channing Quotes

“The great hope of society is in individual character.”

“Life has a higher end, than to be amused.”

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

“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.”

“How easy to be amiable in the midst of happiness and success.”

“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.”

“It is not the quantity but the quality of knowledge which determines the mind's dignity.”

“The home is the chief school of human virtues.”

“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.”

“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.”