William James

"Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune."

"When you have to make a choice and don't make it that is in itself a choice."

"We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood."

"Man lives by habits indeed but what he lives for is thrill and excitements. ... From time immemorial war has been ... the supremely thrilling excitement."

"Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact."

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

"Men habitually use only a small part of the powers which they possess and which they might use under appropriate circumstances."

"Be willing to have it so acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune."

"Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequence of any misfortune."

"Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation."

"There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision."

"The greatest discovery of our generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. As you think, so shall you be."

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

"The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook."

"To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them ratified."

"Most people live in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole organism should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger."

"Everyone is familiar with the phenomenon of feeling more or less alive on different days. Everyone knows on any given day that there are energies slumbering in him which the incitements of that day do not call forth, but which he might display if these were greater. Most of us feel as if a sort of cloud weighed upon us, keeping us below our highest notch of clearness in discernment, sureness in reasoning, or firmness in deciding. Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources. Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives far within his limits; he possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use."

"All religions and spiritual traditions begin with the cry "Help!"

"There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference."

"Much of what we call evil can often be converted into a bracing and tonic good by a simple change of the sufferer's inner attitude from one of fear to one of fight"