One anecdote of a man is worth a volume of biography.

— William Ellery Channing

Reading is the royal road to intellectual eminence... Truly good books are more than mines to those who can understand them. They are the breathings of the great souls of past times. Genius is not embalmed in them, but lives in them perpetually.

— William Ellery Channing

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.

— William Ellery Channing

The great hope of society is individual character.

— 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 human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.

— 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 sages and heroes of history are receding from us and history contracts the record of their deeds into a narrower and narrower page. But time has no power over the name and deeds and words of Jesus Christ.

— William Ellery Channing