To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common - this is my symphony.
William Ellery ChanningWar is to be ranked among the most dreadful calamities which fall on a guilty world; and, what deserves consideration, it tends to multiply and perpetuate itself without end. It feeds and grows on the blood which it sheds. The passions, from which it springs, gain strength and fury from indulgence.
William Ellery ChanningIt is chiefly through books that we enjoy the intercourse with superior minds.
William Ellery ChanningNatural amiableness is too often seen in company with sloth, with uselessness, with the vanity of fashionable life.
William Ellery Channing