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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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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
Power
Never
Men
Select
Exercise
Wise

More quotes by William Ellery Channing

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Undoubtedly a man is to labor to better his condition, but first to better himself.
William Ellery Channing
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All noble enthusiasms pass through a feverish stage, and grow wiser and more serene
William Ellery Channing
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Home - the nursery of the Infinite.
William Ellery Channing
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Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.
William Ellery Channing
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The domestic relations precede, and in our present existence are worth more than all our other social ties. They give the first throb to the heart, and unseal the deep fountains of its love. Home is the chief school of human virtue. Its responsibilities, joys, sorrows, smiles, tears, hopes, and solicitudes form the chief interest of human life.
William Ellery Channing
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Most joyful let the Poet be, it is through him that all men see.
William Ellery Channing
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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
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Life is a fragment, a moment between two eternities.
William Ellery Channing
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A man might pass for insane who should see things as they are.
William Ellery Channing
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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
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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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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.
William Ellery Channing
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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
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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.
William Ellery Channing
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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
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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
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It is not the quantity but the quality of knowledge which determines the mind's dignity.
William Ellery Channing
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One good anecdote is worth a volume of biography.
William Ellery Channing
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Let every man, if possible, gather some good books under his roof.
William Ellery Channing
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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