Quote

We do not sing because we are happy, we are happy because we sing.

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
Inspirational
Sing
Happiness
Happy

More quotes by William James

Image
Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought.
William James
Image
Let anyone try, I will not say to arrest, but to notice or to attend to, the present moment of time. One of the most baffling experiences occurs. Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.
William James
Image
I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomena are IMPOSSIBLE.
William James
Image
Man's chief difference from the brutes lies in the exuberant excess of his subjective propensities. Prune his extravagance, sober him, and you undo him.
William James
Image
The teachers of this country, one may say, have its future in their hands.
William James
Image
Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.
William James
Image
Act in earnest and you will become earnest in all you do.
William James
Image
The ultimate test of what a truth means is the conduct it dictates or inspires.
William James
Image
Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
William James
Image
It is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we may call something there, more deep and more general than any of the special and particular senses by which the current psychology supposes existent realities to be originally revealed.
William James
Image
What a magnificent land and race is this Britain! Everything about them is of better quality than the corresponding thing in the U.S.... Yet I believe (or suspect) that ours is eventually the bigger destiny, if we can only succeed in living up to it.
William James
Image
We with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground.
William James
Image
Great indeed is Fear but it is not, as our military enthusiasts believe and try to make us believe, the only stimulus known for awakening the higher ranges of men's spiritual energy.
William James
Image
Organization and method mean much, but contagious human characters mean more in a university.
William James
Image
Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.
William James
Image
The mind is made up by what it feeds upon.
William James
Image
Far from being antecedent principles that animate the process, law, language, truth are but abstract names for its results.
William James
Image
The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.
William James
Image
... A rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those ... truths were really there, would be an irrational rule.
William James
Image
The 'I think' which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the 'I breathe' which actually does accompany them.
William James