William James Quotes About Life

Quotes about: Life

• The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.

  William James

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational
• 

  The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.

  William James

  Life, Change, Positive

  "Living the Abundant Life". Book by Thomas S. Monson, 2004.

• Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.

  William James

  Life, Positive, Encouraging

  William James (2010). “The Will to Believe: And Other Essays in Popular Philosophy”, p.80, The Floating Press

• To change ones life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly.

  William James

  Life, Change, Philosophical

• Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.

  William James

  Inspirational, Life, Hate

• We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.

  William James

  Life, Trust, Truth

  William James (1970). “Essays in Pragmatism”, p.170, Simon and Schuster

• It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.

  William James

  Life, Faith, Optimism

  William James (1956). “The Will to Believe: And Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, and Human Immortality”, p.59, Courier Corporation

• 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.

  William James

  Life, Success, Everyday

  William James (2012). “Psychology: The Briefer Course”, p.15, Courier Corporation

• Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make very small use of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger.

  William James

  Inspirational, Life, Moving

  Letter toWincenty Lutoslawski, 6 May 1906

• Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendships and intimacies … 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 mere inertia.

  William James

  Life, Friendship, Littles

  William James (2008). “The Letters of William James”, Cosimo, Inc.

• This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it.

  William James

  Life, Inspiration, Purpose

  William James (2015). “Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays”, p.42, 谷月社

• Habit simplifies our movements, makes them accurate, and diminishes fatigue.

  William James

  Life, Happiness, Movement

  William James, Robert D Richardson (2010). “The Heart of William James”, p.105, Harvard University Press

• Most of us can learn to live in perfect comfort on higher levels of power. Everyone knows that on any given day there are energies slumbering in him which the incitements of that day do not call forth. Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. It is evident that our organism has stored-up reserves of energy that are ordinarily not called upon - deeper and deeper strata of explosible material, ready for use by anyone who probes so deep. The human individual usually lives far within his limits.

  William James

  Life, Power, Perfect

• To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life.

  William James

  Life, Positive, Art

• I have often thought the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it comes upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: This is the real me!.

  William James

  Life, Success, Attitude

  Letter to Alice Gibbons James, 1878

• If this life is not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight.

  William James

  Life, Success, Real

  William James (1956). “The Will to Believe: And Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, and Human Immortality”, p.61, Courier Corporation

• Lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or being.

  William James

  Inspirational, Life

  William James (1985). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.256, Harvard University Press

• We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.

  William James

  Life, Philosophical, Fate

  William James (1987). “Essays, Comments, and Reviews”, p.3, Harvard University Press

• A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.

  William James

  Life, Stay Strong, Ties

  William James (2013). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.136, Courier Corporation

• Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.

  William James

  Life, Humorous, Philosophical

• We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can. . . . The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work.

  William James

  Life, Work, Hands

  William James (2012). “Psychology: The Briefer Course”, p.12, Courier Corporation

• We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can...in the acquisition of a new habit, we must take car to launch ourselves with as strong and decided initiative as possible. Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life.

  William James

  Life, Success, Strong

• Fatalism, whose solving word in all crises of behavior is All striving is vain, will never reign supreme, for the impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race. Moral creeds which speak to that impulse will be widely successful in spite of inconsistency, vagueness, and shadowy determination of expectancy. Man needs a rule for his will, and will invent one if one be not given him.

  William James

  Life, Determination, Successful

  William James (2015). “Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays”, p.58, 谷月社

• We are all potentially such sick men. The sanest and best of us are of one clay with lunatics and prison-inmates. And whenever we feel this, such a sense of the vanity of our voluntary career comes over us, that all our morality appears but as a plaster hiding a sore it can never cure, and all our well-doing as the hollowest substitute for that well-being that our lives ought to be grounded in, but alas! are not.

  William James

  Life, Men, Vanity

  "Essays in Religion and Morality".

• There is no being capable of a spiritual life who does not have within him a jungle. Where the wolf constantly HOWLS and the OBSCENE bird of night chatters endlessly.

  William James

  Life, Spiritual, Night

Page 1 of 2

← Prev

1

2

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin