William James Quotes
|
|
|
Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
[Humor]
|
|
|
|
Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.
|
|
|
|
Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state.
|
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
Each of us is in fact what he is almost exclusively by virtue of his imitative-ness.
[Role Models]
|
|
|
|
Every man who possibly can should force himself to a holiday of a full month in a year, whether he feels like taking it or not.
|
|
|
|
Every time a resolve or fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing fruit, it is worse than a chance lost; it works to hinder future emotions from taking the normal path of discharge.
[Instincts]
|
|
|
|
Every way of classifying a thing is but a way of handling it for some particular purpose.
|
|
|
|
Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.
|
|
|
|
Faith is one of the forces by which men live; the total absence of it means collapse.
|
|
|
|
Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.
|
|
|
|
Fear of life in one form or another is the great thing to exorcise.
|
|
|
|
First, you know, a new theory is attacked as absurd; then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant; finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
[Genius]
|
|
|
|
Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
[Peace]
|
|
|
|
Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor.
|
|
|
|
He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he had failed.
|
|
|
|
How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.
|
|
|
|
Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendship and intimacies, and soon their places will know them no more, and yet they leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation, to grow as they will by the roadside, expecting them to "keep" by force of inertia.
[Friendship]
|
|
|
|
|