Date: August 31, 1837
"But he, in his private observatory, cataloguing obscure and nebulous stars of the human mind, which as yet no man has thought of as such, — watching days and months, sometimes, for a few facts; correcting still his old records; — must relinquish display and immediate fame."
preview | full record— Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)
Date: January, 1884
"The demand for atoms of feeling, which shall be real units, seems a sheer vagary, an illegitimate metaphor."
preview | full record— James, William (1842-1910)
Date: January, 1884
"The best symbol for [the brain] seems to be an electric conductor, the amount of whose charge at any one point is a function of the total charge elsewhere."
preview | full record— James, William (1842-1910)
Date: 1901-2, 1902
"It is as if a bar of iron, without touch or sight, with no representative faculty whatever, might nevertheless be strongly endowed with an inner capacity for magnetic feeling; and as if, through the various arousals of its magnetism by magnets coming and going in its neighborhood, it might be co...
preview | full record— James, William (1842-1910)
Date: 1901-2, 1902
"This absolute determinability of our mind by abstractions is one of the cardinal facts in our human constitution. Polarizing and magnetizing us as they do, we turn towards them and from them, we seek them, hold them, hate them, bless them, just as if they were so many concrete beings."
preview | full record— James, William (1842-1910)
Date: 1901-2, 1902
"Most mindcurers here bring in a doctrine that thoughts are 'forces,' and that, by virtue of a law that like attracts like, one man's thoughts draw to themselves as allies all the thoughts of the same character that exist the world over."
preview | full record— James, William (1842-1910)
Date: 1901-2, 1902
"A mental system may be undermined or weakened by this interstitial alteration just as a building is, and yet for a time keep upright by dead habit. But a new perception a sudden emotional shock or an occasion which lays bare the organic alteration, will make the whole fabric fall together; and t...
preview | full record— James, William (1842-1910)
Date: 1901-2, 1902
"Speaking generally, our moral and practical attitude, at any given time, is always a resultant of two sets of forces within us, impulses pushing us one way and obstructions and inhibitions holding us back. "Yes! yes!" say the impulses; "No! no !" say the inhibitions."
preview | full record— James, William (1842-1910)