I am done with big things and great institutions, and am for those tiny invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man’s pride.
{October 2, 2007} from william james
Lovely quote, Gem. William James became quite a wise man in his later years, I reckon. I have a few nice quotes from him too.
Here’s the William James quote I have in my book where I collect quotes:-
“I am convinced that the desire to formulate truths is a virulent disease. It has contracted lately an alliance in me with feverish personal ambition, which I never had before and which I recognise as an unholy thing in such a connection. I actually dread to die until I have settled the Universe’s hash in one more book…. Childish idiot! As if formulae about the Universe could ruffle its majesty and as if the common sense world and its duties were not eternally the really real.”