Quotes By William Ellery Channing

All noble enthusiasms pass through a feverish stage, and grow wiser and more serene.

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

Error is discipline through which we advance.

The world is governed by opinion.

Nothing which has entered into our experience is ever lost.

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.

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.

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

Life has a higher end, than to be amused.

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.

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.

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

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.

The great hope of society is in individual character.

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

Grandeur of character lies wholly in force of soul, that is, in the force of thought, moral principle, and love, and this may be found in the humblest condition of life.

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

Do anything rather than give yourself to reverie.

Faith is love taking the form of aspiration.

One good anecdote is worth a volume of biography.

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.

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.

No one should part with their individuality and become that of another.

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.

The home is the chief school of human virtues.

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.

Each of us is meant to have a character all our own, to be what no other can exactly be, and do what no other can exactly do.

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

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.

The reveries of youth, in which so much energy is wasted, are the yearnings of a Spirit made for what it has not found but must forever seek as an Ideal.