William Channing

William Channing
books chiefly communication enjoy invaluable means reach superior
It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds, and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of all.
mind work
It is mind which does the work of the world, so that the more there is of mind, the more work will be accomplished.
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We look forward to the time when the power to love will replace the love of power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.
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We look forward to the time when the power to love will replace the love of power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.
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He who possesses the divine powers of the soul is a great being, be his place what it may. You may clothe him with rags, may immure him in a dungeon, may chain him to slavish tasks. But he is still great . . . .
educated education
He is to be educated not because he's to make shoes, nails, and pins, but because he is a man.
accidental acts bends call circumstance creature events free inward mind outward passively principles swept torrent
I call that mind free which is not passively framed by outward circumstances, which is not swept away by the torrent of events, which is not the creature of accidental impulse, but which bends events to its own improvement, and acts from an inward spring, from immutable principles which it has deliberately espoused.
best books-and-reading great men pour precious souls talk
In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours.
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The essential and unbounded mercy of my Creator is the foundation of my hope, and a broader and surer the universe cannot give me.
altar hills seas vanish
The hills are reared, the seas are scooped in vainIf learning's altar vanish from the plain.
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The greatest truths are wronged if not linked with beauty, and they win their way most surely and deeply into the soul when arrayed in this their natural and fit attire.
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The divine attributes are first developed in ourselves, and thence transferred to our Creator. The idea of God, sublime and awful as it is, is the idea of our own spiritual nature, purified and enlarged to infinity. In ourselves are the elements of the Divinity.
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The less of government the better, if society were kept in peace and prosperity.
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I do and I must reverence human nature. I bless it for its kind affections. I honor it for its achievements in science and art, and still more for its examples of heroic and saintly virtue. These are marks of a divine origin and the pledges of a celestial inheritance; and I thank God that my own lot is bound up with that of the human race.