It is not the quantity but the quality of knowledge which determines the mind's dignity.
William Ellery Channing

Life has a higher end, than to be amused.
William Ellery Channing

No one should part with their individuality and become that of another.
William Ellery Channing

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

Nothing which has entered into our experience is ever lost.
William Ellery Channing

One good anecdote is worth a volume of biography.
William Ellery Channing

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

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

The home is the chief school of human virtues.
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

The office of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men the opportunity to work out happiness for themselves.
William Ellery Channing

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

The world is governed by opinion.
William Ellery Channing

Undoubtedly a man is to labor to better his condition, but first to better himself.
William Ellery Channing

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