Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing of supreme quality is cheap, whatever the price one has to pay for it.
Interpretation
True quality, regardless of its cost, is ultimately valuable and should be prioritized over mere monetary considerations.
William James highlights that when one is in pursuit of quality, the ultimate achievement of superior quality comes at a price that is insignificant compared to its worth. This suggests that prioritizing true excellence, whether in experiences or possessions, brings greater value than the financial cost associated with it.
In practice
In a presentation about business ethics, one could quote this to stress the importance of quality over cost.
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.
Don’t worry about things. Don’t push. Just do your work and you’ll survive. The important thing is to have a ball, to be joyful, to be loving and to be explosive. Out of that comes everything and you grow.
Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day's work absorb your entire energies, and satisfy your widest ambition.
If desire causes suffering, it may be because we do not desire wisely, or that we are inexpert at obtaining what we desire. Instead of hiding our heads in a prayer cloth and building walls against temptation, why not get better at fulfilling desire? Salvation is for the feeble, that's what I think. I don't want salvation, I want life, all of life, the miserable as well as the superb.
A life all turbulence and noise may seem To him that leads it wise and to be praised, But wisdom is a pearl with most success Sought in still waters.
The best way to be original is to be yourself.
There is no end To what a living world Will demand of you.
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