“Of course, the sovereign cure for worry is religious faith”
"The Gospel of Relaxation"
1910s, Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (1911)
Context: Worry means always and invariably inhibition of associations and loss of effective power. Of course, the sovereign cure for worry is religious faith; and this, of course, you also know. The turbulent billows of the fretful surface leave the deep parts of the ocean undisturbed, and to him who has a hold on vaster and more permanent realities the hourly vicissitudes of his personal destiny seem relatively insignificant things. The really religious person is accordingly unshakable and full of equanimity, and calmly ready for any duty that the day may bring forth.
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William James 246
American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist 1842–1910Related quotes
“To me faith means not worrying”
Address to the Constituent Assembly (1947)
“I had faith, and if I had faith I couldn't worry.”
Source: Alice in Zombieland
Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 4 (p. 34)
“Sorrow looks back, Worry looks around, Faith looks up”
Individual Liberty (1926), Passive Resistance
Context: When a physician sees that his patient's strength is being exhausted so rapidly by the intensity of his agony that he will die of exhaustion before the medical processes inaugurated have a chance to do their curative work, he administers an opiate. But a good physician is always loath to do so, knowing that one of the influences of the opiate is to interfere with and defeat the medical processes themselves. He never does it except as a choice of evils. It is the same with the use of force, whether of the mob or of the State, upon diseased society; and not only those who prescribe its indiscriminate use as a sovereign remedy and a permanent tonic, but all who ever propose it as a cure, and even all who would lightly and unnecessarily resort to it, not as a cure, but as an expedient, are social quacks.
The Faith that Heals (1910)
“Don't worry about being effective. Just concentrate on being faithful to the truth.”
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