Every time a resolve or fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing fruit it is worse than a chance lost it works to hinder future emotions from taking the normal path of discharge.

— William James

Faith is one of the forces by which men live the total absence of it means collapse.

— William James

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

— William James

Fear of life in one form or another is the great thing to exorcise.

— William James

Footnotes the little dogs yapping at the heels of the text.

— William James

Four Characters in Consciousness—How does it go on? We notice immediately four important characters in the process, of which it shall be the duty of the present chapter to treat in a general way:1) Every 'state' tends to be part of a personal consciousness. 2) Within each personal consciousness states are always changing. 3) Each personal consciousness is sensibly continuous.4) It is interested in some parts of its object to the exclusion of others, and welcomes or rejects—chooses from among them, in a word—all the while.

— William James

Genius in truth means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an habitual way.

— William James

Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.

— William James

Habit is the enormous flywheel of society its most precious conservative agent. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding or regretting of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all.

— William James

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