Quotes from William James

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

We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can... . The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the ore our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work

To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that being.

One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling.

The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one.

There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise.

Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits

The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.

Habit is thus the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor.

Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.

The baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once, feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confusion.

Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation.