Quote

It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accepts the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints.

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
Accepting
Tremendous
Differences
Practicals
Happiness
Practical
Whether
Necessity
Drab
Christian
Saint
Stoic
Universe
Passionate
Resignation
Makes
Emotional
Accepts
Way
Difference
Saints

More quotes by William James

Image
A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed.
William James
Image
Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practical affairs and lucky it is if the passion be not something as petty as a love of personal conquest over the philosopher across the way.
William James
Image
Knowledge about life is one thing effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.
William James
Image
Act in earnest and you will become earnest in all you do.
William James
Image
A Beethoven string-quartet is truly, as some one has said, a scraping of horses' tails on cats' bowels, and may be exhaustively described in such terms but the application of this description in no way precludes the simultaneous applicability of an entirely different description.
William James
Image
Men habitually use only a small part of the power which they actually possess.
William James
Image
Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
William James
Image
In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly.
William James
Image
In all this process of acquiring conceptions, a certain instinctive order is followed. There is a native tendency to assimilate certain kinds of conception at one age, and other kinds of conception at a later age.
William James
Image
The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour.
William James
Image
Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits.
William James
Image
Instinct leads, logic does but follow.
William James
Image
Invention, using the term most broadly, and imitation, are the two legs, so to call them, on which the human race historically has walked.
William James
Image
The true'to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as 'the right' is only the expedient in the way of our behaving.
William James
Image
It is only in the lonely emergencies of life that our creed is tested: then routine maxims fail, and we fall back on our gods.
William James
Image
Most men's friendships are too inarticulate.
William James
Image
Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system
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
We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort. We postpone and postpone until those smiling possibilities are dead... By neglecting the necessary concrete labor, by sparing ourselves the little daily tax, we are positively digging the graves of our higher possibilities.
William James
Image
The most immutable barrier in nature is between one man's thoughts and another's.
William James