“In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly.”

"Is Life Worth Living?"
1890s, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

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 "In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly." by William James?
William James photo
William James 246
American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist 1842–1910

Related quotes

Patrick Swift photo

“It is the transcendent imagination working on this material that releases the mysterious energies which move and speak of deepest existence.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

"The Painter in the Press", X magazine, Vol. I, No.4 (October 1960).
Context: Art on the other hand speaks to us of resignation and rejoicing in reality, and does so through a transformation of our experience of the world into an order wherein all facts become joyous; the more terrible the material the greater the artistic triumph. This has nothing at all to do with "a constant awareness of the problems of our time" or any other vague public concern. It is a transformation that is mysterious, personal and ethical. And the moral effect of art is only interesting when considered in the particular. For it is always the reality of the particular that provides the occasion and the spring of art — it is always "those particular trees/ that caught you in their mysteries" or the experience of some loved object. Not that the matter rests here. It is the transcendent imagination working on this material that releases the mysterious energies which move and speak of deepest existence.

Alison Croggon photo
George Orwell photo

“The truth of the ultimate mystery — the truth that there is an ultimate mystery, that being is radically mysterious — cannot be denied even by the unbelieving Jew of our age.”

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism

Commenting upon the Aleinu prayer, in "Why We Remain Jews" (1962)
Context: The kingdom is Yours, and You will reign in glory for all eternity. As it is written in Your Torah: "The Lord shall reign for ever and ever." And it is said: " And the Lord shall be King over all the earth: on that day the Lord shall be One, and His name One."
No nobler dream was ever dreamt. It is surely nobler to be a victim of the most noble dream than to profit from a sordid reality and to wallow in it. Dream is akin to aspiration. And aspiration is a kind of divination of an enigmatic vision. And an enigmatic vision in the emphatic sense is the perception of the ultimate mystery, of the truth of the ultimate mystery. The truth of the ultimate mystery — the truth that there is an ultimate mystery, that being is radically mysterious — cannot be denied even by the unbelieving Jew of our age. That unbelieving Jew of our age, if he has any education, is ordinarily a positivist, a believer in Science, if not a positivist without any education.

André Breton photo

“[T]his cancer of the mind which consists of thinking all too sadly that certain things 'are' while others, which well might be, 'are not.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

Quote from Deuxième Manifeste du Surréalisme, Andre Breton (Second Manifesto of Surrealism; 1930)
1920's

Charles Kingsley photo
Robert Charles Wilson photo
Joris-Karl Huysmans photo
Charles Darwin photo

“The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

Related topics