William Ellery ChanningThinkers

Beauty is an all-pervading presence. It unfolds to the numberless flowers of the Bpring ; it waves in the branches of the trees and the green blades of grass; it haunts the depths of the earth and the sea, and gleams out in the hues of the shell and the precious stone. And not only these midute objects, but the ocean, the mountains, the clouds, the heavens, the stars, the rising and setting sun, all overflow with beauty.

The Book is the means by which anyone at all can intercourse with superior minds of the distant and the dead, who talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books.

The Book is the true leveller. It gives to all who faithfully use it the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race.

Faith is love taking the form of aspiration.

Fiction is no longer a mere amusement ; but transcendent genius, accommodating itself to the character of the age, has seized upon this province of literature, and turned fiction from a toy into a mighty engine.

The Friend is tasked to incite one to God’s works.

Home is the chief school of human virtues.

Immortality is the glorious discovery of Christianity.

Labor is discovered to be the great, the grand conqueror, enriching and building up nations more surely than the proudest battles.

Life is a fragment, a moment between two eternities, influenced by all that has preceded, and to influence all that follows.

Love is the life of the soul. It is the harmony of the universe.