Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
In the dim background of our mind we know meanwhile what we ought to be doing: getting up, dressing ourselves, answering the person who has spoken to us, trying to make the next step in our reasoning. But somehow we cannot start.
William James
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
William James
Age: 68 †
Born: 1842
Born: January 11
Died: 1910
Died: August 26
Philosopher
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
Philosophical
Meanwhile
Person
Answering
Trying
Somehow
Dressing
Mind
Step
Surfing
Make
Ought
Spoken
Start
Reasoning
Getting
Background
Next
Backgrounds
Cannot
More quotes by William James
There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise.
William James
Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that assures the successful outcome of any venture.
William James
Faith branches off the highroad before reason begins
William James
We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and as carefully guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous.
William James
Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working-day, he may safely leave the result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morning to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation.
William James
Strength is a facade for the proud, weakness is a mask for the lazy.
William James
Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.
William James
The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.
William James
The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact.
William James
A good hypothesis in science must have other properties than those of the phenomenon it is immediately invoked to explain, otherwise it is not prolific enough.
William James
Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive.
William James
All of our life is but a mass of small habits - practical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual - that bear us irresistibly toward our destiny.
William James
The perfection of rottenness.
William James
There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin or snicker if sad, it must not scream or curse.
William James
Results should not be too voluntarily aimed at or too busily thought of. They are sure to float up of their own accord from a long enough daily work at a given matter.
William James
An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.
William James
The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.
William James
Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. It works in the minutest crannies and it opens outthe widest vistas. It 'bakes no bread', as has been said, but it can inspire our souls with courage.
William James
A great idea goes through three stages on its way to acceptance: 1) it is dismissed as nonsense, 2) it is acknowledged as true, but insignificant, 3) finally, it is seen to be important, but not really anything new.
William James
Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system
William James