William Channing Quotes on Nature (7 Quotes)


    But the ground of a man's sic culture lies in his nature, not in his calling. His powers are to be unfolded on account of their inherent dignity, not their outward direction. He is to be educated, because he is a man, not because he is to make shoes, nail, or pins.

    To give a generous hope to a man of his own nature, is to enrich him immeasurably.

    I do and I must reverence human nature. I bless it for its kind affections. I honor it for its achievements in science and art, and still more for its examples of heroic and saintly virtue. These are marks of a divine origin and the pledges of a celestial inheritance and I thank God that my own lot is bound up with that of the human race.

    The divine attributes are first developed in ourselves, and thence transferred to our Creator. The idea of God, sublime and awful as it is, is the idea of our own spiritual nature, purified and enlarged to infinity. In ourselves are the elements of the Divinity.

    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.


    Man's spiritual nature is no dream of theologians to vanish before the light of natural science. It is the grandest reality on earth.

    The distinctions of society vanish before the light of these truths. I attach myself to the multitude, not because they are voters and have political power but because they are (human), and have within their reach the most glorious prizes of humanity. . . . Self-culture, the care which every (person) owes to (oneself), to the unfolding . . . of (one's) nature. . . .


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