Quote

Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain.

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
Make
Emotional
Seize
Possible
Aspire
Opportunity
Resolution
Experience
Habits
May
Gain
Firsts
Direction
First
Gains
Every
Habit
Prompting

More quotes by William James

Image
The philosophy which is so important in each of us is not a technical matter it is our more or less dumb sense of what life honestly and deeply means. It is only partly got from books it is our individual way of just seeing and feeling the total push and pressure of the cosmos.
William James
Image
Psychology saves us from mistakes. It makes us more clear as to what we are about. We gain confidence in respect to any method which we are using as soon as we believe that it has theory as well as practice at its back.
William James
Image
The thinker philosophizes as the lover loves. Even were the consequences not only useless but harmful, he must obey his impulse.
William James
Image
All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits.
William James
Image
[Religion is] the attempt to be in harmony with an unseen order of things.
William James
Image
We all have a lifelong habit of inferiority to our full self...
William James
Image
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
Image
The war against war is going to be no holiday excursion or camping party.
William James
Image
The teachers of this country, one may say, have its future in their hands.
William James
Image
There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.
William James
Image
The old question of whether there is design is idle. The real question is what is the world, whether or not it have a designer--and that can be revealed only by the study of all nature's particulars.
William James
Image
The science of logic never made a man reason rightly, and the science of ethics never made a man behave rightly. The most such sciences can do is to help us to catch ourselves up and check ourselves, if we start to reason or to behave wrongly and to criticise ourselves more articulately after we have made mistakes.
William James
Image
Do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty.
William James
Image
Man lives by habits indeed, but what he lives for is thrill and excitements. ... From time immemorial war has been ... the supremely thrilling excitement.
William James
Image
I am well aware how odd it must seem to some of you to hear me say that an idea is true so long as to believe it is profitable to our lives
William James
Image
We hear the words we have spoken, feel our own blow as we give it, or read in the bystander's eyes the success or failure of our conduct.
William James
Image
... I am the same personal being who in old times upon the Earth had those experiences.
William James
Image
To kill time is not murder, it's suicide.
William James
Image
An idea will infect another with its own emotional interest when they have become both associated together into any sort of a mental total.
William James
Image
Anything you may hold firmly in your imagination can be yours.
William James