The Varieties of Religious Experience Quotes

“The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience, bravery to which the wings of human nature have spread themselves have been flown for religious ideals.”

― William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

topic:religion

“Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile.”

― William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

topic:naturephilosophy

“In certain diseased conditions consciousness is a mere spark, without memory of the past or thought of the future, and with the present narrowed down to some one simple emotion or sensation of the body.”

― William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

topic:memoryconsciousness

“If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.”

― William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

topic:experiencefeeling

“We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise any one who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking...”

― William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

topic:povertyambition

“Individuality is founded in feeling; and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is...”

― William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

topic:feelingcharacter

“And for morality life is a war, and the service of the highest is a sort of cosmic patriotism which also calls for volunteers.”

― William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

topic:morality

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

― William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

topic:joy

“It is that 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.”

― William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

topic:consciousness