AUTHOR QUOTES
Explore 31 sourced quotes by W. E. Channing. Discover famous, inspirational and timeless words with source information.
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People should be guarded against temptation to unlawful pleasures by furnishing them the means of innocent ones. In every community there must be pleasures, relaxations, and means of agreeable excitement; and if innocent are not furnished, resort will be had to criminal. Man was made to enjoy as well as labor; and the state of society should be adapted to this principle of human nature.
Happiness
"Compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses," let us with firm and cheerful trust endure all trials, discharge all duties, accept all sacrifices, fulfill the law of universal and impartial love, and adopt as our own that cause of truth, righteousness, humanity, liberty, and holiness,—which being the cause of the All-Good, cannot but triumph over all powers of evil. Let us rise into blest assurance that everywhere and forever we are enfolded, penetrated, guarded, guided, kept by the power of the Father and Friend, who can never forsake us; and that all spirits who have begun to seek, know, love, and serve the All-Perfect One on earth shall be reunited in a celestial home, and be welcomed together into the freedom of the universe, and the perpetual light of His presence.
Love
The sages and heroes of history are receding from us, and history contracts the record of their deeds into a narrow and narrower page. But time has no power over the name and deeds and words of Jesus Christ.
Wisdom
Other sages have spoken to me of God. But from whom could I have learned the essence of Divine perfection, as from Him, who was in a peculiar sense the Son, representative, and image of God—who was especially an incarnation of the unbounded love of the Father? And from what other teacher could I have learned to approach the Supreme Being with that filial spirit, which forms the happiness of my fellowship with Him? From other seers I might have heard of heaven; but when I behold in Jesus the spirit of heaven, dwelling actually on earth, what a new comprehension have I of that better world!
Love
The miracles of Christ were studiously performed in the most unostentatious way. He seemed anxious to veil His majesty under the love with which they were wrought.
Love
Compassionate Saviour! We welcome Thee to our world, We welcome Thee to our hearts. We bless Thee for the Divine goodness Thou hast brought from heaven; for the souls Thou hast warmed with love to man, and lifted up in love to God; for the efforts of divine philanthropy which Thou hast inspired; and for that hope of a pure celestial life, through which Thy disciples triumph over death.
Love
No man living in deliberate violation of his duty, in willful disobedience to God's commands, as taught by conscience, can possibly make progress in acquaintance with the Supreme Being. Vain are all acts of worship in church or in secret, vain are religious reading and conversation, without this instant fidelity.
Education
What a sublime doctrine it is, that goodness cherished now is eternal life already entered on!
Life
Let us aspire towards this living confidence, that it is the will of God to unfold and exalt without end the spirit that entrusts itself to Him in well-doing as to a faithful Creator.
Life
Do we vividly feel that He is near us as our everlasting Friend, to guide, cheer, and bless our aspirations and our efforts? And in this confidence do we watch, pray, strive, press forward, and seek resolutely for ourselves and fellow-beings the highest end of existence, even the perfection of our immortal souls?
Success
Thank Him for health. Consecrate it as His trust to innocent enjoyment, manly effort, social usefulness, and preparation for an honorable and holy career.
Success
O, for a voice of power to arouse the human spirit from its death in life of animality, to quicken it with a fit consciousness of its own nature, to lift it to an adequate comprehension of the purposes for which the sublime thoughts of God, of duty, of disinterested love, of heaven are opened within!
Love
A beautiful literature springs from the depth and fullness of intellectual and moral life, from an energy of thought and feeling, to which nothing, as we believe, ministers so largely as enlightened religion.
Life
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. Books are the true levelers. They give to all who will faithfully use them the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race.
Life
In general, we do well to let an opponent's motives alone. We are seldom just to them. Our own motives on such occasions are often worse than those we assail.
Wisdom
The world is governed much more by opinion than by laws. It is not the judgment of courts, but the moral judgment of individuals and masses of men, which is the wall of defense around property and life.
Life
There is but one true good for a spiritual being, and this is found in its perfection. Men are slow to see this truth; and yet it is the key to God's providence, and to the mysteries of life.
Truth
We must watch over pious impressions, and cultivate them, or they will never become vigorous and enduring.
Wisdom
The greatest thoughts are wronged, if not linked to beauty; and they win their way most surely and deeply into the soul when arranged in this their natural and fit attire.
Wisdom
We doubt whether a man ever brings his faculties to bear with their whole force on a subject, until he writes upon it.
Wisdom
Religion is faith in an infinite Creator, who delights in and enjoins that rectitude which conscience commands us to seek. This conviction gives a Divine sanction to duty.
Education
The true office of religion is to bring out the whole nature of man in harmonious activity.
Wisdom
It was religion, which, by teaching men their near relation to God, awakened in them the consciousness of their importance as individuals. It was the struggle for religious rights, which opened their eyes to all their rights. It was resistance to religious usurpation, which led men to withstand political oppression. It was religious discussion, which roused the minds of all classes to free and vigorous thought.
Wisdom
Contempt of all outward things, which come in competition with duty, fulfills the ideal of human greatness. This conviction, that readiness to sacrifice life's highest material good and life itself, is essential to the elevation of human nature, is no illusion of ardent youth, nor outburst of blind enthusiasm. It does not yield to growing wisdom. It is confirmed by all experience. It is sanctioned by conscience—that universal and eternal lawgiver whose chief dictate is, that every thing must be yielded up for the right.
Education
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