William James Quotes & Sayings (Page 5)

“Whatever universe a professor believes in must at any rate be a universe that lends itself to lengthy discourse. A universe definable in two sentences is something for which the professorial intellect has no use. No faith in anything of that cheap kind!”

“Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.”

“Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.”

“Action may not bring happiness but there is no happiness without action.”

“Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.”

“The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.”

“There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.”

“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.”

“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.”

“No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.”