Quotes from William James

Since I gave up to God all ownership in my own life, he has guided me in a thousand ways, and has opened my path in a way almost incredible to those who do not enjoy the blessing of a truly surrendered life.

All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.

It is like a general informing his soldiers that it is better to keep out of battle forever than to risk a single wound. Not so are victories either over enemies or over nature gained. Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf. At any rate, it seems the fittest thing for the empiricist philosopher.

How comes the world to be here at all instead of the nonentity which might be imagined in its place? ... from nothing to being there is no logical bridge.

I gave all up to him to do with me as he pleased, and was willing that God should rule over me at his pleasure

Common sense is BETTER for one sphere of life, science for another, philosophic criticism for a third; but whether either be TRUER absolutely, Heaven only knows.

In forming a judgment of ourselves now, Edwards writes, we should certainly adopt that evidence which our supreme Judge will chiefly make use of when we come to stand before him at the last day…. There is not one grace of the Spirit of God, of the existence of which, in any professor of religion, Christian practice is not the most decisive evidence…. The degree in which our experience is productive of practice shows the degree in which our experience is spiritual and divine.

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so I stand here without further deprecatory words.

But if, on the other hand, our theory should allow that a book may well be a revelation in spite of errors and passions and deliberate human composition, if only it be a true record of the inner experiences of great-souled persons wrestling with the crises of their fate, then the verdict would be much more favorable.

Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.

the rhetorical formulas of objurgation with which I was to begin a page of inquiries of you: whether you were dead