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Divinity lies all around us, but society remains too hidebound to accept that fact...The mother sea and the fountain-head of all religions lies in the mystical experiences of the individual.

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
Society
Experiences
Fact
Sea
Individual
Remains
Facts
Accept
Mother
Lies
Mystical
Around
Accepting
Fountain
Head
Divinity
Lying
Religions

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Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us our hour of triumph is what brings the void. Not the Jews of the captivity, but those of the days of Solomon 's glory are those from whom the pessimistic utterances in our Bible come.
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This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it.
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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.
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Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.
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Between what a man calls me and what he simply calls mine the line is difficult to draw. We feel and act about certain things that are ours very much as we feel and act about ourselves.
William James
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The last peculiarity of consciousness to which attention is to be drawn in this first rough description of its stream is that it is always interested more in one part of its object than in another, and welcomes and rejects, or chooses, all the while it thinks.
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We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.
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To change one's life: a. Start immediately b. B. Do it flamboyantly c. No exceptions Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted.
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The mind of your own enemy, the pupil, is working away from you, as keenly and eagerly as is the mind of the commander on the other side from the scientific general. Just what the respective enemies want and think, and what they know or do not know, are as hard things for the teachers as for the general to find out.
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Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.
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The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.
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Habit simplifies our movements, makes them accurate, and diminishes fatigue.
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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.
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The difference between an interesting and a tedious teacher consists in little more than the inventiveness by which the one is able to mediate these associations and connections, and in the dullness in discovering such transitions which the other shows.
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Geniuses are commonly believed to excel other men in their power of sustained attention . . . But it is their genius making them attentive, not their attention making geniuses of them.
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An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.
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The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.
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Do something everyday for no other reason than you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.
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If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.
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As the art of reading (after a certain stage in one's education) isthe art of skipping, so the art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
William James