William James Quotes

In our animation we must show only the actions and reactions of a character, but we must picture also with the action. . . the feeling of those characters.

The man of decision cannot be stopped! The man of indecision cannot be started! Take your own choice.

A lobster, when left high and dry among the rock, does not have the sense enough to work his way back to the sea, but waits for the sea to come to him. If it does not come, he remains where he is and dies, although the slightest effort would enable him to reach the waves, which are perhaps within a yard of him. The world is full of human lobsters; people stranded on the rocks of indecision and procrastination, who, instead of putting forth their own energies, are waiting for some grand billow of good fortune to set them afloat.

You can over complicate everything with techniques; when you're in the moment, you have to feel that you are that character, that you're feeling the pain or the happiness or whatever it is that they're feeling in that moment. Usually the authenticity will manifest itself.

By dawn he had surrendered, gratefully, to the old inertia, the product of always seeing both sides of every question.

Being at a loss to resolve these questions, I am resolved to leave them without any resolution.

We must carry things beyond conversation to conclusion.

How many years must a man do nothing, before he can at all know what is to be done and how to do it!

I'll never understand how a man can live his life With his finger on the self-destruct button, Holding it there day after day, Blinded by an obsession to press it But lacking the conviction to do even that.

If you hesitate to map out your future, to make a big plan or to set a goal, you've just gone ahead and mapped your future anyway.

While some of us act without thinking, too many of us think without acting.

Irresolute men are sometimes very persistent in their undertakings, because if they give up their designs they would have to make a second resolution.

Love isn't how you feel. It's what you do. I've never had a feeling in my life. As a matter of fact, I matter only with earth people.

Lead with action and let the feelings follow.

Irresolution is a worse vice than rashness. He that shoots best may sometimes miss the mark; but he that shoots not at all can never hit it. Irresolution loosens all the joints of a state; like an ague, it shakes not this nor that limb, but all the body is at once in a fit. The irresolute man is lifted from one place to another; so hatcheth nothing, but addles all his actions.

Nothing is more tragic - or more common - than mental inertia.

...no one can do a thing about feelings, they exist and there's no way to censor them. We can reproach ourselves for some action, for a remark, but not for a feeling, quite simply because we have no control at all over it.

Intelligence alone is not courage, we often see that the most intelligent people are irresolute. Since in the rush of events a man is governed by feelings rather than by thought, the intellect needs to arouse the quality of courage, which then supports and sustains it in action.

Character - in things great and small - is indicated when a man (or person) pursues with sustained follow-through what he feels himself capable of doing.

You know, feeling and action are always linked, one can't exist without the other. It's sort of a hippie thing.

The aphorism sometimes casts off cynicism and expresses strong feeling.

If Moses had operated through committees the Israelites never would have got across the Red Sea.

I never make my mind up about anything at all, until it's over and done with.

Perhaps, on the whole, embarrassment and perplexity are a kind of natural accompaniment to life and movement; and it is better to be driven out of your senses with thinking which of two things you ought to do than to do nothing whatever, and be utterly uninteresting to all the world.

Maybe the older you grow and the less easy it is to put thought into action, maybe that’s why it gets all locked up in your head and becomes a burden.