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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

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William Ellery Channing
Age: 62 †
Born: 1780
Born: April 7
Died: 1842
Died: October 2
Pastor
Preacher
Theologian
Newport
Rhode Island
Reverend William Ellery Channing
Order
Pursuit
Blunders
Persons
Fruit
Savage
Person
Smile
Eager
Made
Reach
Impatient
Every
Ignorance
Savages
Cutting
Cuts
Tree
Fierce
Pleasure
Patience
Blunder

More quotes by William Ellery Channing

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A man in earnest finds means or, if he cannot find, creates them.
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The office of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men the opportunity to work out happiness for themselves.
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The great hope of society is in individual character
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How easy to be amiable in the midst of happiness and success.
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One of the tremendous evils of the world, is the monstrous accumulation of power in a few hands.
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Faith is love taking the form of aspiration.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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A general loftiness of sentiment, independence of men, consciousness of good intentions, self-oblivion in great objects, clear views of futurity thoughts of the blessed companionship of saints and angels, trust in God as the friend of truth and virtue,--these are the states of mind in which I should live.
William Ellery Channing
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The fewer the voices on the side of truth, the more distinct and strong must be your own.
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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
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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
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Every mind was made for growth, for knowledge, and its nature is sinned against when it is doomed to ignorance.
William Ellery Channing
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Men are never very wise and select in the exercise of a new power.
William Ellery Channing
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The home is the chief school of human virtues.
William Ellery Channing
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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.
William Ellery Channing
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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
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To be prosperous is not to be superior, and should form no barrier between men. Wealth out not to secure the prosperous the slightest consideration. The only distinctions which should be recognized are those of the soul, of strong principle, of incorruptible integrity, of usefulness, of cultivated intellect, of fidelity in seeking the truth.
William Ellery Channing