Quote

We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.

William James

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

William James
Age: 68 †
Born: 1842
Born: January 11
Died: 1910
Died: August 26
Philosopher
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
Life
Unendurable
Cling
Doomed
Philosophical
Fate
Find
Even

More quotes by William James

Image
The trail of the human serpent is thus over everything.
William James
Image
The one who thinks over his experiences most, and weaves them into systematic relations with each other, will be the one with the best memory.
William James
Image
We are not only gregarious animals, liking to be in sight of our fellows, but we have an innate propensity to get ourselves noticed, and noticed favorably, by our kind.
William James
Image
I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.
William James
Image
Lay plans as if we were to be immortal.
William James
Image
A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity.
William James
Image
The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.
William James
Image
If it works, it's true.
William James
Image
In its broadest term, religion says that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in rightful relations to it.
William James
Image
Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.
William James
Image
Whilst part of what we perceive comes through our senses from the object before us, another part (and it may be the larger part) always comes out of our own mind.
William James
Image
A little cooling down of animal excitability and instinct, a little loss of animal toughness, a little irritable weakness and descent of the pain-threshold, will bring the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight into full view, and turn us into melancholy metaphysicians.
William James
Image
Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.
William James
Image
Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources.
William James
Image
No decision is, in itself, a decision.
William James
Image
If WE claim only reasonable probability, it will be as much as men who love the truth can ever at any given moment hope to have within their grasp.
William James
Image
But petitional prayer is only one department of prayer and if we take the word in the wider sense as meaning every kind of inward communion or conversation with the power recognized as divine, we can easily see that scientific criticism leaves it untouched. Prayer in this wide sense is the very soul and essence of religion.
William James
Image
Procrastination is attitude's natural assassin. There's nothing so fatiguing as an uncompleted task
William James
Image
Strength is a facade for the proud, weakness is a mask for the lazy.
William James
Image
An idea will infect another with its own emotional interest when they have become both associated together into any sort of a mental total.
William James