When happiness is actually in possession, the thought of evil can no more acquire the feeling of reality than the thought of good can gain reality when melancholy rules. To the man actively happy, from whatever cause, evil simply cannot then and there be believed in.
Interpretation
True happiness diminishes the perception of evil or negativity, making it difficult to believe in them.
William James suggests that when a person is genuinely happy, their ability to perceive evil or negativity is greatly diminished. Happiness creates a mental state where negative thoughts cannot gain traction, just as sadness can distort the perception of positive aspects of life. This highlights the powerful influence of emotions on our perception of reality.
In practice
In a motivational speech about the power of positive thinking.
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.
...Be grateful for what you have to be thankful for instead of complaining about the little things that annoy you.
The happiness of one's own heart alone cannot satisfy the soul; one must try to include, as necessary to one's own happiness, the happiness of others.
I live a fantastic life. Why should I complain about awards?
Every single diet I ever fell off of was because of potatoes and gravy of some sort.
Coarse rice to eat, water to drink, my bended arm for a pillow - therein is happiness. Wealth and rank attained through immoral means are nothing but drifting clouds.
It seems to me that I will always be happy in the place where I am not.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.