Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons.
The thinker philosophizes as the lover loves. Even were the consequences not only useless but harmful, he must obey his impulse.
Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
Man, whatever else he may be, is primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in adapting him to this world's life
Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout.
We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.
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.
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.
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.
Every sort of energy and endurance, of courage and capacity for handling life's evils, is set free in those who have religious faith.
Mental fire is what won't burn real sticks; mental water is what won't necessarily (though of course it may) put out even a mentalfire.
When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome.
The greatest empiricists among us are only empiricists on reflection: when left to their instincts, they dogmatize like infallible popes.
For I had often said that the best argument I knew for an immortal life was the existence of a man who deserved one as well as Child did.
We hear the words we have spoken, feel our own blow as we give it, or read in the bystander's eyes the success or failure of our conduct.
What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise although the philosophers generally call it recognition!
Invention, using the term most broadly, and imitation, are the two legs, so to call them, on which the human race historically has walked.
An idea will infect another with its own emotional interest when they have become both associated together into any sort of a mental total.
I am well aware how odd it must seem to some of you to hear me say that an idea is true so long as to believe it is profitable to our lives
Any object not interesting in itself may become interesting through becoming associated with an object in which an interest already exists.
Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. Not through mere perversity do men run after it.
Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.
There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise.
No reception without reaction, no impression without correlative expression, -this is the great maxim which the teacher ought never to forget.
The one who thinks over his experiences most, and weaves them into systematic relations with each other, will be the one with the best memory.
I am only a philosopher, and there is only one thing that a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers.
Cramming seeks to stamp things in by intense application immediately before the ordeal. But a thing thus learned can form but few associations.
Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?
A man of sense is never discouraged by difficulties; he redoubles his industry and his diligence, he perseveres and infallibly prevails at last.
All of our life is but a mass of small habits - practical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual - that bear us irresistibly toward our destiny.
An enormous mass of experience, both of homeopathic doctors and their patients, is invoked in favor of the efficacy of these remedies and doses.
The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the damnatory judgment passed on their failures by the opinion of the world.
True to her inveterate habit, rationalism reverts to 'principles,' and thinks that when an abstraction once is named, we own an oracular solution.
Your hopes, dreams and aspirations are legitimate. They are trying to take you airborne, above the clouds, above the storms, if you only let them.
We with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground.
If WE claim only reasonable probability, it will be as much as men who love the truth can ever at any given moment hope to have within their grasp.
Volition . . . takes place only when there are a number of conflicting systems of ideas, and depends on our having a complex field of consciousness.
Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance.
I am tired of the position of the dried-up critic and doubter. The believer is the true full man. (from a biography of James by Robert D. Richardson)
Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.
The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place in our opinion of that larger whole.
Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules; then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together into a reconciling law.
If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill. But more important than that, practicing this philosophy has made a different person of me.
'Pure experience' is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.
Of all the beautiful truths pertaining to the soul None is more gladdening or fruitful than to know You can regenerate and make yourself what you will.
The worst thing that can happen to a good teacher is to get a bad conscience about her profession because she feels herself hopeless as a psychologist.
There must always be a discrepncy between concepts and reality, because the former are static and discontinuous while the latter is dynamic and flowing
Men's activities are occupied into ways -- in grappling with external circumstances and in striving to set things at one in their own topsy-turvy mind.
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.
Man's chief difference from the brutes lies in the exuberant excess of his subjective propensities. Prune his extravagance, sober him, and you undo him.