Quotes from William James

Religious feeling is thus an absolute addition to the subject's range of life. It gives him a new sphere of power. When the outward battle is lost, and the outward world disowns him, it redeems and vivifies an interiour world which otherwise would be an empty waste.

Truth in our ideas means their power to work.

You must bring out of each word its practical cash-value, set it at work within the stream of your experience.

Work usually follows will.

What a teacher needs to know about psychology "might almost be written on the palm of one's hand."

Psychology ought certainly to give the teacher radical help.

The amount of psychology which is necessary to all teachers need not be very great.

The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly.

Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive.

Procrastination is attitude's natural assassin. There's nothing so fatiguing as an uncompleted task

We can change our circumstances by a mere change of our attitude.

The work that leads to a doctor's degree is a constant temptation to sacrifice one's growth as a man to one's growth as a specialist.

In all primary school work the principle of multiple impressions is well recognized.

The most any one can do is to confess as candidly as he can the grounds for the faith that is in him, and leave his example to work on others as it may.

Results should not be too voluntarily aimed at or too busily thought of. They are sure to float up of their own accord from a long enough daily work at a given matter.

Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions.

Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.

To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.

It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.

Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, This is the real me, and when you have found that attitude, follow it.

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.

So to feel brave, act as if we were brave, use all our will to that end...and a courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of fear.

We want all our friends to tell us our bad qualities; it is only the particular a.. that does so whom we can't tolerate