Varieties of Religious Experience, a Study in Human Nature

by William James

somewhat ridiculous swagger

There is of course no special affinity between crankiness as such and superior intellect,[7]

curious case of presence felt by a blind man. The presence was that of the figure of a gray-bearded man dressed in a pepper and salt suit, squeezing himself under the crack of the door and moving across the floor of the room towards a sofa.

we have really different types of religious experience;

the hot blood has grown cool,

"By the word 'happiness' every human being understands something different. It is a phantom pursued only by weaker minds. The wise man is satisfied with the more modest but much more definite term CONTENTMENT.

It cannot be said exactly that I WISHED to kill myself, for the force which drew me away from life was fuller, more powerful, more general than any mere desire. It was a force like my old aspiration to live, only it impelled me in the opposite direction.

the subject is really complex.

"Again, the corrupt and unsound form of speaking in the plural number to a single person, YOU to one, instead of THOU, contrary to the pure, plain, and single language of truth, THOU to one, and YOU to more than one, which had always been used by God to men, and men to God, as well as one to another, from the oldest record of time till corrupt men, for corrupt ends, in later and corrupt times, to flatter, fawn, and work upon the corrupt nature in men, brought in that false and senseless way of speaking you to one, which has since corrupted the modern languages, and hath greatly debased the spirits and depraved the manners of men;—this evil custom I had been as forward in as others, and this I was now called out of and required to cease from.