Quotes from William Ellery Channing

The sages and heroes of history are receding from us, and history contracts the record of their deeds into a narrower and narrower page. But time has no power over the name and deeds and words of Jesus Christ.

Mistakes and errors are the discipline through which we advance.

We must not waste life in devising means. It is better to plan less and do more.

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 study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to the stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear on cheerfully, do all bravely, awaiting occasions, worry never; in a word to, like the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common.

We grow by love ... others are our nutriment.

Immortality is the glorious discovery of Christianity.

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

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.

War will never yield but to the principles of universal justice and love, and these have no sure root but in the religion of Jesus Christ.

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 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 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Did any man at his death ever regret his conflicts with himself, his victories over appetite, his scorn of impure pleasure, or his sufferings for righteousness' sake?

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

It is a greater work to educate a child in the true and larger sense of the word than to rule a state.

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

I am a living member of the great family of all souls.