All William James Quotes
- Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees… Each
- It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. All
- We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life.… Afraid
- There are two lives, the natural and the spiritual, and we must lose the one before we can participate in the other. Inspirational
- Procrastination is attitude's natural assassin. There's nothing so fatiguing as an uncompleted task Assassin
- We may be in the Universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling… All
- My experience is what I agree to attend to. Agree
- A man with no philosophy in him is the most inauspicious and unprofitable of all possible social mates. All
- It does not follow, because our ancestors made so many errors of fact and mixed them with their religion, that we should therefore leave off… All
- Our colleges ought to have lit up in us a lasting relish for a better kind of man, a loss of appetite for mediocrities. Appetite
- What do believers in the Absolute mean by saving that their belief affords them comfort? They mean that since in the Absolute finite evil is… Absolute
- The perfect stillness of the night was thrilled by a more solemn silence. The darkness held a presence that was all the more felt because… All
- So you see that the process of education, taken in a large way, may be described as nothing but the process of acquiring ideas or… Acquired
- Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendships and intimacies … and yet they leave… Beings
- Beyond the very extreme of fatigue and distress, we may find amounts of ease and power we never dreamed ourselves to own; sources of strength… All
- Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them, or… Ascribed
- The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal. Correctness
- Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit. Acting
- It would probably astound each of us beyond measure to be let into his neighbors mind and to find how different the scenery was there… Astound
- I am tired of the position of the dried-up critic and doubter. The believer is the true full man. (from a biography of James by… Believer