~ William James Quotes ~

[MysteRy]

Life is one long struggle between conclusions based on abstract ways of conceiving cases and opposite conclusions prompted by our instinctive perception of them.

[MysteRy]

An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: 'There is very little difference between one man and another but what there is is very important.'

[MysteRy]

The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own peculiar ways of being happy provided those ways do not assume to interfere with ours.

[MysteRy]

The exercise of prayer in those who habitually exert it must be regarded by us doctors as the most adequate and normal of all the pacifiers of the mind and calmers of the nerves.

[MysteRy]

Every time a resolve or fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing fruit it is worse than a chance lost; it works to hinder future emotions from taking the normal path of discharge.

[MysteRy]

Seek out that particular mental attitude which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive along with which comes the inner voice which says 'This is the real me ' and when you have found that attitude follow it.

[MysteRy]

So long as the anti-militarists propose no substitute for war's disciplinary function no moral equivalent of war analogous as one might say to the mechanical equivalent of hate so long they fail to realize the full equities of the situation.

[MysteRy]

Science must constantly be reminded that her purposes are not the only purposes and that the order of uniform causation which she has use for and is therefore right in postulating may be enveloped in a wider order on which she has no claim at all.

[MysteRy]

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.

[MysteRy]

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently we must be willing to change our belief system let the past slip away expand our sense of now and dissolve the fear in our minds.

[MysteRy]

Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendships and intimacies ... and yet they leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation to grow as they will by the roadside expecting them to 'keep' by force of mere inertia.

[MysteRy]

Habit is the enormous flywheel of society its most precious conservative agent. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding or regretting of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all.