"These then are my last words to you. Be not afraid of
life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create
the fact."
"This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what
we make it."
"Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial
interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy
these in advance or not."
"To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported,
known, to have awareness of one's being added to that being."
"To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into
its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude
from them any element that is directly experienced."
"To change ones life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly."
"To spend life for something which outlasts it."
"To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding
the normal."
"Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system.
Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just
as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them."
"Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to
overcoming the consequences of any misfortune."
"Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does."
"Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and
feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more
direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which
is not."
"An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen
out of several all equally possible."
"An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual
with the force of revelation."
"Be willing to have it so. Acceptance of what has happened
is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune."
"Begin to be now what you will be hereafter."
"Belief creates the actual fact."
"Believe that life is worth living and your belief will
help create the fact."
"Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing,
moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing."
"Could the young but realize how soon they will become
mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct
while in the plastic state."
"Do something everyday for no other reason than 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."
"Every man who possibly can should force himself to a
holiday of a full month in a year, whether he feels like taking it or not."
"Man can alter his life by altering his thinking."
"Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate
effort to think clearly."
"Most people never run far enough on their first wind
to find out they've got a second."
"No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess,
and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage
of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely
unaffected for the better."
"Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of
an uncompleted task."
"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."
"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."
"Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness.
It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout."
"Our faith is faith in someone else's faith, and in the
greatest matters this is most the case."
"Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness
as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about
it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms
of consciousness entirely different."
"Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity successful men act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something. Soon it becomes a reality. Act, look, feel successful, conduct yourself accordingly, and you will be amazed at the positive results."
Written by William James
