Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them,… — William James Copy Share Image
An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: "There is very little difference between one man and another; but… — William James Copy Share Image
Mankind's common instinct for reality has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism. In heroism, we feel, life's… — William James Copy Share Image
Results should not be too voluntarily aimed at or too busily thought of. They are sure to float up of their own… — William James Copy Share Image
The philosophy which is so important in each of us is not a technical matter; it is our more or less dumb… — William James Copy Share Image
Habit is the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. There is no more miserable human being than one in… — William James Copy Share Image
I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable… — William James Copy Share Image
We ought, all of us, to realize each other in this intense, pathetic, and important way. If you say that this is… — William James Copy Share Image
Ideas are so much flat psychological surface unless some mirrored matter gives them cognitive lustre. This is why as a pragmatistI have… — William James Copy Share Image
What interest, zest, or excitement can there be in achieving the right way, unless we are enabled to feel that the wrong… — William James Copy Share Image
Hardly ever can a youth transferred to the society of his betters unlearn the nasality and other vices of speech bred in… — William James Copy Share Image
(Five) thinkers since Galileo, each informing his successor of what discoveries his own lifetime had seen achieved, might have passed the torch… — William James Copy Share Image
If you say that this is absurd, that we cannot be in love with everyone at once, I merely point out to… — William James Copy Share Image
The difference between the first and second-best things in art absolutely seems to escape verbal definition -- it is a matter of… — William James Copy Share Image
The gist of the matter is this: Every impression that comes in from without, be it a sentence which we hear, an… — William James Copy Share Image
No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one… — William James Copy Share Image
The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly. What can be more base and unworthy than the… — William James Copy Share Image
The minute a man ceases to grow, no matter what his years, that minute he begins to be old. — William James Copy Share Image
Even if matter could do every outward thing that God does, the idea of it would not work as satisfactorily, because the… — 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
