“Unhappiness is apt to characterize the period of order-making and struggle.”
Lecture VIII, "The Divided Self, and the Process of its Unification"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
Context: Now in all of us, however constituted, but to a degree the greater in proportion as we are intense and sensitive and subject to diversified temptations, and to the greatest possible degree if we are decidedly psychopathic, does the normal evolution of character chiefly consist in the straightening out and unifying of the inner self. The higher and the lower feelings, the useful and the erring impulses, begin by being a comparative chaos within us — they must end by forming a stable system of functions in right subordination. Unhappiness is apt to characterize the period of order-making and struggle.
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William James 246
American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist 1842–1910Related quotes
“This period is characterized by a diversity of textual transmissions undreamed of two decades ago.”
Referring to the state of the Bible in Persian times, circa 300BCE.
"Hebrew Biblical Manuscripts" (Biblica, 48 (1967), pp.243-290)
Dwight Waldo (1978), "Organization Theory: Revisiting the Elephant," Public Administration Review, 38 (November/December): p. 597.
Foreword to revised edition (1982)
One Man's Meat (1942)
Context: Once in everyone's life there is apt to be a period when he is fully awake, instead of half asleep. I think of those five years in Maine as the time when this happened to me … I was suddenly seeing, feeling, and listening as a child sees, feels, and listens. It was one of those rare interludes that can never be repeated, a time of enchantment. I am fortunate indeed to have had the chance to get some of it down on paper.
“It isn't necessary to have relatives in Kansas City in order to be unhappy.”
"Time in Transition" https://web.archive.org/web/20121113235339/http://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/article/777/time-in-transition (2011)
The Third Notebook: Part Two
No Longer Human
Letter (March 1890), published in The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad, edited by Frederick R. Karl and Laurence Davies, Vol. 1, p. 43 ISBN 0521242169