William Ellery Channing

William Ellery Channing
William Ellery Channingwas the foremost Unitarian preacher in the United States in the early nineteenth century and along with Andrews Norton,, one of Unitarianism's leading theologians. He was known for his articulate and impassioned sermons and public speeches, and as a prominent thinker in the liberal theology of the day. Channing's religion and thought were among the chief influences on the New England Transcendentalists, though he never countenanced their views, which he saw as extreme. The beliefs he espoused, especially...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth7 April 1780
CountryUnited States of America
It is far more important to me to preserve an unblemished conscience than to compass any object however great.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The office of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men the opportunity to work out happiness for themselves.
The home is the chief school of human virtues.
True love is the parent of humility....
Mistakes and errors are the discipline through which we advance.
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.
An earnest purpose finds time, or makes it. It seizes on spare moments, and turns fragments to golden account.
The spirit of liberty is not merely, as multitudes imagine, a jealousy of our own particular rights, but a respect for the rights of others, and an unwillingness that any man, whether high or low, should be wronged and trampled under foot.
To extinguish the free will is to strike the conscience with death, for both have but one and the same life.
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.