I have often thought the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it comes upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: This is the real me!.
Interpretation
A person's true character can be revealed by their most passionate and intense moments.
William James suggests that to truly understand someone's character, one must look for the moments when they feel most alive and active. During these peak experiences, an inner voice reveals their authentic self, indicating that character is closely tied to passion and sincerity.
In practice
In a personal development workshop, one might use this quote to illustrate how self-discovery happens in moments of high energy and passion.
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.
America must begin the struggle for democracy at home. The advocacy of free elections in Europe by American officials is hypocrisy when free elections are not held in great sections of America.
Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination.
There is no truth except the truth that exists within you. Everything else is what someone is telling you.
And yet the true creator is necessity, which is the mother of invention.
I don't think you ever understand your life - not till it's finished and probably not then either. The more I live the less I seem to understand.
In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.