All noble enthusiasms pass through a feverish stage, and grow wiser and more serene.
William Ellery Channing

Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.
William Ellery Channing

Do anything rather than give yourself to reverie.
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

Error is discipline through which we advance.
William Ellery Channing

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

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.
William Ellery Channing

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

Every mind was made for growth, for knowledge, and its nature is sinned against when it is doomed to ignorance.
William Ellery Channing

Faith is love taking the form of aspiration.
William Ellery Channing


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

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

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

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

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

How easy to be amiable in the midst of happiness and success.
William Ellery Channing

Influence is to be measured, not by the extent of surface it covers, but by its kind.
William Ellery Channing

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

It is far more important to me to preserve an unblemished conscience than to compass any object however great.
William Ellery Channing