William James Quotes

Whoever thinks much and to good purpose easily forgets his own experiences, but not the thoughts which these experiences have called forth.

I knew that I had to write my memoirs.

Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.

I do enjoy thinking about the past.

A well-fashioned day - with a beginning and an end, a purpose and a content, a color and a character, a feel and a texture - takes it place among the many and becomes a valuable memory and treasure. At midnight the winged messengers come and gather up all these pieces and take them off to wherever the mosaic is kept. And surely, on occasion, one messenger says to another, 'Wait 'til you see this one.'

Things you did. Things you never did. Things you dreamed. After a long time they run together.

I think that I am here, on this earth, to present a report on it, but to whom I don't know. As if I were sent so that whatever takes place has meaning because it changes into memory.

The past is one evil less and one memory more.

When we travel, we are like a film at the moment of exposure; it is memory that will develop it.

I have more questions than answers in this world as do most poets and writers. The field of memory we exist in is absolutely encompassing and is both a question and answer. It is memory that provides the heart with impetus, fuels the brain, and propels the corn plant from seed to fruit.

Do you remember we were sitting there by the water?

I still preserve those relics of past sufferings and experience, like pillars of witness set up in travelling through the valve of life, to mark particular occurrences. The footsteps are obliterated now; the face of the country may be changed; but the pillar is still there, to remind me how all things were when it was reared.

Do you know how there are moments when the world moves so slowly you can feel your bones shifting, your mind tumbling? When you think that no matter what happens to you for the rest of your life, you will remember every last detail of that one minute forever?

Aristotle once said that wisdom (the ability to make good decisions) is a combination of experience plus reflection. The more time that you take to think about your experiences, the more vital lessons you will gain from them.

Sometimes," he sighed, "I think the things I remember are more real than the things I see.

We don’t choose between experiences, we choose between memories of experiences. Even when we think about the future, we don’t think of our future normally as experiences. We think of our future as anticipated memories.

The past scampers like an alley cat through the present, leaving the paw prints of memories scattered helter-skelter.

Reflective thinking turns experience into insight.

This moment will just be another story someday.

A photograph it a souvenir of a memory. It is not a moment. It is the looking at the photograph that becomes the moment. Your own moment.

Well, I'm not able to work anymore as an actor and still at the level I would want to ... you start to lose your memory, you start to lose your confidence, you start to lose your invention. So, that's pretty much a closed book for me. And I'm grateful for the other things that have come into my life: grandkids, and restaurants and charity ... I've been doing it for 50 years. That's enough.

I think the people I have met have meant a great deal to me, more than any shot I ever hit. I will always remember some golf shots, but others I would like to forget.

The past does not only draw us back to the past. There are certain memories of the past that have strong steel springs and, when we who live in the present touch them, they are suddenly stretched taut and then they propel us into the future.

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who know where their high school yearbook is and those who do not.