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To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life.
William James
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William James
Age: 68 †
Born: 1842
Born: January 11
Died: 1910
Died: August 26
Philosopher
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
Moment
Recovery
Opportunity
Addiction
Moments
Catch
Art
Improve
Great
Golden
Good
Reach
Life
Positive
Within
More quotes by William James
Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing of supreme quality is cheap, whatever the price one has to pay for it.
William James
Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being.
William James
Men's activities are occupied into ways -- in grappling with external circumstances and in striving to set things at one in their own topsy-turvy mind.
William James
If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.
William James
All natural goods perish. Riches take wings fame is a breath love is a cheat youth and health and pleasure vanish.
William James
There is a law in psychology that if you form a picture in your mind of what you would like to be, and you keep and hold that picture there long enough, you will soon become exactly as you have been thinking.
William James
In this real world of sweat and dirt, it seems to me that when a view of things is 'noble,' that ought to count as presumption against its truth, and as a philosophic disqualification. The prince of darkness may be a gentleman, as we are told he is, but whatever the God of earth and heaven is, he can surely be no gentleman.
William James
True ideas lead us into useful verbal and conceptual quarters as well as directly up to useful sensible termini. They lead to consistency, stability and flowing human intercourse.
William James
A remarkable parallel, which I think has never been noticed, obtains between the facts of social evolution on the one hand, and of zological evolution as expounded by Mr. Darwin on the other.
William James
If there is aught of good in the style, it is the result of ceaseless toil in rewriting. Everything comes out wrong with me at first but when once objectified in a crude shape, I can torture and poke and scrape and pat it till it offends me no more.
William James
The discovery of the power of our thoughts will prove to be the most important discovery of our time
William James
O my Bergson, you are a magician, and your book is a marvel, a real wonder in the history of philosophy . . . In finishing it I found . . . such a flavor of persistent euphony, as of a rich river that never foamed or ran thin, but steadily and firmly proceeded with its banks full to the brim.
William James
We and God have business with each other, and in opening ourselves to God's influence our deepest destiny is fulfilled.
William James
Millions of items in the outward order are present to my senses which never properly enter into my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind --without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos.
William James
We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. ...Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out.
William James
Truths emerge from facts, but they dip forward into facts again and add to them which facts again create or reveal new truth (the word is indifferent) and so on indefinitely. The 'facts' themselves meanwhile are not true. They simply are. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and terminate among them.
William James
As long as there are postmen, life will have zest.
William James
A difference which makes no difference is no difference at all.
William James
Pragmatism asks its usual question. Grant an idea or belief to be true, it says, what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?
William James
The more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or tremble because we are sorry, angry, or fearful as the case may be.
William James
