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  ...and gives a new issue to his life. So with fear, with indignation, jealousy, ambition, worship. If they are there, life changes. And whether they shall be there or not depends almost always upon non-logical, often on organic conditions. And as the excited interest which these passions put into the world is our gift to the world, just so are the passions themselves GIFTS--gifts to us, from sources sometimes low and sometimes high; but almost always nonlogical and beyond our control. How can the moribund old man reason back to himself the romance, the mystery, the imminence of great things with which our old earth tingled for him in the days when he was young and well?   Gifts, either of the flesh or of the spirit; and the spirit bloweth where it listeth; and the world's materials lend their surface passively to all the gifts alike, as the stage-setting receives indifferently whatever alternating colored lights may be shed upon it from the optical apparatus in the gallery.
Meanwhile the practically real world for each one of us, the effective world of the individual, is the compound world, the physical facts and emotional values in...   James, William

Excerpt from Varieties of Religious Experience, a Study in Human Nature · This quote is about age and aging · Search on Google Books to find all references and sources for this quotation.

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