William James Quotes
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But petitional prayer is only one department of prayer; and if we take the word in the wider sense as meaning every kind of inward communion or conversation with the power recognized as divine, we can easily see that scientific criticism leaves it untouched. Prayer in this wide sense is the very soul and essence of religion.
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I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.
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Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
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In the matter of belief, we are all extreme conservatives.
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If any one phrase could gather its (religion's) universal message, that phrase would be, - All is not vanity in this Universe, whatever the appearances may suggest.
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Our life is always deeper than we know, is always more divine than it seems, and hence we are able to survive degradations and despairs which otherwise must engulf us.
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We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.
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If you can change your mind, you can change your life.
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As we take, in fact, a general view of the wonderful stream of our consciousness, what strikes us first is this different pace of its parts. Like a bird 's life, it seems to be made of an alternation of flights and perchings.
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The good or bad is not in the circumstance, but only in the mind...that encounters it.
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That which is most personal, is most interesting.
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As a rule reading fiction is as hard to me as trying to hit a target by hurling feathers at it. I need resistance to celebrate!
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Considering the inner fitness of things, one would rather think that the very first act of a will endowed with freedom should be to sustain the belief in the freedom itself.
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To give the theory plenty of 'rope' and see if it hangs itself eventually is better tactics than to choke it off at the outset b abstract accusations of self-contradiction
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Men's activities are occupied into ways -- in grappling with external circumstances and in striving to set things at one in their own topsy-turvy mind.
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It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.
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To neglect the wise sayings of great thinkers is to deny ourselves the truest education.
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Intelligence is a fixed goal with variable means of achieving it.
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Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that assures the successful outcome of any venture.
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Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. There is in the living act of perception always something that glimmers and twinkles and will not be caught, and for which reflection comes too late.
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We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.
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So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.
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The instinct of ownership is fundamental in man's nature.
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My experience is what I agree to attend to.