Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.
—William Ellery Channing
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.
—William Ellery Channing
Topics: War
Everything here, but the soul of man, is a passing shadow.—The only enduring substance is within.—When shall we awake to the sublime greatness, the perils, the accountableness, and the glorious destinies of the immortal soul?
—William Ellery Channing
Topics: Soul
Friends should not be chosen to flatter.—The quality we prize is that rectitude which will shrink from no truth.—Intimacies which increase vanity destroy friendship.
—William Ellery Channing
Topics: Friendship
The world is governed much more by opinion than by laws. It is not the judgment of courts, but the moral judgment of individuals and masses of men: which is the chief wall of defence around property and life. With the progress of society, this power of opinion is taking the place of arms.
—William Ellery Channing
Topics: Opinion
It was religion, which, by teaching men their near relation to God, awakened in them the consciousness of their importance as individuals. It was the struggle for religious rights, which opened their eyes to all their rights. It was resistance to religious usurpation which led men to withstand political oppression. It was religious discussion which roused the minds of all classes to free and vigorous thought. It was religion which armed the martyr and patriot in England against arbitrary power; which braced the spirits of our fathers against the perils of the ocean and wilderness, and sent them to found here the freest and most equal state on earth.
—William Ellery Channing
Topics: Religion
No human being, man or woman, can act up to a sublime standard without giving offence.
—William Ellery Channing
Topics: Duty
Is it asked, how can the laboring man find time for self-culture? I answer, that an earnest purpose finds time, or makes it. It seizes on spare moments, and turns fragments to golden account. A man who follows his calling with industry and spirit, and uses his earnings economically, will always have some portion of the day at command. And it is astonishing how fruitful of improvement a short season becomes, when eagerly seized and faithfully used. It has often been observed, that those who have the most time at their disposal profit by it the least. A single hour in the day, steadily given to the study of some interesting subject, brings unexpected accumulations of knowledge.
—William Ellery Channing
Topics: Self-improvement, Learning
Science and art may invent splendid anodes of illuminating the apartments of the opulent; but these are all poor and worthless compared with the light which the sun pours freely, impartially, over hill and valley; which kindles daily the eastern and western sky; and so the common lights of reason and conscience and love are of more worth and dignity than the rare endowments which give celebrity to a few.
—William Ellery Channing
Topics: Light
Undoubtedly a man is to labor to better his condition, but first to better himself.
—William Ellery Channing
Topics: Progress, Improvement, Sacrifice
No man receives the full culture of a man in whom the sensibility to the beautiful is not cherished; and there is no condition of life from which it should be excluded. Of all luxuries this is the cheapest, and the most at hand, and most important to those conditions where coarse labor tends to give grossness to the mind.
—William Ellery Channing
Topics: Beauty, Labor
Every man is a volume, if you know how to read him.
—William Ellery Channing
Topics: Reading, Character, Man, Books
Sensuality is the grave of the soul.
—William Ellery Channing
Let our prayers, like the ancient sacrifices, ascend morning and evening. Let our days begin and end with God.
—William Ellery Channing
Topics: Prayer
The ties of family and of country were never intended to circumscribe the soul.—If allowed to become exclusive, engrossing, clannish, so as to shut out the general claims of the human race, the highest end of Providence is frustrated, and home, instead of being the nursery, becomes the grave of the heart.
—William Ellery Channing
Topics: Family
Poetry reveals to us the loveliness of nature, brings back the freshness of youthful feeling, revives the relish of simple pleasures, keeps unquenched the enthusiasm which warmed the spring time of our being, refines youthful love, strengthens our interest in human nature, 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.
—William Ellery Channing
Topics: Poets, Poetry
We never know a greater character unless there is in ourselves something congenial to it.
—William Ellery Channing
Topics: Appreciation
It is far more important to me to preserve an unblemished conscience than to compass any object however great.
—William Ellery Channing
Topics: Conscience
The less of government the better, if society be kept in peace and prosperity.
—William Ellery Channing
Topics: Government
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.
—William Ellery Channing
Topics: Wealth, Honesty
Each of us is meant to have a character of our own, to be what no other can exactly be, and do what no other can exactly do.
—William Ellery Channing
Be true to your own highest convictions. Intimations from our own souls of something more perfect than others teach, if faithfully followed, give us a consciousness of spiritual force and progress never experienced by the vulgar of high life, or low life, who march as they are drilled to the step of their times.
—William Ellery Channing
Topics: Vulgarity
Do anything innocent rather than give yourself up to reverie. I can speak on this point from experience; for at one period of my life, I was a dreamer and castle-builder. Visions of the dis tant and future took the place of present duty and activity. I spent hours in reverie. The body suffered as much as the mind. The imagination threatened to inflame the passions, and I found, if I meant to be virtuous, I must dismiss my musings. The conflict was a hard one; but I resolved, prayed, resisted, sought refuge in occupation, and at length triumphed.
—William Ellery Channing
Contempt of all outward things that come in competition with duty fulfils the ideal of human greatness.—It is sanctioned by conscience, that universal and eternal lawgiver, whose chief principle is, that everything must be yielded up for right.
—William Ellery Channing
It is not the quantity but the quality of knowledge which determines the mind’s dignity.
—William Ellery Channing
Topics: Knowledge, Quality
All that a man does outwardly is but the expression and completion of his inward thought. To work effectually, he must think clearly; to act nobly, he must think nobly. Intellectual force is a principal element of the soul’s life, and should be proposed by every man as the principal end of his being.
—William Ellery Channing
Topics: Positive Attitudes, Thought, Work, Act, Think, Optimism, War
True love is the parent of humility.
—William Ellery Channing
Topics: Love
The incongruity of the Bible with the age of its birth; its freedom from earthly mixtures; its original, unborrowed, solitary greatness; the suddenness with which it broke forth amidst the general gloom; these, to me, are strong indications of its Divine descent: I cannot reconcile them with a human origin.
—William Ellery Channing
Topics: Bible
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.
—William Ellery Channing
Topics: Books
No one should part with their individuality and become that of another.
—William Ellery Channing
Topics: Individuality
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Maria Mitchell American Astronomer
- Edward Everett Hale American Unitarian Clergyman
- William Laurence Sullivan American Priest
- Joseph Priestley English Clergyman, Scientist
- George Washington Burnap American Unitarian Clergyman
- Thomas Starr King American Clergyman
- Daniel Webster American Statesman, Lawyer
- James Walker American Clergyman
- Alexander Hamilton American Statesman
- James Madison American Statesman, President
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