which at first offends, which wins its way by degrees, which the many hate and would rejoice to crush.

Do anything rather than give yourself to reverie.

In the long run, truth is aided by nothing so much as by opposition.

Poetry reveals to us the loveliness of nature, brings back the freshness of youthful feelings, reviews the relish of simple pleasures, keeps unquenched the enthusiasm which warmed the springtime of our being, refines youthful love, strengthens our interest in human mature, by vivid delineations of its tenderest and softest feelings, and through the brightness of its prophetic visions, helps faith to lay hold on the future life.

Health is the working man's fortune, and he ought to watch over it more than the capitalist over his largest investments. Health lightens the efforts of body and mind. It enables a man to crowd much work into a narrow compass. Without it, little can be earned, and that little by slow, exhausting toil.

A man might pass for insane who should see things as they are.

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours.

Knowledge is essential to freedom.

He who is false to the present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and you will see the effect when the weaving of a life-time is unraveled.

Every human being has a work to carry on within, duties to perform abroad, influence to exert, which are peculiarly his, and which no conscience but his own can teach.

Love is the life of the soul. It is the harmony of the universe.

Undoubtedly a man is to labor to better his condition, but first to better himself.

Every human being is a volume, worthy to be studied.

To be prosperous is not to be superior, and should form no barrier between men. Wealth out not to secure the prosperous the slightest consideration. The only distinctions which should be recognized are those of the soul, of strong principle, of incorruptible integrity, of usefulness, of cultivated intellect, of fidelity in seeking the truth.

What a sublime doctrine it is, that goodness cherished now is eternal life already entered on!

How easy to be amiable in the midst of happiness and success.

It is far more important to me to preserve an unblemished conscience than to compass any object however great.

Most joyful let the Poet be, it is through him that all men see.