What we really need the poet's and orator's I help to keep alive in us is not, then, the common and gregarious… — 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
If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing. It would take us… — William James Copy Share Image
Considering the inner fitness of things, one would rather think that the very first act of a will endowed with freedom should… — William James Copy Share Image
We hear in these days of scientific enlightenment a great deal of discussion about the efficacy of Prayer. Many reasons are given… — William James Copy Share Image
Creatures extremely low in the intellectual scale may have conception. All that is required is that they should recognize the same experience… — William James Copy Share Image
Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make very small use… — William James Copy Share Image
The bottom of being is left logically opaque to us, a datum in the strict sense of the word, something we simply… — 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
Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she… — William James Copy Share Image
Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris's Utopias should all be… — William James Copy Share Image
Selection is the very keel on which our mental ship is built. And in this case of memory its utility is obvious.… — William James Copy Share Image
Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice. — William James Copy Share Image
The art of remembering is the art of thinking. When we wish to fix a new thing in either our own mind… — William James Copy Share Image
It does not follow, because our ancestors made so many errors of fact and mixed them with their religion, that we should… — William James Copy Share Image
Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon… — William James Copy Share Image
Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act… — William James Copy Share Image
It is very important that teachers should realize the importance of habit. — William James Copy Share Image
If I should throw down a thousand beans at random upon a table, I could doubtless, by eliminating a sufficient number of… — William James Copy Share Image
No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose in society… — William James Copy Share Image
Every man who possibly can should force himself to a holiday of a full month in a year, whether he feels like… — 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
