The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James illustrated edition Quotes

“We must make search rather for the original experiences which were the pattern-setters to all this mass of suggested feeling and imitated conduct. These experiences we can only find in individuals for whom religion exists not as a dull habit, but as an acute fever rather. But such individuals are "geniuses" in the religious line; and like many other geniuses who have brought forth fruits effective enough for commemoration in the pages of biography, such religious geniuses have often shown symptoms of nervous instability. Even more perhaps than other kinds of genius, religious leaders have been subject to abnormal psychical visitations. Invariably they have been creatures of exalted emotional sensibility. Often they have led a discordant inner life, and had melancholy during a part of their career. They have known no measure, been liable to obsessions and fixed ideas; and frequently they have fallen into trances, heard voices, seen visions, and presented all sorts of peculiarities which are ordinarily classed as pathological. Often, moreover, these pathological features in their career have helped to give them their religious authority and influence.”
― William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James illustrated edition

“The gods we stand by are the gods we need and can use, the gods whose demands on us are reinforcements of our demands on ourselves and on one another.”
― William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature.

“Knowledge and Love are One, and the
MEASURE is suffering”
― William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James

“Each attitude being a syllable in human nature's total message, it takes the whole of us to spell the meaning out completely.”
― William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James