What do believers in the Absolute mean by saving that their belief affords them comfort? They mean that since in the Absolute finite evil is ‘overruled’ already, we may, therefore, whenever we wish, treat the temporal as if it were potentially the eternal, be sure that we can trust its outcome, and, without sin, dismiss our fear and drop the worry of our finite responsibility. In short, they mean that we have a right ever and anon to take a moral holiday, to let the world wag in its own way, feeling that its issues are in better hands than ours and are none of our business.


William James

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We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the oppos...
WILLIAM JAMES
Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.
WILLIAM JAMES
The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his at...
WILLIAM JAMES
The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sym...
WILLIAM JAMES
The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy...
WILLIAM JAMES
Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself,...
WILLIAM JAMES
These, then are my last words to you: be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and ...
WILLIAM JAMES
The stream of thought flows on; but most of its segments fall into the bottomless abyss of oblivion....
WILLIAM JAMES
The most immutable barrier in nature is between one man's thoughts and another's.
WILLIAM JAMES
The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
WILLIAM JAMES
The great use of a life is to spend for something that outlasts it.
WILLIAM JAMES
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
WILLIAM JAMES
Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
WILLIAM JAMES
Whatever universe a professor believes in must at any rate be a universe that lends itself to length...
WILLIAM JAMES
The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his att...
WILLIAM JAMES
How can the moribund old man reason back to himself the romance, the mystery, the imminence of great...
WILLIAM JAMES
Wisdom is learning what to overlook.
WILLIAM JAMES
To spend life for something which outlasts it.
WILLIAM JAMES
The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS. That - with the squ...
WILLIAM JAMES
If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you...
WILLIAM JAMES
The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.
WILLIAM JAMES
Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to b...
WILLIAM JAMES
The path to cheerfulness is to sit cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already t...
WILLIAM JAMES
Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully ...
WILLIAM JAMES
Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendship and in...
WILLIAM JAMES
Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us.
WILLIAM JAMES
Do every day or two something for no other reason than you would rather not do it, so that when the ...
WILLIAM JAMES
To change one's life: 1. Starte immediately, 2. Do it flamboyantly, 3. No exceptions. -William Jame...
WILLIAM JAMES
To change ones life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly.
WILLIAM JAMES
Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along ...
WILLIAM JAMES
Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible
WILLIAM JAMES
Ninety-nine hundredths or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is pur...
WILLIAM JAMES
No human being ever learns to live until he has awakened to the dormant powers within him
WILLIAM JAMES
The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.
WILLIAM JAMES
Tell him to live by yes and no -- yes to everything good, no to everything bad.
WILLIAM JAMES