William James Quotes
-
Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they've got a second.
-
Every way of classifying a thing is but a way of handling it for some particular purpose.
-
All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience, factors to which the environment and the lessons it has so far taught us must learn to bend.
-
Deepest principle of human nature is to be appreciated.
-
Do something everyday for no other reason than you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.
-
Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.
-
One of the greatest discoveries of our time is that a man can alter the state of their life by altering the state of their mind.
-
Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed. which give happiness. Thomas Jefferson We never enjoy perfect happiness; our most fortunate successes are mingled with sadness; some anxieties always perplex the reality of our satisfaction.
-
The perfect stillness of the night was thrilled by a more solemn silence. The darkness held a presence that was all the more felt because it was not seen. I could not any more have doubted that HE was there than that I was. Indeed, I felt myself to be, if possible, the less real of the two.
-
When you have broken the reality into concepts you never can reconstruct it in its wholeness.
-
The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as the sculptor works on his block of stone.
-
Faith is synonymous with working hypothesis.
-
The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.
-
There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood bu those who hear it.
-
The question of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological grounds.
-
Science can tell us what exists; but to compare the worths, both of what exists and of what does not exist, we must consult not science, but what Pascal calls our heart.
-
Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves ... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom.
-
... the intellect, everywhere invasive, shows everywhere its shallowing effect.
-
We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition
-
Regarding mutual tolerance: It is negative in one sense, but positive in another. It absolutely forbids us to be forward in pronouncing on the meaninglessness of forms of existence other than our own; and it commands us to tolerate, respect, and indulge those whom we see harmlessly interested and happy in their own ways, however unintelligible these may be to us. Hands off.
-
Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make very small use of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger.
-
Asceticism may be a mere expression of organic hardihood, disgusted with too much ease.
-
Religion must be considered vindicated in a certain way from the attacks of her critics.
-
Effort is a measure of a Man.