William E Channing Quotes & Sayings

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

The great hope of society is in individual character. — William Ellery Channing

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

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

God deliver us all from prejudice and unkindness, and fill us with the love of truth and virtue. — William Ellery Channing

To extinguish the free will is to strike the conscience with death, for both have but one and the same life. — William Ellery Channing

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

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

Compassionate Saviour! We welcome Thee to our world, We welcome Thee to our hearts. We bless Thee for the Divine goodness Thou hast brought from heaven; for the souls Thou hast warmed with love to man, and lifted up in love to God; for the efforts of divine philanthropy which Thou hast inspired; and for that hope of a pure celestial life, through which Thy disciples triumph over death. — William Ellery Channing

Every man is a volume, if you know how to read him. — William Ellery Channing

To give a generous hope to a man of his own nature, is to enrich him immeasurably. — William Ellery Channing

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

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

Others are affected by what I am, and say, and do. So that a single act of mine may spread and spread in widening circles, through a nation or humanity. Through my vice I intensify the taint of vice throughout the universe. Through my misery I make multitudes sad. On the other hand, every development of my virtue makes me an ampler blessing to my race. Every new truth that I gain makes me a brighter light to humanity. — William Ellery Channing

In the long run, truth is aided by nothing so much as by opposition. — William Ellery Channing

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

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

The only freedom worth possessing is that which gives enlargement to a people's energy, intellect, and virtues. — William Ellery Channing

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

No man receives the full culture of a man in whom the sensibility to the beautiful is not cherished; and there is no condition of life from which it should be excluded. Of all luxuries this is the cheapest, and the most at hand, and most important to those conditions where coarse labor tends to give grossness to the mind. — William Ellery Channing

Natural amiableness is too often seen in company with sloth, with uselessness, with the vanity of fashionable life. — William Ellery Channing

No punishment is so terrible as prosperous guilt. — William Ellery Channing

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

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

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

Conscience, the sense of right, the power of perceiving moral distinctions, the power of discerning between justice and injustice, excellence and baseness, is the highest faculty given us by God, the whole foundation of our responsibility, and our sole capacity for religion ... God, in giving us conscience, has implanted a principle within us which forbids us to prostrate ourselves before mere power, or to offer praise where we do not discover worth. — William Ellery Channing

Science and art may invent splendid modes of illuminating the apartments of the opulent; but these are all poor and worthless compared with the common light which the sun sends into all our windows, which he pours freely, impartially over hill and valley, which kindles daily the eastern and western sky; and so the common lights of reason, and conscience, and love, are of more worth and dignity than the rare endowments which give celebrity to a few. — William Ellery Channing

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

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

The worst tyrants are those which establish themselves in our own breasts. — William Ellery Channing