There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise.
Interpretation
Joy and tenderness often come together, especially in a life of virtue.
In this quote, William James highlights the natural connection between joy and tenderness, suggesting that these qualities coexist harmoniously in the lives of virtuous individuals. This companionship is a reflection of the deeper emotional and spiritual affinities that guide a saintly life, indicating that true joy is often rooted in compassion and caring for others.
In practice
In a motivational speech about living a fulfilling life, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of joy and compassion.
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.
I've reached the point where I hardly care whether I live or die. The world will keep on turning without me, I can't do anything to change events anyway.
Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?
Throw away the light, the definitions, and say what you see in the dark.
If individuality has no play, society does not advance; if individuality breaks out of all bounds, society perishes.
There are manifold tones of mental life, or, in other words, our psychic life may be lived at different heights, now nearer to action, now further removed from it, according to the degree of our attention to life.
Just watching an animal closely can take you out of your mind and bring you into the present moment, which is where the animal lives all the time - surrendered to life.
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