William James Quotes

A Beethoven string-quartet is truly, as some one has said, a scraping of horses' tails on cats' bowels, and may be exhaustively described in such terms; but the application of this description in no way precludes the simultaneous applicability of an entirely different description.

William James

• Different
• Science
• Horse
• Term
• Application

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• It is exciting to write about the present once one gets beyond the trivia of the moment. As a time to live in, as a time to think about, the present is intriguing.

  

  Vikram Seth
  • Time
  • Live
  • Present

• I applied to only one college - the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania - and was fortunate to be accepted. After graduation, I headed to Wall Street and worked as I had dreamed.

  

  Karen Finerman
  • School
  • College
  • Wall

• I think it's such a powerful thing: Words and melodies, and you put them together. I couldn't really picture a world without music. It would be quite boring.

  

  Sabrina Carpenter
  • World
  • Music
  • Together

• I do all of my good thinking at over 65 miles per hour. The speed limit is, luckily, the same speed as my brainstorming speed.

  

  Maggie Stiefvater
  • Good
  • Thinking
  • Same

• There's a long history of private-company cooperation with the NSA that dates back to at least the 1970s.

  

  Barton Gellman
  • Long
  • History
  • Cooperation

• I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.

  

  Oscar Wilde
  • God
  • Think
  • Man

• A friendship can weather most things and thrive in thin soil; but it needs a little mulch of letters and phone calls and small, silly presents every so often - just to save it from drying out completely.

  

  Pam Brown
  • Small
  • Friendship
  • Silly

• I read in the paper that I'd slashed my wrists. But I didn't.

  

  Gail Porter
  • Read
  • Paper

• 'Morning Joe' host Mika Brzezinski's personal life is a minefield. Her father is Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, and while one brother is an Obama appointee, the other advises Romney.

  

  Brown Campbell
  • Life
  • Father
  • Morning

• I had an ethnic preference, if you will, for the warm weather, coming from Chennai. So I finally said, 'Look, can I move to California?' because every time I come here, it would be in the 70s or 80s, and there would be beautiful blue sky and warm.

  

  Ram Shriram
  • Time
  • Beautiful
  • Sky

• As a child, I was hyper, I was a clown and I was sensitive. Today I'm all of the above, except I've refrained from bouncing off the walls.

  

  Nadine Velazquez
  • Today
  • Child
  • Walls

• Acting is the work of two people - it's only possible when you have the complicity, the help, even the manipulation of a director.

  

  Victoria Abril
  • People
  • Work
  • Help

• Acting is something that I always wanted, but I never paid attention to the notion that it might actually work out. You have all sorts of ideas about what you want to do - at one stage, I wanted to be a jockey - but this is the one that's a big deal.

  

  Olivia Thirlby
  • Work
  • Attention
  • Ideas

• I am an earnest advocate of manual training and trade teaching for black boys, and for white boys, too.

  

  W. E. B. Du Bois
  • Training
  • Boys
  • Manual

• A man has a birthright to be tired and retired. I am retired completely.

  

  Rajneesh
  • Man
  • Tired
  • Retired

• Children don't really understand the concept of health. You can't give them an apple and say 'if you eat this you will be healthy when you're older' because they don't understand. You have to find a different way to motivate them.

  

  Magnus Scheving
  • Different
  • Children
  • Health

• Sometimes you have to be okay with what you are to the world, where you are in the world, and make the most of it.

  

  Jack McBrayer
  • World
  • You
  • Sometimes

• I missed the television train at some point. I don't know what happened, but now I've created a complex about it. I'm missing out on what everybody's watching, and now I can't even begin to think about starting to watch a television show because it's been so long. I don't even have a Netflix account.

  

  Dakota Johnson
  • Long
  • Think
  • Missing

• Because I am Olympic champion, everyone assumes I am this perfect athlete who should never lose. Every time I step in the ring, I am expected to win.

  

  Jade Jones
  • Time
  • Perfect
  • Athlete

• If none of us ever read a book that was 'dangerous,' had a friend who was 'different,' or joined an organization that advocated 'change,' we would all be just the kind of people Joe McCarthy wants.

  

  Edward R. Murrow
  • People
  • Different
  • Book

• Science, which cuts its way through the muddy pond of daily life without mingling with it, casts its wealth to right and left, but the puny boatmen do not know how to fish for it.

  

  Alexander Herzen
  • Life
  • Science
  • Daily

• If you're on a road trip, you need driving music.

  

  Edgar Wright
  • Music
  • Road
  • Driving

• Even Jack Kerouac, who famously said, "First thought, best thought," benefited from editing. His earliest works are the most edited, and they're the best of his writing.

  

  K. M. Soehnlein
  • Writing
  • Firsts
  • Editing

• A Beethoven string-quartet is truly, as some one has said, a scraping of horses' tails on cats' bowels, and may be exhaustively described in such terms; but the application of this description in no way precludes the simultaneous applicability of an entirely different description.

  

  William James
  • Different
  • Science
  • Horse