Date: January, 1884

"Let anyone try to cut a thought across in the middle and get a look at its section, and he will see how difficult the introspective observation of the transitive tracts is."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: January, 1884

"As a snowflake-crystal caught in the warm hand is no longer a crystal but a drop, so, instead of catching the feeling of relation moving to its term, we find we have caught some substantive thing, usually the last word we were pronouncing, statically taken, and with its function, tendency and pa...

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: January, 1884

"The attempt at introspective analysis in these cases is in fact like seizing a spinning top to catch its motion, or trying to turn up the gas quickly enough to see how the darkness looks."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: January, 1884

"When very fresh, our minds carry an immense horizon with them."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: January, 1884

"And in states of extreme brain-fag the horizon is narrowed almost to the passing word, -- the associative machinery, however, providing for the next word turning up in orderly sequence, until at last the tired thinker is led to some kind of a conclusion."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: January, 1884

"I wish that space were here afforded to show what, in most cases of rapid thinking, the fringe or halo is with which each successive image is enveloped."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: January, 1884

"The notion of sameness-with-something-else is in fact one of the 'fringes' in which a substantive mental kernel-of-content can appear enveloped."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: January, 1884

"If this "solidarity" of the stream of feelings is all that is meant by the Ego, -- if the Ego is merely a name for that fact, -- well and good, -- we seem agreed!"

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: 1892, 1899

"In admitting a new body of experience, we instinctively seek to disturb as little as possible our pre-existing stock of ideas."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: 1892, 1899

"The flowing life of the mind is sorted into parcels suitable for presentation in the recitation-room, and chopped up into supposed 'processes' with long Greek and Latin names, which in real life have no distinct existence."

— James, William (1842-1910)