The man whose acquisitions stick is the man who is always achieving and advancing whilst his neighbors, spending most of their time… — William James Copy Share Image
Take the happiest man, the one most envied by the world, and in nine cases out of ten his inmost consciousness is… — William James Copy Share Image
Religion . . . shall mean for us the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude. — William James Copy Share Image
Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. — William James Copy Share Image
There can be no final truth in ethics any more than in physics, until the last man has had his experience and… — William James Copy Share Image
I have often thought the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral… — William James Copy Share Image
Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder; but modern man inherits all the… — William James Copy Share Image
Genius is the capacity for seeing relationships where lesser men see none. — William James Copy Share Image
Geniuses are commonly believed to excel other men in their power of sustained attention . . . But it is their genius… — William James Copy Share Image
Man alone of all the creatures of earth can change his own pattern. Man alone is the architect of his own destiny. — William James Copy Share Image
Man's chief difference from the brutes lies in the exuberant excess of his subjective propensities. Prune his extravagance, sober him, and you… — 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
The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the damnatory judgment passed on their failures by… — William James Copy Share Image
Much of what we call evil is due entirely to the way men take the phenomenon. It can so often be converted… — William James Copy Share Image
Man is essentially the imitative animal. His whole educabilityand in fact the whole history of civilization depend on this trait, which his… — William James Copy Share Image
Man, whatever else he may be, is primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in adapting him to… — William James Copy Share Image
Most men have a good memory for facts connected with their own pursuits. — William James Copy Share Image
The intellectual life of man consists almost wholly in his substitution of conceptual order for the perceptual order in which his experience… — William James Copy Share Image
A man of sense is never discouraged by difficulties; he redoubles his industry and his diligence, he perseveres and infallibly prevails at… — 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
Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. Not through mere perversity do men run after it. — William James Copy Share Image
The science of logic never made a man reason rightly, and the science of ethics never made a man behave rightly. The… — William James Copy Share Image
When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when… — 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
