William James Quotes Page 3

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

“Thoughts become perception, perception becomes reality. Alter your thoughts, alter your reality.”

“To change one’s life:
1. Start immediately.
2. Do it flamboyantly.
3. No exceptions.
Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted.”

“To kill time is not murder, it's suicide.”

“To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.”

“We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.”

“We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.”

“We don’t laugh because we are happy. We are happy because we laugh.”

“We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort. We postpone and postpone until those smiling possibilities are dead... By neglecting the necessary concrete labor, by sparing ourselves the little daily tax, we are positively digging the graves of our higher possibilities.”

“We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone 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 in ambition.”

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

“We may be in the Universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the meaning of it all.”

“What's mistake but a kind of take?”

“When a thing is new, people say: ‘It is not true.’ Later, when its truth becomes obvious, they say: ‘It is not important.’ Finally, when its importance cannot be denied, they say: ‘Anyway, it is not new'.”

“When thoughts do not neutralize an undesirable emotion, action will.”

“When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice.”

“Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.”

“Whenever you're in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.”

“Wherever you are, it is your friends who make your world.”

“You can alter your life by altering the state of your mind.”

“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.”

“Do every day or two something for no other reason that 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.”

“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.”

“What holds attention determines action.”

“In youth, we have an absolutely new experience, subjective or objective, every hour of the day… but as each passing year converts some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly note at all, the days smooth themselves out in recollection to contentless units, and the years grow hollow and collapse.”

“Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, 'This is the real me,' and when you have found that attitude, follow it.”

“There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.”

“The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.”

“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.”

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