Top 100 William Ellery Quotes
#1. Religion is faith in an infinite Creator, who delights in and enjoins that rectitude which conscience commands us to seek. This conviction gives a Divine sanction to duty.
William Ellery Channing
#2. Whatever you may suffer, speak the truth. Be worthy of the entire confidence of your associates. Consider what is right as to what must be done. It is not necessary that you should keep your property, or even your life, but it is necessary that you should hold fast your integrity.
William Ellery Channing
#3. The miracles of Christ were studiously performed in the most unostentatious way. He seemed anxious to veil His majesty under the love with which they were wrought.
William Ellery Channing
#4. 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.
William Ellery Channing
#5. Of all the discoveries which men need to make, the most important, at the present moment, is that of the self-forming power treasured up in themselves. They little suspect its extent, as little as the savage apprehends the energy which the mind is created to exert on the material world.
William Ellery Channing
#6. 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.
William Ellery Channing
#7. 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.
William Ellery Channing
#8. 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.
William Ellery Channing
#9. 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.
William Ellery Channing
#10. 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.
William Ellery Channing
#11. 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.
William Ellery Channing
#14. 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.
William Ellery Channing
#16. God is another name for human intelligence raised above all error and imperfection, and extended to all possible truth.
William Ellery Channing
#17. 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.
William Ellery Channing
#21. 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.
William Ellery Channing
#23. I am a living member of the great family of all souls; and I cannot improve or suffer myself, without diffusing good or evil around me through an ever-enlarging sphere. I belong to this family. I am bound to it by vital bonds.
William Ellery Channing
#24. There is but a very minute portion of the creation which we can turn into food and clothes, or gratification for the body; but the whole creation may be used to minister to the sense of beauty.
William Ellery Channing
#25. War is to be ranked among the most dreadful calamities which fall on a guilty world; and, what deserves consideration, it tends to multiply and perpetuate itself without end. It feeds and grows on the blood which it sheds. The passions, from which it springs, gain strength and fury from indulgence.
William Ellery Channing
#27. O God, animate us to cheerfulness! May we have a joyful sense of our blessings, learn to look on the bright circumstances of our lot, and maintain a perpetual contentedness
William Ellery Channing
#28. 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.
William Ellery Channing
#31. What a sublime doctrine it is, that goodness cherished now is eternal life already entered on!
William Ellery Channing
#33. Progress, the growth of power, is the end and boon of liberty; and, without this, a people may have the name, but want the substance and spirit of freedom.
William Ellery Channing
#36. It is not the quantity but the quality of knowledge which determines the mind's dignity.
William Ellery Channing
#38. 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.
William Ellery Channing
#39. 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.
William Ellery Channing
#44. To extinguish the free will is to strike the conscience with death, for both have but one and the same life.
William Ellery Channing
#45. The fewer the voices on the side of truth, the more distinct and strong must be your own.
William Ellery Channing
#46. Another powerful principle of our nature, which is the spring of war, is the passion for superiority, for triumph, for power. The human mind is aspiring, impatient of inferiority, and eager for preeminence and control.
William Ellery Channing
#47. 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.
William Ellery Channing
#48. Precept is instruction written in the sand; the tide flows over it and the record is gone; example is graven on the rock, and the lesson is not soon lost.
William Ellery Channing
#49. The spirit of liberty is not merely, as multitudes imagine, a jealousy of our own particular rights, but a respect for the rights of others, and an unwillingness that any man, whether high or low, should be wronged and trampled under foot.
William Ellery Channing
#50. We honor revelation too highly to make it the antagonist of reason, or to believe that it calls us to renounce our highest powers.
William Ellery Channing
#51. Natural amiableness is too often seen in company with sloth, with uselessness, with the vanity of fashionable life.
William Ellery Channing
#52. One of the tremendous evils of the world, is the monstrous accumulation of power in a few hands.
William Ellery Channing
#53. Books are true levelers. They give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race.
William Ellery Channing
#54. The hills are reared, the seas are scooped in vain If learning's altar vanish from the plain.
William Ellery Channing
#56. 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.
William Ellery Channing
#57. 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
#58. It is far more important to me to preserve an unblemished conscience than to compass any object however great.
William Ellery Channing
#60. My highway is unfeatured air, My consorts are the sleepless stars, And men my giant arms upbear My arms unstained and free from scars.
William Ellery Channing
#61. 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.
William Ellery Channing
#63. The office of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men the opportunity to work out happiness for themselves.
William Ellery Channing
#67. Perhaps in our presence, the most heroic deed on earth is done in some silent spirit, the loftiest purpose cherished, the most generous sacrifice made, and we do not suspect it. I believe this greatness to be most common among the multitude, whose names are never heard.
William Ellery Channing
#69. 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
#70. Every mind was made for growth, for knowledge, and its nature is sinned against when it is doomed to ignorance.
William Ellery Channing
#71. A man may quarrel with himself alone; that is, by controverting his better instincts and knowledge when brought face to face with temptation.
William Ellery Channing
#72. 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.
William Ellery Channing
#74. 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.
William Ellery Channing
#77. We never know a greater character unless there is in ourselves something congenial to it.
William Ellery Channing
#78. 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.
William Ellery Channing
#80. A clear thought, a pure affection, a resolute act of a virtuous will, have a dignity of quite another kind, and far higher than accumulations of brick and granite and plaster and stucco, however cunningly put together.
William Ellery Channing
#81. Real greatness has nothing to do with a man's sphere. It does not lie in the magnitude of his outward agency, in the extent of the effects which he produces. The greatest men may do comparatively little.
William Ellery Channing
#83. Other blessings may be taken away, but if we have acquired a good friend by goodness, we have a blessing which improves in value when others fail.
William Ellery Channing
#84. Labor is discovered to be the grand conqueror, enriching and building up nations more surely than the proudest battles.
William Ellery Channing
#85. An earnest purpose finds time, or makes it. It seizes on spare moments, and turns fragments to golden account.
William Ellery Channing
#87. Let us aspire towards this living confidence, that it is the will of God to unfold and exalt without end the spirit that entrusts itself to Him in well-doing as to a faithful Creator.
William Ellery Channing
#88. God deliver us all from prejudice and unkindness, and fill us with the love of truth and virtue.
William Ellery Channing
#89. But the ground of a man's culture lies in his nature, not in his calling. His powers are to be unfolded on account of their inherent dignity, not their outward direction. He is to be educated, because he is a man, not because he is to make shoes, nail, or pins.
William Ellery Channing
#90. 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?
William Ellery Channing
#91. The only freedom worth possessing is that which gives enlargement to a people's energy, intellect, and virtues.
William Ellery Channing
#96. The world is to be carried forward by truth, which at first offends, which wins its way by degrees, which the many hate and would rejoice to crush.
William Ellery Channing
#98. Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.
William Ellery Channing
#99. 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.
William Ellery Channing
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