William James

It is so human a book that I don’t see how belief in its divine authority can survive the reading of it.

William James

It is very important that teachers should realize the importance of habit.

William James

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.

William James

Knowledge about life is one thing effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.

William James

Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought.

William James

Let any one try, I will not say to arrest, but to notice or attend to, the present moment of time. One of the most baffling experiences occurs. Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.

William James

Life feels like a real fight – as if there were something really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities and faithfulnesses, are needed to redeem.

William James

Life is one long struggle between conclusions based on abstract ways of conceiving cases, and opposite conclusions prompted by our instinctive perception of them.

William James

Life shall be built in doing and suffering and creating.

William James

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

William James