I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny, invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man's pride.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the power of small, often overlooked moral influences over grand achievements.
William James highlights the significance of subtle, individual actions and moral forces that may seem insignificant but possess the potential to create profound change over time. He contrasts the allure of grandeur with the lasting impact of small, persistent moral influences, suggesting that true progress often comes from the ground up, through everyday interactions rather than monumental successes.
In practice
During a motivational talk, emphasizing the importance of small acts of kindness in making a difference.
Many persons nowadays seem to think that any conclusion must be very scientific if the arguments in favor of it are derived from twitching of frogs' legs (especially if the frogs are decapitated) and that, on the other hand, any doctrine chiefly vouched for by the feelings of human beings (with heads on their shoulders) must be benighted and superstitious.
The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.
All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience, factors to which the environment and the lessons it has so far taught us must learn to bend.
The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association
As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.
The necessary thing for anyone to be happy and contented as long as he lives is working for the ones who will come after him rather than working for himself... One can reach the true delight and happiness in the life only by working for the existence, honor, and happiness of the future generations.
We should never allow our fears or the expectations of others to set the frontiers of our destiny.
The best that can be said of my life so far is that it has been industrious, and the best that can be said of me is that I have not pretended to what I was not.
When you release the wrongdoer from the wrong, you cut a malignant tumor out of your inner life. You set a prisoner free, but you discover that the real prisoner was yourself.
It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that.
The profit we possess after study is to have become better and wiser.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.