To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them ratified.
WILLIAM JAMESWe 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.
More William James Quotes
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The instant field of the present is at all times what I call the ‘pure’ experience. It is only virtually or potentially either object or subject as yet.
WILLIAM JAMES -
The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place in our opinion of that larger whole.
WILLIAM JAMES -
The deepest longing in the human breast is the desire for appreciation.
WILLIAM JAMES -
The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.
WILLIAM JAMES -
You may not get everything you dream about, but you will never get anything you don’t dream about.
WILLIAM JAMES -
Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing of supreme quality is cheap, whatever the price one has to pay for it.
WILLIAM JAMES -
Man, biologically considered … is simply the most formidable of all beasts of prey, and, indeed, the only one that preys systematically on its own kind.
WILLIAM JAMES -
With no attempt there can be no failure; with no failure no humiliation.
WILLIAM JAMES -
Both thought and feeling are determinants of conduct, and the same conduct may be determined either by feeling or by thought.
WILLIAM JAMES -
Touch is the alpha and omega of affection.
WILLIAM JAMES -
So it is with children who learn to read fluently and well: They begin to take flight into whole new worlds as effortlessly as young birds take to the sky.
WILLIAM JAMES -
There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.
WILLIAM JAMES -
Lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or being.
WILLIAM JAMES -
The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.
WILLIAM JAMES -
It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all.
WILLIAM JAMES







