Quote

Just for today I will exercise my soul in three ways: I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out. I will do at least two things I don't want to do

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
Two
Inspiration
Today
Turn
Soul
Somebody
Way
Ways
Good
Least
Things
Turns
Found
Three
Exercise

More quotes by William James

Image
He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he had failed.
William James
Image
Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.
William James
Image
No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.
William James
Image
I don't sing because I'm happy I'm happy because I sing.
William James
Image
The baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once, feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confusion.
William James
Image
The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact.
William James
Image
Circumstance does not make me, it reveals me.
William James
Image
Agisci come se quel che fai, facesse la differenza. La fa!
William James
Image
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 of the meaning of it all.
William James
Image
I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, but I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality. I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave.
William James
Image
What holds attention determines action.
William James
Image
How can the moribund old man reason back to himself the romance, the mystery, the imminence of great things with which our old earth tingled for him in the days when he was young and well?
William James
Image
Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought.
William James
Image
The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.
William James
Image
Everything which is demanded is by that fact a good.
William James
Image
As the brain-changes are continuous, so do all these consciousnesses melt into each other like dissolving views. Properly they are but one protracted consciousness, one unbroken stream.
William James
Image
Out of time we cut 'days' and 'nights', 'summers' and 'winters.' We say what, each part of the sensible continuum is, and all these abstract whats are concepts. The intelletual life of man consists almost wholly in his substitution of a conceptual order for the persceptual order in which his experience originally comes.
William James
Image
Belief creates the actual fact.
William James
Image
Psychology ought certainly to give the teacher radical help.
William James
Image
Formula to live your dream: 1. Be bold. 2. Begin now, 3. No exceptions.
William James