A Quote by William Ellery Channing

A man in earnest finds means or, if he cannot find, creates them. — © William Ellery Channing
A man in earnest finds means or, if he cannot find, creates them.
Enclosed within his artificial creation, man finds that there is “no exit”; that he cannot pierce the shell of technology again to find the ancient milieu to which he was adapted for hundreds of thousands of years . In our cities there is no more day or night or heat or cold. But there is overpopulation, thralldom to press and television, total absence of purpose. All men are constrained by means external to them to ends equally external. The further the technical mechanism develops that allows us to escape natural necessity, the more we are subjected to artificial technical necessities.
Nothing is more creative than death, since it has the whole secret of life. It means that the past must be abandoned, that the unknown cannot be avoided, that 'I' cannot continue, and that nothing can be ultimately fixed. When a man knows this, he lives for the first time in his life. By holding his breath, he loses it. By letting go he finds it.
An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation.
In every science, after having analysed the ideas, expressing the more complicated by means of the more simple, one finds a certain number that cannot be reduced among them, and that one can define no further. These are the primitive ideas of the science; it is necessary to acquire them through experience, or through induction; it is impossible to explain them by deduction.
Man cannot live without some knowledge of the purpose of life. If he can find no purpose in life he creates one in the inevitability of death.
A successful man cannot realize how hard an unsuccessful man finds life.
The great reason why we have so little good preaching is that we have so little piety. To be eloquent one must be in earnest; he must not only act as if he were in earnest, or try to be in earnest, but be in earnest.
No ideology can help to create a new world or a new mind or a new human being -- because ideological orientation itself is the root cause of all the conflicts and all the miseries. Thought creates boundaries, thought creates divisions and thought creates prejudices; thought itself cannot bridge them. That's why all ideologies fail. Now man must learn to live without ideologies religious, political or otherwise. When the mind is not tethered to any ideology, it is free to move to new understandings. And in that freedom flowers all that is good and all that is beautiful.
The gods should certainly be revered, but kept at a distance... . The way is not beyond man; he who creates a way outside of man cannot make it a true way. A good man is content with changing man, and that is enough for him.
A Godly leader ... finds strength by realizing his weakness finds authority by being under authority finds direction by laying down his plans finds vision by seeing the needs of others finds credibility by being an example finds loyalty by expressing compassion finds honor by being faithful finds greatness by being a servant
Desire means you are dragged out of the moment; that creates a tension, that creates anxiety, that creates hope. And then finally hope turns sour, becomes frustration. Each hope leads you into anguish. Buddha calls it the only impurity. Cut the roots of desire, live in the moment so totally, pull yourself out of the past and don`t project yourself into the future. Let this moment be all and all. And your life will have such a purity, such a crystal-clear consciousness that right now you cannot imagine.
I'll not meddle with it; it is a dangerous thing; it makes a man a coward; a man cannot steal, but it accuseth him; a man cannot swear, but it checks him; a man cannot lie with his neighbor's wife, but it detects him. 'Tis a blushing, shame -faced spirit, that mutinies in a man's bosom ; it fills one full of obstacles; it made me once restore a purse of gold that by chance I found; it beggars any man that keeps it; it is turned out of all towns and cities for a dangerous thing; and every man that means to live well endeavors to trust to himself and live without it.
The word philosophy simply means a pursuit of wisdom, the purpose of life, and a search for Truth. However, this quest, because it originates with man, can never find the answers. In fact, man cannot reach God or know God by intellectual pursuit.
Forget not that the man who cannot enjoy his own natural gifts in silence, and find his reward in the exercise of them, will generally find himself badly off.
An earnest purpose finds time, or makes it. It seizes on spare moments, and turns fragments to golden account.
A writer takes earnest measures to secure his solitude and then finds endless ways to squander it.
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