Philosophers have actually devoted themselves, in the main, neither to perceiving the world, nor to spinning webs of conceptual theory, but to interpreting the meaning of the civilizations which they have represented, and to attempting the interpretation of whatever minds in the universe, human or divine, they believed to be real.
Josiah RoyceMemory and hope constantly incite us to the extensions of the self which play so large a part in our daily life.
Josiah RoyceInterfere with the reality of my world, and you therefore take the very life and heart out of my will.
Josiah RoyceI never felt a feeling that I knew or could know to be unlike the feelings of other people. I never consciously thought, except after patterns that the world or my fellows set for me.
Josiah RoyceA self is, by its very essence, a being with a past. One must look lengthwise backwards in the stream of time in order to see theself, or its shadow, now moving with the stream, now eddying in the currents from bank to bank of its channel, and now strenuously straining onwards in the pursuit of its chosen good.
Josiah Royce