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William James quotes

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“Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile.” William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
“A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.” William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
“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, The Varieties of Religious Experience
“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.” William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
“We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise any one who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking...” William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
“It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.” William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
“Religion, in short, is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.” William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
“There are two lives, the natural and the spiritual, and we must lose the one before we can participate in the other.” William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
“The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says...” William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
“Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation.” William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
“The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience, bravery to which the wings of human nature have spread themselves have been flown for religious ideals.” William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
“Individuality is founded in feeling; and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is...” William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
“The God whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals.” William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
“There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious.” William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
“Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.” William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
“And for morality life is a war, and the service of the highest is a sort of cosmic patriotism which also calls for volunteers.” William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
“If the grace of God miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door, then.” William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
“In certain diseased conditions consciousness is a mere spark, without memory of the past or thought of the future, and with the present narrowed down to some one simple emotion or sensation of the body.” William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
“An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of a revelation.” William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
“If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.” William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
“There is thus an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise.” William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

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philosophy consciousness spirituality human nature religion life God truth feeling tenderness science humor smile knowledge fear happiness rationality weakness poverty motivation

Related sources

The Varieties of Religious Experience (21)