Quotes by William Ellery Channing

Immortality is the glorious discovery of Christianity.

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

An earnest purpose finds time or makes it. It seizes on spare moments and turns fragments to golden account.

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

All that a man does outwardly is but the expression and completion of his inward thought. To work effectively he must think clearly to act nobly he must think nobly.

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.

No man should part with his own individuality and become that of another.

What distinguishes war is not that man is slain but that he is slain spoiled crushed by the cruelty the injustice the treachery the murderous hand of man.

The great hope of society is in individual character.

The mind, in proportion as it is cut off from free communication with nature, with revelation, with God, with itself, loses its life, just as the body droops when debarred from the air and the cheering light from heaven.

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

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

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

God is another name for human intelligence raised above all error and imperfection, and extended to all possible truth.

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.

It is not the quantity but the quality of knowledge which determines the minds dignity.

Nothing which has entered into our experience is ever lost.

The world is governed by opinion.

Life has a higher end, than to be amused.

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.