William James Quote: The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry, to...

The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry, to equanimity, receptivity, and peace, is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of personal centre of energy, which I have analyzed so often; and the chief wonder of it is that it so often comes about, not by doing, but by simply relaxing and throwing the burden down.

— William James

Source: The Principles of Psychology - 1890

simply tenseness inner equilibrium transition

Select Quotes by William James

Dead men tell no tales.

— William James

Source: The Moral Equivalent of War - 1906

The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense the statue stood there from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest.

— William James

Source: Principles of Psychology - Chapter 9 - 1890

If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing. It would take us as long to recall a space of time as it took the original time to elapse, and we should never get ahead with our thinking.

— William James