William Channing Quotes on Beauty (3 Quotes)

No man receives the full culture of a man in whom the sensibility to the beautiful is not cherished and there is no condition of life from which it should be excluded. Of all luxuries this is the cheapest, and the most at hand, and most important to those conditions where coarse labor tends to give grossness to the mind.

Beauty is an all-pervading presence. It unfolds to the numberless flowers of the Spring it waves in the branches of the trees and in 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 minute objects, but the ocean, the mountains, the clouds, the heavens, the stars, the rising and the setting sun all overflow with beauty. The universe is its temple and those people who are alive to it can not lift their eyes without feeling themselves encompassed with it on every side.

The greatest truths are wronged if not linked with beauty, and they win their way most surely and deeply into the soul when arrayed in this their natural and fit attire.