William James Quotes
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A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed.
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Millions of items in the outward order are present to my senses which never properly enter into my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind --without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos.
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Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
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When two minds of a high order, interested in kindred subjects, come together, their conversation is chiefly remarkable for the summariness of its allusions and the rapidity of its transitions. Before one of them is half through a sentence the other knows his meaning and replies. ... His mental lungs breathe more deeply, in an atmosphere more broad and vast.
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Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in; it stains the ancient mass; but it is also tinged by what absorbs it.
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Wisdom is learning what to overlook.
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The amount of psychology which is necessary to all teachers need not be very great.
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Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us; our hour of triumph is what brings the void.
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Every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
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The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it." "This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it." "Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
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So to feel brave, act as if we were brave, use all our will to that end...and a courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of fear.
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Even if matter could do every outward thing that God does, the idea of it would not work as satisfactorily, because the chief callfor a God on modern men's part is for a being who will inwardly recognize them and judge them sympathetically. Matter disappoints this craving of our ego, so God remains for most men the truer hypothesis, and indeed remains so for definite pragmatic reasons.
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How many of us persist in a precipitate course which, but for a moment of heedlessness we might never have entered upon, simply because we hate to change our minds.
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It is as important to cultivate your silence power as your word power.
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The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.
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We and God have business with each other, and in opening ourselves to God's influence our deepest destiny is fulfilled.
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Ninety-nine hundredths or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual, from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night.
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The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact.
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If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill. But more important than that, practicing this philosophy has made a different person of me.
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It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accepts the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints.
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The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons.
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An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: "There is very little difference between one man and another; but what little there is, is very important." This distinction seems to me to go to the root of the matter.
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To know psychology, therefore, is absolutely no guarantee that we shall be good teacher.
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The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.