William Ellery Channing Quotes

“A man in earnest finds means, or if he cannot find he creates them. A vigorous purpose makes much out of little, breathes power into weak instruments, disarms difficulties, and even turns them into assistances. Every condition has means of progress, if we have spirit enough to use them.”

“All that we do outwardly is but the expression and completion of our inward thought. To work effectively, we must think clearly; to act nobly, we must think nobly.”

“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.”

“Ask the majority of Christians what they consider the greatest evil from which Christ freed humanity and they will say: from Hell, from eternal fire, from punishment in the next world. As a corollary to this they think that salvation is something that someone else can achieve for us. The word hell, which is seldom met in the Holy Scriptures, has done much harm to Christianity as a result of false interpretations. People run away from external hell which they are made to fear most of all. The salvation that man needs most and that which gives him freedom is redemption from the evil within his soul. There is something far worse than external punishment.

It is the sin of the soul being in rebellion against God; the soul, endowed with God's strength, yielding itself to the force of bestial instinct; the soul which exists before God, yet fears the threats and fury of men, preferring human glory to its own peaceful awareness of virtue. There is no fate worse than this. And it is this that the unrepentant person carries with him to the grave. And it is this we ought to fear.

To gain salvation, in the highest meaning of the word, means to raise your fallen spirit, cure the sick soul, give it back its freedom of thought, conscience and love. In this lies the salvation for which Christ died. It is for this salvation that we have been given the Holy Spirit, and it is towards this salvation that the Christian teaching should be directed.”

“Don't let go of your personality and become someone else. Be yourself.”

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

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

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

“Faith is love taking the form of aspiration.”

“God deliver us all from prejudice and unkindness, and fill us with the love of truth and virtue.”

“Great effort from great motives is the best definition of a happy 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.”

“I call that mind free, which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opens itself to light whencesoever it may come.

I call that mind free which protects itself against the usurpations of society, and which does not cower to human opinion: Which refuses to be the slave or tool of the many or of the few, and guards its empire over itself as nobler than the empire of the world.”

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

“In general, we do well to let an opponent's motives alone. We are seldom just to them. Our own motives on such occasions are often worse than those we assail.”

“It has often been observed, that those who have the most time at their disposal profit by it the least. A single hour a day, steadily given to the study of some interesting subject, brings unexpected accumulations of knowledge.”

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

“Knowledge is essential to freedom.”

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

“May your life preach more loudly than your lips.”

“Mistakes and errors are the discipline through which we advance.”

“Nothing which has entered into our experience is ever lost.”

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

“Peace is the fairest form of happiness.”

“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 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.”

“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.”

“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 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.”

“The home is the chief school of human virtues.”

“The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.”