'Pure experience' is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with… — William James Copy Share Image
We with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest... But the trees also commingle their… — William James Copy Share Image
The teacher's prime concern should be to ingrain into the pupil that assortment of habits that shall be most useful to him… — William James Copy Share Image
Old age has the last word: the purely naturalistic look at life, however enthusiastically it may begin, is sure to end in… — William James Copy Share Image
An impression which simply flows in at the pupil's eyes or ears and in no way modifies his active life, is an… — William James Copy Share Image
The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change… — William James Copy Share Image
Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting… — William James Copy Share Image
The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it." "This life is worth living, we can… — William James Copy Share Image
So you see that the process of education, taken in a large way, may be described as nothing but the process of… — William James Copy Share Image
Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. There is in… — William James Copy Share Image
“Religious feeling is thus an absolute addition to the subject's range of life. It gives him a new sphere of power. When… — William James Copy Share Image
If theological ideas prove to have a value for concrete life, they will be true, for pragmatism, in the sense of being… — William James Copy Share Image
Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed. which give… — William James Copy Share Image
If this life is not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no… — William James Copy Share Image
For I had often said that the best argument I knew for an immortal life was the existence of a man who… — William James Copy Share Image
We can act as if there were a God; feel as if we were free; consider Nature as if she were full… — William James Copy Share Image
Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and disdains; under all misleading wrappings it pounces unerringly upon the human… — William James Copy Share Image
To change one's life: a. Start immediately b. B. Do it flamboyantly c. No exceptions Never suffer an exception to occur till… — William James Copy Share Image
Life is one long struggle between conclusions based on abstract ways of conceiving cases, and opposite conclusions prompted by our instinctive perception… — William James Copy Share Image
The love of life, at any and every level of development, is the religious impulse. — William James Copy Share Image
Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact. --William James — William James Copy Share Image
It is art that makes life, and I know of no substitute whatsoever for the force and beauty of its process. — William James Copy Share Image
The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it. --William James — William James Copy Share Image
“The best use of life is to spend it for something that outlasts it.” — William James Copy Share Image
Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules; then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together… — William James Copy Share Image
Our life is always deeper than we know, is always more divine than it seems, and hence we are able to survive… — William James Copy Share Image
These then are my last words to you. Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief… — William James Copy Share Image
There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise. — William James Copy Share Image
Fatalism, whose solving word in all crises of behavior is All striving is vain, will never reign supreme, for the impulse to… — William James Copy Share Image
Feed the growing human being, feed him with the sort of experience for which from year to year he shows a natural… — William James Copy Share Image
“Were one asked to characterize the life of religion in the broadest and most general terms possible, one might say that it… — William James Copy Share Image
“Not that I would not, if I could, be both handsome and fat and well-dressed, and a great athlete, and make a… — William James Copy Share Image
“Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.” — William James Copy Share Image
Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world. — William James Copy Share Image
We are all potentially such sick men. The sanest and best of us are of one clay with lunatics and prison-inmates. And whenever we… — William James Copy Share Image
In the dim background of our mind we know meanwhile what we ought to be doing: getting up, dressing ourselves, answering the person who… — William James Copy Share Image
“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… — William James Copy Share Image
Woe to him whose beliefs play fast and loose with the order which realities follow in his experience; they will lead him nowhere or… — William James Copy Share Image
We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be. — William James Copy Share Image
Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. — William James Copy Share Image
Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them,… — William James Copy Share Image
“How soon, indeed, are human things forgotten! As we meet here this morning, the Southern sun is shining on their place of burial, and… — William James Copy Share Image
