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William James Quotes - Page 13

All Quotes Acceptance Achievement Adversity Affection Age Alcohol Anxiety Apology Appreciation Art Attitude Authority Belief Business Challenges Change Character Children Choices College Common Sense Community Consciousness Courage Creativity Criticism Design Desire Destiny Doubt Earth Education Effort Encouragement Energy Ethics Evil Excellence Exercise Experience Failing Failure Faith Fate Fear Feelings Fighting Free Will Freedom Friendship Genius Giving Giving Up Glory God Happiness Hate Heart Heroism History Holiday Honesty Human Nature Imagination Impulse Individuality Inspiration Inspirational Knowledge Laughter Leadership Learning Letting Go Life Literature Logic Loss Love Lying Making A Difference Memories Military Motivation Motivational Opportunity Optimism Pain Passion Past Perception Perseverance Personality Perspective Philosophy Pleasure Politics Positive Positive Thinking Prayer Procrastination Psychology Purpose Quality Reading Reality Reflection Religion Responsibility Risk Running Science Self Esteem Self Love Society Soul Stress Struggle Study Success Suffering Teaching Today Truth Virtue Vision Wall War Weakness Wealth Wisdom Worry

Owing to the fact that all experience is a process, no point of view can ever be the last one

Owing to the fact that all experience is a process, no point of view can ever be the last one

Truth, Views, Owing

William James (2013). “The Meaning of Truth”, p.48, Courier Corporation

If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing. It would take us as long to recall a space of time as it took the original time to elapse, and we should never get ahead with our thinking. All recollected times undergo, accordingly, what M. Ribot calls foreshortening; and this foreshortening is due to the omission of an enormous number of facts which filled them.

Thinking, Numbers, Space

Serious development of the personality begins at the closet door.

Fashion, Doors, Personality

We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. ...Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out.

Character, Fate, Evil

"The Principles of Psychology". Book by William James, 1890.

It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.

Birthday, Character, Age

William James (2012). “The Principles of Psychology”, p.121, Courier Corporation

Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.

Knowledge, Occupation, Life Is

William James, John Dewey, John M. Capps, Donald Capps (2005). “James and Dewey on Belief and Experience”, p.120, University of Illinois Press

Religious awe is the same organic thrill which we feel in a forest at twilight, or in a mountain gorge.

Religious, Twilight, Mountain

William James (2013). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.27, Courier Corporation

A difference which makes no difference is no difference at all.

Differences

"William James: The Essential Writings". Book by Bruce W. Wilshire, 1971.

Religion . . . shall mean for us the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude.

Mean, Men, Solitude

William James (2013). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.31, Courier Corporation

Most men have a good memory for facts connected with their own pursuits.

Memories, Philosophy, Educational

William James (2012). “Psychology: The Briefer Course”, p.161, Courier Corporation

Habit is a second nature, or rather, it is 'ten times nature'.

Inspirational, Educational, Philosophy

"Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals".

History is a bath of blood.

Blood, History, Baths

William James (1987). “Writings, 1902-1910”, p.1281, Library of America

The emotions aren't always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action.

Emotional, Feelings, Action

The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist.

Education, World, Consciousness

William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.497, Booklassic

Every man who possibly can should force himself to a holiday of a full month in a year, whether he feels like taking it or not.

Work, Holiday, Men

William James (1987). “Essays, Comments, and Reviews”, p.4, Harvard University Press

An impression which simply flows in at the pupil's eyes or ears and in no way modifies his active life, is an impression gone to waste. It is physiologically incomplete... Its motor consequences are what clinch it.

Eye, Waste, Flow

William James (2008). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.17, Cosimo, Inc.

The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.

Passion, Math, Unions

William James (1987). “Essays, Comments, and Reviews”, p.356, Harvard University Press

I have often thought the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it comes upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: This is the real me!.

Life, Success, Attitude

Letter to Alice Gibbons James, 1878

How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.

Happiness, Laughter, Men

William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature”, p.40, Xist Publishing

Faith branches off the highroad before reason begins

Political, Branches, Reason

The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.

Lonely, Civilization, Agony

William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.158, Booklassic

'What would be better for us to believe!' This sounds very like a definition of truth

Truth, Believe, Sound

William James (1970). “Essays in Pragmatism”, p.156, Simon and Schuster

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.

Views, Bird, Different

William James (2012). “The Principles of Psychology”, p.243, Courier Corporation

As Charles Lamb says, there is nothing so nice as doing good by stealth and being found out by accident, so I now say it is even nicer to make heroic decisions and to be prevented by 'circumstances beyond your control' from ever trying to execute them.

Nice, Decision, Trying

Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement, with reality.

Truth, Mean, Reality

William James (2016). “William James: Essays and Lectures”, p.99, Routledge

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