“The normal process of life contains moments as bad as any of those which insane melancholy is filled with, moments in which radical evil gets its innings and takes its solid turn. The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony. If you protest, my friend, wait till you arrive there yourself! … Here on our very hearths and in our gardens the infernal cat plays with the panting mouse, or holds the hot bird fluttering in her jaws. Crocodiles and rattlesnakes and pythons are at this moment vessels of life as real as we are; their loathsome existence fills every minute of every day that drags its length along; and whenever they or other wild beasts clutch their living prey, the deadly horror which an agitated melancholiac feels is the literally right reaction on the situation.”

—  William James

Lectures VI and VII, "The Sick Soul"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The normal process of life contains moments as bad as any of those which insane melancholy is filled with, moments in w…" by William James?
William James photo
William James 246
American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist 1842–1910

Related quotes

Anne Brontë photo

“All our talents increase in the using, and every faculty, both good and bad, strengthens by exercise: therefore, if you choose to use the bad, or those which tend to evil, till they become your masters, and neglect the good till they dwindle away, you have only yourself to blame.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XXIII : First weeks of Matrimony; Helen to Arthur

Maurice Merleau-Ponty photo

“All thought of something is at the same time self-consciousness […] At the root of all our experiences and all our reflections, we find […] a being which immediately recognises itself, […] and which knows its own existence, not by observation and as a given fact, nor by inference from any idea of itself, but through direct contact with that existence. Self-consciousness is the very being of mind in action.”

Maurice Merleau-Ponty book Phenomenology of Perception

Source: Phenomenology of Perception

Margaret Cho photo

“Body dysmorphia has got to go. Its similar to a disease called "crazy eyes" not the way others look at you, but the way you see yourself. The insanity which we use as our vision….”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, HATING ONESELF

Jenny Han photo

“There are moments in life that you wish with all your heart you could take back. Like, just erase from existence. Like, if you could, you'd erase yourself right out of existence too, just to make that moment not exist.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: It's Not Summer Without You

Joan Baez photo

“Here's to you, Nicola and Bart
Rest forever here in our hearts
The last and final moment is yours
That agony is your triumph”

Joan Baez (1941) American singer

Here's to You
Sacco e Vanzetti (1971)

Rutherford B. Hayes photo

“The melancholy thing in our public life is the insane desire to get higher.”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

Letter "to a leading editor" (10 April 1875), as quoted in The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes (1876) http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/22037 edited by James Quay Howard, ch. X, p. 144

Matthew Stover photo

“We can each sit and wait to die, from the very day of our births. Those of us who do not do so, choose to ask--and to answer--the two questions that define every conscious creature: What do I want? and What will I do to get it? Which are, finally, only one question: What is my will? Caine teaches us that the answer is always found within our own experience; our lives provide the structure of the question, and a properly phrased question contains its own answer.”

Matthew Stover book Blade of Tyshalle

(XIV.3) Del Rey, p. 472
Blade of Tyshalle (2001)

Howard Zinn photo

“I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare.”

Howard Zinn book A People's History of the United States

Source: A People's History of the United States (1980), Ch. 1

Trường Chinh photo

“Our patriotic fight must be long-drawn-out. Its requirements in terms of manpower and material resources are increasing daily. These are mainly contributed by the peasants; but the peasants, who have little or no land at all, are poverty-stricken.”

Trường Chinh (1907–1988) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (1907-1988)

Implementing the Land Reform (1958) (excerpts)

Ta-Nehisi Coates photo

“There was the normal high that comes from the hormones of youth, that fresh sense of being unchained. But also there was the omnipresent feeling that It could go down. In those moments—which back then were all of our moments—your neurology was always code red.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates (1975) writer, journalist, and educator

Source: The Beautiful Struggle: A Memoir (2008), p. 34.

Related topics